Chelsea Flower Show

In an article about the Chelsea Flower Show, the BBC reported that the organisers had noted “nearly a quarter of the UK's front gardens are now paved over.”  The results of a survey showed that 24% of gardens are paved, concreted or gravelled.

In the Official Publications Collection there is a small item entitled “Our Gardens” (shelfmark GHA.1/2).  It was published in 1948 and in the foreword by the Minister of Health (Aneurin Bevan) explains that “the purpose of this book is to show how much anyone who is fortunate enough to have a garden can do to add to the attractiveness of his neighbourhood….I therefore commend this little book in the hope that it will help us all to maintain in the surroundings and the settings of our homes that tradition of good gardening of which our country has always been proud.”

In Hansard from the Lords Sitting of Monday, 21st January,vol. 348 (shelfmark GHL.5) 1974

Lord Chorley states  ”I think that the English people should be particularly sensitive to the importance of their floral heritage. What have flowers meant to the English? If you go to the Chelsea Flower Show, if you go to Vincent Square every fortnight, you will see not wild flowers but flowers which have developed out of wild flowers; but for the wild flowers they would not be displayed there and our gardens in the summer would not be the lovely sights that they are. Plants have meant a very great deal to the English people, to the English way of life and to our culture. One important aspect of this I have already mentioned; namely, what flowers have meant to our poets. Obviously, our greatest poets have been as much moved by the charming little flowers in our countryside as by almost anything else, and that has meant a great deal. The inspiration to our people of our great poets-Shakespeare, Wordsworth and the others-cannot be measured. It certainly cannot be measured in money. It cannot really be measured in words. What would Wordsworth's poetry be without the flowers?”