An olfactory guide to RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival
If you are a city dwelling Londoner, and have traded the hope of a garden of your own for the luxury of zero commute, you are likely to have full sovereignty of an outdoor balcony or window box and even more likely to be renting and flat sharing: your scope for greening your castle may be confined to the realm of your bedroom. I share your pain. If tempted to ignore a garden festival designed chiefly for garden owners, please reconsider: RHS Hampton Court will deliver pleasures that can be had neither in town nor in cyberspace. Stay with me.
A wealth of indoor plants, this year hosted in a dedicated Houseplant Market tent, will surprise, from the outrageously bold staghorn fern or Platycerium, to be nailed to whatever vertical support you can, to the flamingo- or salmon-tinted leaves of Aglaonema, a Chinese evergreen tropical houseplant introduced in the UK only recently. Glass terrariums are an architecturally elegant and addictive way to take your very own green miniature ecosystem with you every time you move. Orchids, too, travel light and give generously, just like the bell-shaped clusters of Streptocarpus.
If you are terrified of getting even the one houseplant or balcony verdure wrong, there is inspired guidance from the daily, 3pm talk “Top Tip for Houseplants”, from Saturday’s unmissable “Gardening Whilst Renting”, delivered both at noon and 3pm, and from Sunday’s 2pm “Planting for Containers”. If you can rely on longer-term residency, there is advice by the National Allotment Society on starting up.
Even if none of the above appeals, and you are a nonredeemable plant killer, there are two pleasures that can only be had at RHS Hampton Court and are worth the ticket price alone.
Pleasure number one starts the moment you approach the entry gate to the Flower Festival: you are not quite sure why, but your mood improves and the words “sweet air” take form.
Make time to locate the source of this miracle: the lime alleys along each side of the Long Water, the canal leading the Longford river into the estate and dug to look like a garden feature, completed in 1660 by the previous King Charles. Two double rows of lime trees are seldom found, even in country estates, and Tilia Europaea have practically been exterminated in city areas: the sticky sap gently released by their canopy universally loathed anywhere cars need to park. At Hampton Court their canopies join to form a wide tunnel. Walk their lengths as many times as your companions and schedule will allow. Lime trees bloom only at this time of year and not for long.
Pruned to head height, if you tilt your head up the tiny blooms will caress your nose and dissolve your worries. There is no other place I know of where the their fragrance conveys so physical a pleasure.
Pleasure number two is the Festival of Roses, housed under a huge twelve-pole marquee with a café and exhibitions from the most significant five breeders of the country. You will not find this gathering of roses anywhere else in the UK: nurseries’ shelves are emptied as the best stock is brought to Hampton Court.
Start from a helpful “exercise stand”: a raised plot outside the pavilion, grouping rose shrubs in five categories of scent. Ignore this stand’s labelling and definition of myrrh, fruity, musk, old rose and tea fragrance: colonisation of language used to describe aromas, especially of roses, is unacceptable as you should find your own. However, I wholly recommend doing the rounds of this plot not once, but thrice. The first time inhale from each group with your eyes open; the second time close your eyes as you smell them. And for the third round, try and ask a companion to place you “blindfolded”, so to speak, in front of one group or the other randomly. Sniff, eyes shut, and you’ll be surprised at how much your olfactory memory retains. We find hard to explain fragrances through language but we recognise them without fail.
Having sharpened your nose outdoor, proceed inside: take time both to inhale the blended effect and to identify the differences in each rose. If you can tell a Sauvignon from a Sancerre and a Chardonnay, why not a Zéphirine Drouhin from a Louise Odier, or a Margaret Merrill from from an Albertine? Some things just can’t be learned or enjoyed online.