Of all the many things that have been cancelled due to lockdown, the loss of RHS Malvern 2020 is the one that’s hit me hardest. Although I go to most of the big gardening shows, Malvern is my local event and the one where I feel truly at home.
The spring festival is the start of my gardening year proper, a chance to meet up with friends in the nursery trade or fellow journos. Above all, it’s an opportunity to revel in plants and find something new for my garden.
This year, Malvern was celebrating 35 years and a spectacular show was planned with live music events and lots to see.
I’ve been talking to some of the nurseries who would have been filling the floral marquee with colour and scent about what they had hoped to show at RHS Malvern 2020. Here’s just a taste of what was planned – I couldn’t include all 67 exhibitors!
The floral marquee spotlight at this year’s show was going to be on Fernatix, the RHS Master Grower for RHS Malvern 2020.
Steven Fletcher and his partner Kerry Robinson are well known on the show circuit for their fabulous ferns. They’d planned a display that mixed plants with sculpture from Dragons Wood Forge in Herefordshire.
The cancellation of the show was a disappointment, said Steven: “Malvern is our favourite show. We love it.”
With impeccable timing – “It’s almost as though we could see it coming” – the pair started work on revamping their website after last year’s Malvern Autumn Show and are now occupied selling plants online.
“It’s the plants we would have been selling at the shows. We’ve been so busy.”
Another exhibitor who has turned to mail order sales is Neil Jones of The Kitchen Garden Plant Centre in Newent.
His peat and chemical-free herbs have proved popular in lockdown among them Tarragon ‘Four Seasons’, which would have been on his Malvern display.
“It is actually part of the Tagetes family. It has orange marigold flowers and tastes like tarragon.”
One stand that always draws a crowd at Malvern is the display of heucheras, tiarellas and heucherellas by Plantagogo, run by Richard and Vicky Fox.
A recently introduced variety that Vicky picked out is Heucherella ‘Catching Fire’, which has vibrant lime-gold and red leaves.
“It’s a much more vigorous and reliable replacement for Heucherella ‘Stoplight’. We love it and it’s great for a shady place in the garden.”
This display plant of Heuchera ‘Sugar Plum’ would have been at Malvern.
Another popular varieties is Heuchera ‘Sugar Plum’, which has wonderful purple foliage and pink-white flowers from May to September.
A familiar sight at Malvern is the display by Fibrex Nurseries. The family-run firm is a founder member and has been at the show every year.
The star of their display this spring was going to be Pelargonium ‘Rushmoor Parana’, one of the new Zonartic Pelargoniums, raised by former World War Two fighter pilot Cliff Blackman. He started breeding pelargoniums after the war, aiming to breed a yellow zonal pelargonium, and produced a new category of these popular plants, the Zonartics.
“As this year, Malvern was to celebrate the 75th year of VE Day, it felt that showcasing the Zonartic Pelargoniums was a good thing to do,” Heather Goddard Keys from Fibrex told me.
“They are also extraordinarily beautiful and I was really looking forward to building a display around them, knowing that visitors would really take to the new varieties.”
Like many the Fibrex team will be missing RHS Malvern 2020: “This was to be our 35th year at the Malvern Spring Festival, we shall miss it for lots of reasons. It’s a great location, a great time of year, there is always a lovely atmosphere and a feeling of promise of things to come with all that youthful plant growth in abundance.
“But I think now our perspective on everything has changed. Although we are busy, ridiculously busy with mail order, we miss the social contact with our customers, and with the shows cancelled for the foreseeable future this is felt more keenly now than ever. “
From a founder nursery to Lincolnshire Pond Plants who had been due to make their Malvern debut and unveiling a new selection of tropical waterlilies, as well as displaying other aquatic and marginal plants.
‘Texas Dawn’ is a yellow lily that is medium-sized and flowers profusely while ‘Xuefei’ is a dwarf variety.
“It’s ideal for a small dish or bowl and produces a mass of flowers all through the summer,” said Dawn Williamson from the nursery.
It’s hard to miss the vibrantly coloured display by Pheasant Acre Plants, who specialise in bulbs, dahlias and gladioli, and the spring show with its masses of tulips is a particular favourite.
This year the family nursery in South Wales was planning to unveil a new tulip called ‘Wow’.
Described as a ‘blue’ tulip, it is like so many blue flowers more purple but none the worse for that.
Another regular at Malvern are specialist nursery Bloms Bulbs who put on a big display of cut tulips.
They always have a tulip offer, if you order enough bulbs, and this year’s was 10 free Tulipa ‘Strong Gold’ with every 60 tulips ordered. That is now being offered via their online site. It’s a tulip I grew this year and it produced good strong flowers with a deep yellow colour.
Stella Exbury, who runs Hare Spring Cottage Plants, had hoped for an uneventful show year after injury setting up her RHS Chelsea display saw her struggle at subsequent events last year.
She holds the National Collections of both camassia and sidalcea. The camassia always form a big part of her displays and RHS Malvern 2020 would have been no different. Here are two from her collection.
“Early May 2020 will feel empty without the beauty and inspirational backdrop of the Malvern Hills,” she told me. “This extravaganza of an event endears itself to the thousands of visitors that return year on year and it’s the absolute perfect occasion to display our fabulous collection of camassia.”
But she’s optimistic for the future: “The management team for the show will, I know, organise a stunning event for 2021 and I very much look forward to being part of it.”
Lily and bulb specialists Harts Nursery have several new varieties this year including the aptly named ‘Cameleon’.
“It’s true to its name as it colour changes before your eyes,” explained Victoria Hart.
It has large white to pink flowers with a fabulous scent and slightly ruffled edges. It will grow to around 1.2m high.
A lily that Harts had planned to unveil at RHS Chelsea is ‘Empress’. It has frilled and recurved petals that are white with a peppermint green tinge.
“This double Oriental lily is a prolific bloomer that will emit an intense fragrance.”
Another Malvern stalwart is Hardys Cottage Garden Plants. They were planning to use this on their display.
“Uvularia is a brilliant plant for a shady spot through spring to early summer,” Rosy Hardy told me. “It’s used as understorey planting on our displays and is how it should be used in the garden. It’s a Malvern Show plant every year.”
Andy’s Air Plants has been exhibiting at RHS shows since 2017 and Andy Gavin won the award for Best Exhibit in the Floral Marquee at Malvern in spring 2018.
Undoubtedly, a star this year would have been this tillandsia with its bright pink bracts and blue flowers. It was to have had a starring role at Malvern.
Another would have been this Tillandsia seleriana.
“It has coloured up red due to being stressed in high light levels, soon it will produce purple tubular flowers,” said Andy. “I always have T. seleriana on my displays at the flower shows and I enjoy telling people about the intricate relastionship this species has with ant colonies that live within the leaf bases.”
He also always makes room for aechmeas, which change colour during their flowering cycle.
“They make great additions to my flower show displays and are very popular.”
Finally, Stan Griffin and Vicki Newman from Craig House Cacti are well-known for their innovative flower show displays.
Their RHS Malvern 2020 display would have featured celebrity cactus Parodia warasii which has its own Twitter account @popsythecactus. A star indeed!
Of course, it’s not just the nurseries who are disappointed at not being at Malvern. There were several show gardens planned and a group of Shipping Container Gardens.
Many designers are hoping to bring their gardens to next year’s show and some are continuing in some form.
Jane Scott Moncrieff had planned a garden commemorating Second World War SOE agent Violette Szabo.
Plants that had been grown for the garden are now going to two sites. One is at The Maltster’s country inn in Badby, Northamptonshire, where around 380 plants will go into the garden.
The rest are destined for a community garden in Hackney, east London.
“Even before lockdown, we were determined the show plants would have a life after the show and we’ve worked hard to make it happen,” said Jane.
Designer Karen Tatlow has put her show garden supporting St Giles’ Hospice near Lichfield on hold – “We are determined to build it in some way at some point.”
‘Moments that Matter’ metal sunflowers, produced for the garden, are still being sold with money raised going to the hospice.
“If we sell all 500, we should be able to donate £3,750, which would be very nice!”
Sunflowers can be ‘sponsored’, with the sunflower then being used as an art installation at the hospice, or there are various ways of collecting them, once lockdown restrictions are eased. More information is available here.
Many nurseries are struggling with shows and plant fairs cancelled and their nursery sites closed. Lots of them do mail order and you can see who should have been at RHS Malvern 2020 here. Do support them, if you can.
You can read about last year’s floral marquee displays here.
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