Chunnel Vision

sounds as good as it looks

Written by Amanda MacKenzie

When a man tires of London, he can always bunk off from the rainy capital to Hampton Court. So I do – to visit the Flower Show, held there in the second week of July each year.

This is the capital’s second most famous green-fingered event. You don’t need to be a gardener to be wowed by it. You don’t even need a garden; regaling your senses is all the excuse you need. So I get drunk on perfume in the rose marquee and dabble my fingers in the funky water features, at least until I clock the Keep Off sign.

What’s to love about the show? It’s a great balance of avant garde setpieces and the kind of gardens you could realise yourself with a nudge in the right direction. “Lurve the letters,” someone gushes at the edge of a magical garden created for the National Year of Reading, but then it turns out she meant lettuce. So I take my turn at the Listening Wall, part of a snug and wonderful garden planted with echinops, young eucalyptus and spiky fasciculia and jazzed up with dynamic, wooden sound sculptures. The idea’s to draw attention to the auditory pleasure to be had from gardens. Hear hear to that.

Anyway, here are a couple of tips if you’re planning to visit. Go late – after 3pm – and you save on the hefty entrance price. And be prepared with wellies in the monsoon season we call English summer because the paths get churned up like a jousting field.

•  Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 8-13 July ’08. www.rhs.org.uk/hamptoncourt