Hampton Court Garden Festival

Last updated

Visitors at the 2009 show Wives of Henry VIII gardens, Hampton Court Flower Show - geograph.org.uk - 1396156.jpg
Visitors at the 2009 show

The Hampton Court Garden Festival (formerly The Hampton Court Flower Show) is an annual British flower show, held in early July of each year. The show 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, vegetables and cookery, as well as selling gardening accessories, plants and flowers.

Contents

The 2020 festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic which caused limitations for public gatherings. The 2023 festival takes place from 4 to 9 July.

History

Foundation

The original 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 (NSE), 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.

Early shows – 1990 to 1992

In July 1990 the first Hampton Court Palace Flower Show was held. An effort was made to attract people to the show with special trains being laid from London Waterloo and porters wore carnations in their hats to create a buzz around the show. Even though there was comparatively little trade support for the show, it drew in large crowds. Network SouthEast was pleased, saying "70 per cent of the estimated 300,000 visitors used rail and that has paid for our sponsorship many times over". [1]

The RHS debated whether to offer assistance with the show, especially when Chelsea reached full capacity. After initial dismissal, the organizers indicated they would welcome RHS involvement from 1992, and RHS members were granted a reduced admission price at the 1991 show. Adrian Greenoak, the Show's horticultural director, achieved continuous improvement in the standards. The 1991 Show introduced a British Rose Festival with the joint involvement of the Royal National Rose Society and the British Rose Growers' Association.

In November 1992 came the announcement that Network SouthEast was withdrawing its support for the show. A flurry of negotiations took place: Boyd, having no title to the Show, had to join in competitive tendering by blind bid. Stephen Bennett outlined the benefits of RHS involvement: 'We can reduce the costs hugely… Apart from saving publicity costs with our extensive media relations network, we have a colossal amount of equipment. We have around £1m worth of tentage and tons and tons of staging equipment. Try to hire that sort of stuff and it costs and arm and a leg.' Historic Royal Palaces accepted the RHS bid on condition that it undertook to keep certain staff on the payroll, including Adrian Greenoak. [1] The venture was a risky one, with four new shows already booked for 1993.

The RHS years – 1993 to present

Displays on either side of the Long Water Long Water (2).JPG
Displays on either side of the Long Water

The first RHS Hampton Court Show took place in 1993, with additional sponsorship from the Daily Mail . The Show was a considerable success, and the following year was declared[ by whom? ] to be the best outdoor public event of 1994.

With a 25-acre (10 ha) show ground, there was room for considerable expansion before the infrastructure would be severely tested, and over the next few years a Heritage Marquee was set up for the NCCPG and its national collections – initially a rather quiet area, but increasing steadily in public interest; crafts pavilions, which under Adrian Boyd were the first sight to greet the visitor, were gradually moved to a less prominent position; there was room for a couple of dozen display gardens, plus a separate section, on the other side of the Long Water from the major part of the exhibition, for ten water gardens.

In 1998 a Hampton Court garden was rebuilt at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. While Chelsea remained the most prestigious of the Society's shows, Hampton Court was the largest, and readily marketed as such. Within a couple of years the investment in Hampton Court had been more than recouped. [1]

The show rebranded as the Hampton Court Garden Festival in 2019, with the festival manager saying that this "better reflected the atmosphere and the experience of our visitors at the event". [2]

The 2020 festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with most of that year's other RHS flower shows. [3]

Dates

A stand under construction in 2008 Stumpery.jpg
A stand under construction in 2008

The show is always held on a Tuesday until Sunday, usually ending on the second Sunday in July.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal Horticultural Society</span> Registered charity in the UK

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chelsea Flower Show</span> UKs leading annual garden show (Royal Horticultural Society)

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show, formally known as the Great Spring Show, is a garden show held for five days in May by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea, London. Held at Chelsea since 1912, the show is attended by members of the British royal family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tatton Park Flower Show</span>

RHS Flower Show Tatton Park held at Tatton Park, near Knutsford, Cheshire, first began in 1999 by the Royal Horticultural Society. The show houses the RHS National Flower Bed Competition, Young Designer of the Year Award and a wide range of inspirational show gardens, smaller 'Back to Back' gardens, visionary gardens and a number of marquees displaying prize plants and flora exhibits. Other key features of the show are the floral marquee and plant plaza, the arts and heritage pavilion, and the floral design studio.

This is an alphabetical index of articles related to gardening.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Swift</span> British television presenter (b. 1965)

Joseph Samuel Swift is an English garden designer, journalist and television presenter.

Frances Mary Perry MBE VMH was an English gardener, administrator, writer and broadcaster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol Klein</span> English gardening expert and TV presenter

Carol Ann Klein is an English gardening expert, who also works as a television presenter and newspaper columnist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel de Thame</span> British gardener and television presenter

Rachel de Thame is an English gardener, television presenter and actress.

Percival Stephen Cane (1881–1976) was an English garden designer and writer.

James Alexander L. S. Wong is a British ethnobotanist, television presenter and garden designer. He is best known for presenting the award-winning series Grow Your Own Drugs and the BBC and PBS series Secrets of Your Food, as well as being a panelist on the Radio 4 series Gardeners' Question Time.

Paul Hervey-Brookes is an multi-award-winning garden designer and plantsman who no longer lives in the Cotswolds, England He lives alone in the Loire Valley in France.

Medwyn Williams MBE FNVS is a Welsh vegetable gardener, 11 times winner of the gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.

The National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies (NAFAS) is a society of flower arranging clubs and societies in the United Kingdom.

Andrew Wilson is a British landscape architect garden designer, lecturer and writer. He is a partner in Wilson McWilliam Studio and founded The London College of Garden Design. He has judged for the Royal Horticultural Society at the Chelsea Flower Show, Hampton court and Tatton Park and has also judged the Bloom Festival in Ireland. He wrote a regular column for Gardens Illustrated and contributes to the Royal Horticultural Society's journal The Garden alongside the production of a series of books, the most recent of which are Influential Gardeners, The Book of Garden Plans and the Book of Plans for Small Gardens, The Gardens of Luciano Guibbilei and Contemporary Colour in the Garden. He is also the founding editor of The Garden Design Journal and is a former Chairman and currently a Fellow of the Society of Garden Designers, the UK’s professional body for garden design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Domoney</span> Horticulturist and TV gardening presenter

David Martin Domoney, C Hort. FCI Hort is an English Chartered Horticulturist and celebrity gardener. He co-presents the TV gardening programme Love Your Garden, alongside Alan Titchmarsh, and is the resident gardener on ITV1's This Morning.

Plantify.co.uk is an online plant shop based in Windsor, Berkshire (UK) that sells a wide variety of herbaceous and perennial plants. The plant shop supplies over 3150 plants sourced from small British growers and hosts a Plant Finder encyclopedia and free garden design tool.

Matthew Wilson is a garden designer, writer, radio and television broadcaster and lecturer. He is a regular participant on Gardener's Question Time on BBC Radio 4.

Sue-Anne Hilbre Biggs was the Director General of the Royal Horticultural Society, retiring in June 2022 as the longest-serving Director General in the charity's history. Biggs began her career in the travel industry, where she worked for 30 years, and was awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award by the Travel Weekly Globe Travel Awards. She was made a CBE in the 2017 New Year Honours, for her services to the environment at ornamental horticulture industries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Lane (broadcaster)</span> TV gardening presenter and designer

Mark Lane is a British television presenter, landscape designer, columnist, radio broadcaster and writer.

Sarah Eberle is an English garden designer.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Elliott, Brent (2004). The Royal Horticultural Society, A History 1804–2004 . Phillimore & Co. Ltd. The History Press. ISBN   978-1-86077-272-6.
  2. ↑ Heath, Olivia (13 May 2019). "Annual RHS Hampton Show gets subtle name change". House Beautiful. Retrieved 24 February 2020.
  3. ↑ "RHS statement on Coronavirus / RHS Gardening". www.rhs.org.uk. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  4. ↑ "Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, 2016 – Conceptual garden highlights". BBC Two. 2016. Retrieved 5 May 2018.

51°24′08″N0°19′36″W / 51.4021°N 0.3267°W / 51.4021; -0.3267

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.