South Africa recently unveiled their 37th floral exhibit to the Chelsea Flower Show. For top exhibition builders, Joburg’s Ray Hudson and Cape Town’s David Davidson, 2012 will be the 19th year in which they have been on the creative team that develops and builds the SA floral stand in London.
As the international floral Olympics, the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show (May 22 to 26) opens for five days in a tent city that emerges from parkland every May at the bottom of grounds belonging to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, in Chelsea, London.
First held in 1862 as the Great Spring Show, the show moved to Chelsea in 1905 and as the most famous flower show in the world, it’s a huge attraction to gardeners internationally. The theme of this year’s SA stand is Gateways – A botanical journey.
The aim of the exhibit is to take visitors to Chelsea on a journey across SA, through changing botanical and cultural landscapes.
Like the diary of a traveller, the exhibit includes a scene from the south-western Cape coast and interior (fynbos biome) extending into Namaqualand and the semi-arid Karoo (succulent Karoo biome) and onward to the northern provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga (grassland biome).
The exhibit is enclosed by a low perimeter wall, with each side featuring a typical architectural gateway providing a “sense of arrival” at each destination. The roads travelled take in a gracious Cape Dutch Manor House, a fisherman’s cottage, a rough Karoo farm track and an Ndebele archway.
The aim of exhibiting at Chelsea has always been to attract tourists to SA. The South African Gold Coin Exchange is the major sponsor of the exhibit for the second year in a row and a limited edition of a Gold Mandela medallion featuring the portrait of Mandela on one side and the Strelitzia on the reverse, links the icon to SA’s unique flora.
The Cape fynbos section of the exhibit will feature numerous protea species as well as cultivars and new hybrids, leucadendrons (cone bushes), leucospermums (pincushions), serrurias (blushing bride), heaths (Erica), restios and a host of gardener’s favourites such as Nemesia, Lobelia, Osteospermum, Helichrysum, Felicia, Arctotis and Gazania. - Saturday Star