Chelsea Flower Show 2023 review: Plenty to admire, but little to make your heart sing
I don’t suppose anyone visiting the Chelsea show this year would fail to find a garden they liked, but on the other hand they would be hard-pressed to find one that bowled them over. The heart-strings weren’t zing-zinging.
The nearest thing to heart-lifting was Sarah Price’s Mediterranean-style garden (The Nurture Landscapes Garden) in the shade of flat-topped stone pines populated with those wonderful old-fashioned irises bred by the painter Cedric Morris, a cantata of grey, sand, yellow and plum. “Best in Show,” someone said, “or too middle-class?”
If they’re right, then maybe most popular would be Mark Gregory’s walled kitchen garden (The Savills Garden), complete with feasting Chelsea pensioners, a triumph of craftsmanship. But then so was Cleve West’s gardened piece of waste ground (The
