This year’s Harrogate Spring Flower Show boasted over 1,000 exhibitors at the first major UK gardening event of 2014.
Beautiful new show gardens offered lots of inspiration for creating the perfect outdoor space. Themes this year ranged from a tropical courtyard with the call of the Caribbean, to a coastal retreat complete with driftwood decking.
Naturalistic, pollinator friendly planting featured strongly in many of the displays, along with a trend to break up the garden using swathes of timber uprights. Click here for a complete list of show garden awards.
Celebration
Landmark events like the Yorkshire Grand Départ cycling race, the 175th anniversary of the national charity, Perennial, and the 30th birthday of the Harrogate community learning group, Horticap, also provided the inspiration for showpiece gardens.
The spring show hosted Britain’s biggest display of floral art and celebrated the Emerald Anniversary of the national flower arranger’s society NAFAS (National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies) with a stunning hat made from flowers and foliage capturing ‘fifty shades of green.’
Features
New for 2014 was a competition for Pocket Gardens showcasing community projects across the region, with 1m x 1m plots offering a window into their work for thousands of visitors to the show. Themes included a new Tour de Plants, an austerity garden for the kitchen and a bid to create the county’s smallest cottage garden.
With the Yorkshire Grand Départ just around the corner, plant nursery displays at the show celebrated pedals among the petals this year with the theme, On your bike and pedal!, for the competition to find the most innovative exhibit.
Nurseries
The grower’s displays were stunning, featuring a number of rare or new plant varieties which were quick to sell out.
Among the plants that took our eye this year was the delicate Semiaqulegia grown by Summerdale Garden and Nursery and a striking Scilla peruviana from Avon bulbs looking like dwarf steel blue agapanthus.
Great ideas
Apart from the many plant breeders and nurseries exhibiting at the Harrogate Spring flower show, there was a wealth of traders supplying everything from greenhouses to plant labels and among them some new and inspiring ideas;
The simple, yet effective wire plant tunnels from Flower Power Garden Products are a wonderful rustic way to create very sturdy crop protection tunnels using only three bamboo canes and a pack of preformed wire supports. No fiddly fittings and really compact for storage when not in use.
If you want garden furniture but lack a lot of space for table and chairs, then the innovative garden bench from The Bench Company, transforms with one easy movement into a substantial table and seating for about 6 people.
Something for everybody
Rated as Britain’s best gardening event by Which?Gardening in 2013, Harrogate Spring Flower Show also featured a schools Sow & Grow competition and hands-on activities for children, including the chance to sow seeds to turn Yorkshire yellow for this summer’s cycle racing.
Show Director Nick Smith said: “2014 is set to be an exciting year and we are delighted to get the UK gardening calendar off to such a great start with celebrations for a number of landmark events and anniversaries.
“We have reached a few milestones of our own here at the show this year, increasing the range of large-scale show gardens along The Avenue, introducing new Pocket Gardens to enable community groups to showcase their valuable work, and launching a series of new ‘meet the head gardener’ talks in the Dig It Garden Theatre.”
Harrogate Flower Shows are organised and run by the North of England Horticultural Society, a charity set up over 100 years ago to promote horticulture in the north. All profits from the spring and autumn shows are returned to the charity to support a range of community and educational projects.
The Harrogate Autumn Flower Show takes place from 12th – 14th September 2014, so be sure to book your tickets early.
Gallery of pictures from the Harrogate Spring Show 2014
