RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2017

My parents had booked tickets a while back to go and visit the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show on Saturday the 8th of July, a weekend I was going to be in Wales… So I made a last minute decision to drive back to Hampshire on the Friday afternoon so I could join them in the adventure, and it’s a decision I’m glad I made! I’ve always wanted to go to a big garden show like this and even though we sell at quite few throughout the year you never get time to really walk around and take everything in. I was a tad excited!

We arrived at 9.30am and parked in the park and ride so we could get the bus to the show. There weren’t any queues or hordes of people which we were thankful for so we walked straight in, paid £5.00 for a show guide and headed to a coffee stand to have a morning tea and plan our day out.

First off we walked around the shopping stalls marveling at the beautiful flowers on display as well as the unique way some stalls displayed the flowers, a land rover had been decked out with tropical plants and the alliums looked amazing! I fell in love with the most perfect greenhouse and my Dad loved the interior of a vintage shed. We walked around the scarecrow competition and were filled with so much inspiration, my favourite had to be the bug hotel scarecrow with the lego bird house.

Afterwards we headed into the Floral Marquee which was as long as the eye could see! Again this was filled with inspirational and stunning displays of flowers and I couldn’t resist buying 2 lavenders, one for a gift and a pink variety called ‘Little Lottie’ to plant up my allotment. You could see that there was a huge love for cottage garden flowers which I just adore, one stall had my favourite Hollyhocks on them with so many different varieties. I was going to treat myself but they didn’t have the two varieties which I had picked out from the display so I thought I’ll just have to come again next year!

After we exited the flower marquee with our heads buzzing with ideas we decided to stop for lunch. We had prepared a picnic and laid our rug down underneath the shade of a tree, it was super hot today and we had already done so much walking.

After we were fed and watered we carried on looking around the show at the many stalls and amazing display gardens, some of them looked like they had been there years and years! There was a small Cook and Grow marquee which offered all us vegetable growers some delights as well as an actual ‘Kitchen Garden’!

We looked inside the Festival of Roses tent and couldn’t resist a walk around the beautiful David Austin stand, I just wish I had more room up the allotment for even more roses!

Last but not least as our weary and tired legs were starting to give up on us we made our way towards the exit to see if the queue for the butterfly dome was still too long. Fortunately we caught the queue at the right time and only had to wait 5 minutes to enter the dome. I’m so glad we decided to go inside because it was just amazing, the butterflies were so beautiful and there were so many of them flying around! I particularly loved the idea of having a butterfly cafe plate with left over oranges for them to feed on, another idea I stored in my head.

The show was a success and exceeded my expectations even though we chose yet again another hot day to walk around a garden! I only bought two lavender plants and a hat but it was all the ideas that I carried home with me that were more important. My head is full of so much inspiration it could burst! All will be revealed in due time though and part of me can’t wait to get back to the allotment to make these ideas into reality. For now I’m drawing, planning, and dreaming back about my perfect visit to my first RHS show… No doubt I’ll be visiting more next year!