A Cock and Bull Story - Chelsea Flower Show 2013

It is the centenary year of the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show, one of the most famous and most prestigious flower shows in the world.  I have been going for eleven years now and I love it.  I love going to see the gardens, I love the Great Pavilion (both of which I will blog about separately) but I also love the stuff.  There is much stuff at Chelsea from the very beautiful to the somewhat naff, the incredibly expensive to the affordable.  What I realised during my first ever visit to Chelsea is that there really is something for everyone.
  This year there were the serried rows of wheelbarrows, a great display and beautifully underplanted as well.
There are beasties, this wooden chap looks quite friendly despite his huge fangs
If you want a woman with a bird on her head, then this is for you.  I love this stand and visit it every year.
If women with heads are not for you, then that is catered for as well.
and semi-naked women on dinosaurs also make an appearance
as do massive masked birds (the bondage bird?)
and balancing naked people.  You would need an extremely large space to display these items and I imagine within a context they would look outstanding.
I liked this one a lot.  I could find room for this.
There is huge skill in this driftwood horse.  Again, in a landscape this could look amazing, get three of them and you are making a serious statement.  I imagine them running along the edge of a field just on the eyeline.
At times it feels you have entered the world of Willy Wonka, I looked around for Oompah Loopahs to no avail.
and if I ever wanted something to put napkins in, then there that was catered for too.
Oh, and of course...
I rather liked these too, the bird was huge, the bull was quite small.  You can interpret that however you please.
The Chelsea Flower Show is huge fun, I look at these stands of stuff and I think about owning sufficient land to place some of the massive statues.  I worry a little about how anatomically correct some statues are (some of the animal detail was just a little too much information).  I admire the huge skill that has gone into creating some of the exhibits that even if I do not particularly like them I can see how clever they are and how talented the creators are.  I dream of the contexts where I might seek to place some of these things and the life-styles that go with them.  For me Chelsea is always about thinking and dreaming and taking some of the big ideas and working out if there is a way of making something from them into my garden.  However, there are no huge sculptures of semi-naked women riding dinosaurs here at the Blackberry Garden, maybe sadly none.