RHS Malvern Spring Festival

I’m sure that when you marry a landscape gardener, part of you realises that the odd weekend throughout the year will be spent at garden shows! So far, 10 years married, I’ve got away with it lightly with the odd splattering of Chelsea Flower show here and a local County fair there. However, this weekend’s garden show shifted up a gear and consisted of a 3 hour trip to Worcestershire for the RHS Malvern Spring Festival and so along I went smiling dutifully.

Parking

Gold parking! It’s no more fancy than any other field, except it’s the closest! When you’re walking backwards and forwards to the car with arms full of plants, plastic snails, gnomes and the such like, you’ll be grateful you paid to be a little closer to the entrance.

Queuing

Queuing on entry was painless and very quick. I made the error of going in sandals and being near wet Wales this was a big mistake so my first purchase was a pair of wellies – after that, we were up and running; literally with me running behind Charles mostly.

Celebrities

We heard Joe Swift talk about allotments (which he made sound fun!) but my absolute favourite part of the day was was visiting the floral marquee. If I could bottle that smell of the most amazing flowers I’ve ever seen in my life i’d be very rich. The displays of daffodils, acer, lilies, pre-historic ferns to name a few were simply breathtaking and I could have spent nearly all day in there.

Back next year

The three counties show ground is huge so it felt very spacious and not at all busy compared to some shows we’ve been to. Rows and rows of plants to purchase with nurseries specialising in their own certain species made it feel like a ‘proper garden show’. I came away feeling a little more green fingered and looking forward to the summer ahead in our garden. The show was a gem, hidden just shy of the Welsh mountains and I can’t wait to go back next year.