AFP/London
Britain’s dry spring has forced many exhibitors at the Chelsea flower show, which opened yesterday, to amend their displays. However, the horticultural extravaganza is as colourful as ever.In contrast to last year, when late frosts were the threat, weeks of warm dry weather have caused many headaches for the people trying to assemble the 17 show gardens, 15 small gardens and 600 other exhibits.Patrick Collins, co-designer of the B&Q garden, said: “We’ve had to make a few changes to the original planting design because of the weather. We’ve had less choice of roses and lost some of our bulbs which came too early.” B&Q has created an environmental garden with an eight-metre high wall of window boxes to demonstrate vertical farming and urban food production.Olivia Kirk, designer of Worcester Bosch Group’s the power of nature garden, said she had been forced to replace irises with salvias after four batches of irises were grown for the garden and each flowered too early.Queen Elizabeth and senior royals yesterday toured the 11-acre show, in the grounds of London’s Royal Chelsea Hospital, while celebrities got a first look.The show opens to the general public for five days from today and as usual it is a sellout, with all 157,000 tickets having been snapped up weeks ago Among the highlights is an Avatar-inspired garden that lifts people 25 metres into the air by crane. Designer Diarmuid Gavin said he hopes his Irish sky garden will “grab some attention” and show that his country had “a little bit of imagination”.“It’s a hanging garden or a flying garden - the first garden truly in the sky at Chelsea,” the Irishman said, adding that the idea came from the floating islands of Pandora, created for James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar.