Taken from Lynne’s weekly column ‘Green Scene’ for the Western Mail
30th May 2026
Crate idea
I had a lovely bank holiday weekend. Despite it being scorchio, I managed to catch up with things in my own garden and sorted out a few new ways of growing veg to avoid sharing it all with my chickens, pigeons, rabbits, mice and other ‘critters’ that seem to think I have planted out an ‘all you can eat buffet’ just for them. I have to admit, although I absolutely loved doing it all, by the time I totted up all the time, energy and money spent, I’m sure it would be cheaper to buy my veggies at Waitrose through the summer. But of course ‘that’s not the point’.
I took great delight in putting up my new Pro Gro Net Tunnel Cloche. I love the ‘mental challenge’ of things like that and will avoid using any instructions if I can. It turned out that it was really simple to do and I am very pleased with it, as it is doing a sterling job of keeping out rabbits, chickens and pigeons. It is impressively robust and looks really cool in the garden too.
It was also very reasonably priced from www.gardenskill.com who also supply lots of other useful gardening goodies. I will certainly be ordering from them again – soon, probably.
Staying with trying to outwit my chickens, I have also put my trays of seedlings in a dog crate that someone was going to throw out, and I rescued. I knew I’d find a use for it, and am proud of my recycling and creative prowess.
I told you I had a good weekend!
Rill-y Ridiculous
I really enjoyed watching Chelsea Flower Show on the telly this year too.
Whilst I enjoyed it, I wasn’t overly impressed with a lot of it. I recall a friend saying, “I get impressed by a lot less as I get older” and I think that applies to this year’s flagship RHS show.
Whilst I absolutely adored Sarah Erbele’s garden, with the chainsaw-carved Mother Earth section of Redwood and the dry stone wall created by ‘my mates from Yorkshire’, the rest of the gardens at the show all felt very ‘samey’.
Every year the gardens on Main Avenue seem to consist of a large area of some-sort-of-paving and gravel, an obligatory path leading to a weird structure, predictable planting schemes and of course a water feature, which all too often is a bl**dy rill. I hate rills. They must be one of the most impractical addition to any garden and would get clogged up with leaves and general ‘garden debris’ before you could even say ‘I don’t want a rill’.
The elevated rill in Arit Andersons ‘Parkinsons UK’ garden, which won The People’s Choice Award, was a novel and thought-provoking idea – but just as impractical. And they are just death traps for bees and other pollinators who simply get washed ‘down the plug hole’ in them, as they try to drink.
Most water features turn into a nightmare, to be honest. Whilst a well designed, well built and well maintained water feature can be a thing of real beauty in a garden, most people underestimating the amount of skill, and money, needed to create and maintain them.
Garden ponds are great for wildlife but often end up just becoming a green swamp; so if you have been influenced by Chelsea and want a water feature in your own garden, do please do the research first – and don’t bother with a rill.
New Shows
Whilst the iconic RHS Chelsea Flower Show dates remained unchanged this year, some other RHS shows are changing, and are worth making a note of.
The RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival will shift to a biennial schedule, returning in 2027. In its place for 2026, RHS will debut a new RHS Badminton Flower Show at the Badminton Estate in Gloucestershire, from the 8-12 July. And they have also been invited to hold a new show at Sandringham, the private retreat of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, for a special RHS Sandringham Flower Show from 22-26 July.
Meanwhile, RHS Flower Show Tatton Park will now take place every three years, and following the success of the 2025 RHS Flower Show Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire, future events at this grand stately home are being explored.
I wonder why they have forgotten about Cardiff. It used to be the opening show for the RHS calendar and I created many a show garden for it – including the first RHS Show Garden that you could interact with, The Really Fit Garden, which had outdoor fitness equipment incorporated within the garden design. It was great fun – with Rhod Gilbert, Max Boyce, Rhodri Morgan, Edwina Hart and Richard Arnold all cheerfully contributing – and we were surprised to realise that the biggest demographic using the equipment on the garden were teenage boys, apparently the most difficult group to ‘get into a garden’! I also won a Bronze and Silver RHS medal, with the Gold eluding me – maybe I should have incorporated a rill.
Change for Tree Time?
One of the most interesting interviews on the TV Chelsea coverage was a ‘tree chap’ talking about the dubious future of our native trees and why we should be introducing non-native species – and not seeing them as the enemy.
Sadly, diseases are annihilating so many of our native species – of which there are only about 30, as opposed to thousands of non native species to choose from. Diseases include Ash dieback (self explanatory), and Phytophthora ramorum, which is killing vast quantities of rhododendron, bilberry and viburnum, and has also led to the felling of tens of thousands of larch trees in the UK. Horse chestnut bleeding canker and horse chestnut leaf miner both threaten our beloved ‘conker trees’ and climate change could cause several of our native species, such as beech, to struggle to survive in the warmer and drier parts of the country. Predictions are for London to resemble Barcelona with regard to climate in just 20 years or so. And of course we will always need trees. Hugely so. So does it make sense to start introducing non-natives to ensure we have the diversity needed to outwit disease and climate change? Obviously they need to be chosen carefully, but it does seem more sensible than planting trees we know are susceptible to disease.
Of course, no one is advocating simply importing trees from overseas nurseries, far from it, but to do the same thing and expect different results is considered to be a sign of insanity, so maybe it is time for the UK tree scene to undergo a ‘growth’ spurt.
Hydrangea Hoorah
And although it only reached second place in the ‘New Plant of the Year Awards’ at Chelsea, the plant that I will certainly be introducing into my own garden (and others) is the Hydrangea paniculata Groundbreaker Ruby.
Not only is it a ‘groundcover’ plant, its flowers open as white, and gradually deepen through shades of pink to a rich ruby red, creating a lost of varying colour from early summer into late autumn. This means the hydrangea brings both seasonal colour and structural in a completely new format that is ideal for landscaping, covering ground, edging borders and growing in containers. And that makes it a winner in my eyes.
Gone are the Chelsea days!
Cardiff was axed because of Covid and never reinstated! That was a crime! Bring back the show