There seemed to be a buzz about the opening day of this year’s RHS Malvern Spring Festival. Perhaps I’m biased – it is my ‘local’ show and I’ve been nearly every year. Maybe it was the weather, which saw the garden designers using watering cans rather than pumps and visitors suffering sunburn rather than wind chill.
Certainly the show and festival gardens, which moved to a more central position a few years ago, now seem part of the show rather than an afterthought, while the Malvern Hills make a far better backdrop than the top of trade stands.
It was also good to see the Villaggio Verde entry doubling up as a theatre space; perhaps more thought could be given to having gardens that people can actually get into rather than gaze onto. Often it’s only from inside a garden that tiny details can be seen.
Mark Eveleigh’s unassuming Macmillan Legacy Garden took the Best in Show accolade, proving that large scale, big budget gardens are not the only route to RHS success. And it’s not that there was no competition as the other gold-medal winners were polished and varied designs that could easily have won.
Space seemed plentiful in the Floral Marquee, although I’m assured the number of stands is down by only one or two on last year. The feeling is it’s probably due to a rejig in the layout.
What hadn’t changed was the variety for those of us with a plant-buying habit and the increased space did mean that getting around and, more importantly, getting up close to the displays was easy, particularly at the beginning and end of the day.
There certainly seemed to be more interest in Malvern: the press pack had more than doubled on last year and for the first time the festival was used as the venue for TV weather reports on Good Morning Britain and Midlands Today.
Alan Titchmarsh, returning after an absence of some years, described the RHS Malvern Spring Festival as having “come on in leaps and bounds”.
It was, he said, a place with “people who know about plants, people who understand what horticulture and growing and gardening are all about”.
Certainly the gardening public outnumbered the celebs and even those ‘faces’ seemed to be mainly the green-fingered variety.
• Pictures from this year’s RHS Malvern Spring Festival are here
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Fantastic photographs! A thoroughly enjoyable and warm (rare) few days!
Thank you. Wasn’t it lovely to see the show in sunshine. Makes such a difference.