Yes it is Thursday and I am doing #TBT to yesterday!  DH and I had a really lovely day and I took 160 photographs!!!  Yeah for digital photography!!!  I will split the pictures over a few days otherwise you may get overloaded! 

Like the Quilt Shows I only took pictures of what I really loved and what interested us otherwise it would have been over 1,000 pictures!!!  The weather was perfect; warm, sunny but some cloud cover so it wasn’t baking hot.  The crowds were not too bad as it was an RHS day so it was not jam packed and you could walk around without any problems. 

There was always a lot of people around the Show Gardens, which obviously you get to see all of them on the TV, but what amazed me about them is how on TV they are described as being big but actually in person, not so much!  We did not stop at all of them just the ones we wanted to see and our favourite was the Yorkshire Garden, which won a Gold Medal.

The garden featured a miniature canal and lock gates with the lock keepers cottage next to it and his garden. Above is the cottage.

The path leading to the lock and cottage.

The lock through the trees, above and below.

The lock and water with the planting around it, above and below.

Whilst we were stood waiting to get to the front to see the lock, a bumble bee came to visit the fox glove where we were standing.

We got to the show at 8.30am having driven down the night before and stayed just outside London.  We completed the last twenty miles in the morning, fighting our way through London traffic.  When we arrived we had a walk around the show gardens and then had breakfast.  After we went into the Main Pavillion, which is the size of two football fields and has displays by nurseries and specialist growers and also by associations/companies etc who sponsored a display. 

DH and I liked the Pavilion the best out of all of what we saw.  There was plenty of room to move about between the displays and some of them were absolutely amazing and despite the heat of the day it was surprisingly cool inside.

My favourite display in the Great Pavilion of them all was the National Dahlia Collection stand which obviously featured all the different types of Dahlia intermingled with lots of other plants, fruits and vegetables.  It was a very large stand in the centre of the Pavilion.

When I took some of the pictures I got the names of the particular plant  with it, so we can hopefully add some of them to our garden. 

This display was a large rectangle and the colours flowed around it as you will see and they were stunning and the smell was just amazing.

It started with quite pale pinks and blues with the dahlias, fox gloves and delphiniums.

The above is a native, very small, sweet pea called Lathyrus Sativus and is tiny but so pretty and I defintely am going to find this and add it to our garden.

The pinks and blues are my favourite colours.

As you can see below the stand moved around from the pinks into the fire colours

The opposite end to the where the pinks and blues were was a full vegetable plot and fruit trees.

This was definitely my favourite.

I learnt about plants and gardening from my Grandfather, Frank Knight.  I used to help him in the school holidays in the garden (IF I wasn’t sewing with my Grandmother!!!!).  He loved his garden and it was worthy of Chelsea Flower Show.  He had specimen plants in it, as well as trees and fruit trees and behind a neatly trimmed hedge a huge vetable plot and his greenhouse.  He also had an immaculate lawn where I was not allowed ever to do cartwheels on!!!!!!!

Two of his favourite plants were Clematis and Roses in every variety and there were several growers in the Pavilion with these plants.

Clematis in all shapes, sizes and shades.  Unfortunately they would not do well in our garden and it would mean growing them in containers.

DH and I planted a climbing rose last year at the top of our garden and so far it seems happy where it is.  I love Roses (they are my Birthday Month flower) and the main stand was David Austin Roses.  Mr Austin sadly passed away last year but his company is going strong and they had a large stand in the Pavilion and also there was a main tribute to Mr Austin for all his work over the years.

I have a few more ideas where we can plant some roses in the garden now.

There are still a lot of pictures to see, so I will be back tomorrow with more and what else we got up to on our day out.

Happy Thursday Everyone.

Hugs, Susie xx