The show must go on

Visit the impressive display at Hyde Hall, says Peter

- Peter Seabrook

WHILE the ‘Virtual Chelsea Flower Show 2021’ will now be done and dusted for most people, with a bit of luck our pyramid display, which was to have been built in the Great Pavilion in London, will still be decked out in the Floral Fantasia area at the RHS Garden, Hyde Hall, Essex well into June. This is the second year we have had to relocate from the Great Pavilion, and we soon found building a display out of doors on a hilltop exposed to the elements can be quite demanding!

Our original plan was to launch the new soft pink Verbena ‘Margaret’s Memory’, along with a number of other plant novelties, at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. Uprooted to Hyde Hall, and staged alongside the mammoth 277-cultivar pansy trial, provided other opportunities and allowed us to build the wooden framework earlier, clad it with some of the pansies initially, and then have a rolling display with novelty plants replacing the pansies as the season develops.