Joe Swift and Jo Whiley are back in Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival episode 2 2019 – along with gardening experts Carol Klein, Adam Frost, Rachel de Thame, Arit Anderson, Frances Tophill and Mark Lane – where they reveal the winners of this year’s Best Show Garden and the Best Floral Exhibit.
Rachel de Thame explores a new rose garden, Frances Tophill reveals how to grow fruit and veg in small spaces, and Adam Frost takes a look round the RHS Back to Nature garden, co-designed by the Duchess of Cambridge.
Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival episode 2 2019
The Hampton Court Palace Flower Show is the largest flower show in the world. The show is held in early July, and is run by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) at Hampton Court Palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The show features show gardens, floral marquees and pavilions, talks and demonstrations. Erected on the north and south sides of the Long Water in Hampton Court Park, it is the second major national show after the Chelsea Flower Show but has a different character, focusing more on environmental issues, growing your own food and vegetables and cookery, as well as selling gardening accessories, plants and flowers.
The Hampton Court Palace Flower Show was the brainchild of the management consultant Adrian Boyd, who saw an opportunity to connect two organisations facing times of uncertainty in a joint venture. The Department of the Environment had been dismembered in the 1980s, and one of the cuttings was Historic Royal Palaces, which found itself looking for ways of increasing revenue and attracting a larger audience. Similarly, Network SouthEast, one of the temporary aggregations thrown up by the pre-privatisation of British Rail, was looking for ways of making its rail services more profitable. Boyd’s idea was that Network Southeast should sponsor a flower show at Hampton Court, and provide the public transport to Hampton Court railway station. At the time the RHS Shows Department was working on four new events for 1993, in Birmingham, Harrogate, Wembley, and Glasgow.
