Malvern Spring Show

Many thanks to Helen Johnstone of The Patient Gardener who has kindly reported on the Malvern Spring Show on behalf on Notcutts. Helen’s blog The Patient Gardner is a place where she is able to record and share her endeavours and inspirations that have shaped her life in and outside the house.

Malvern Spring Show is all about the plants and the nurserymen that grow them.  It’s a mecca for the compulsive plantaholic.  It goes without saying that this season the growers have had a tough time.  Endless rain and low temperatures last summer, a long and cold winter and a late spring has taken its toll.  There were few irises, peonies and meconopsis poppies on display; plants that have dominated the floral marquee in previous years.

This did not stop the displays being eye-catching and I think that some plants that often get overlooked came into their own.  The cacti and succulents were certainly eye catching; in fact one of the displays won best in show.  Pelargonium were also much in evidence with displays of massed plants which are always stunning but even more so given the difficult growing conditions the nurseries have had.  Also eye catching were the jewel like auriculas, with two nurseries showing their plants in the traditional way on auricula theatres and black backgrounds.

But it wasn’t all tender plants.  The displays at the Malvern Spring Show always feature a number of woodland displays.  Many woodland plants are at their best in the spring and Anemone nemorsa was joined by displays of Solomon’s Seal,  Lamprocapnos spectablis (formerly Dicentra), Disporopsis, Epimedium and Erythroniums.  Hostas and ferns were very prevalent with a number of nurseries having these plant groups as their only displays.

As ever the nursery men put on a fabulous display at Malvern Spring Show providing inspiration, advice and the promise of fabulous displays in our borders in the season ahead.

If you’d like to read more about Helen’s gardening stories, why not read The Hardest Working Greenhouse?