2022 – CHW
Five hundred plant photographs for the website database but a lot of standing about yapping to the great and good while judging goes on around us. No celebrity for the media on the Burncoose stand this year.The 90 second presentation of each of the Plant of the Year finalists begins at 2pm in the president’s pavilion suite. Here is the setting. We are (of course) running late as the president’s lunch ends with Monty Don being awarded a Victoria Medal of Honour. (He is the late Peter Seabrook’s successor to this award). Hurriedly we get under way and my speech has to contain a joke about the yellow leaves not being yellow as well as an appeal to traditionalists. This is a plant grown by an amateur over 20 years and not the product of a Dutch tissue culture / genetically modified laboratory.

You can read the two Burncoose Chelsea press releases by clicking here & here.

A good interview with Horticulture Week on the peat ban at Chelsea in 2025 and how absurd this is for growers of ericaceous plants. Have the RHS scientists come up with an alternative. Of course not!

Here are a few of the other Plant of the Year entries which I liked:

Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Intense’

Rhododendron ‘Stardust Pink’ (stenophyllum ‘Linearifolium’ refined a bit)

Forsythia x intermedia ‘Discovery’

Armeria pseudoarmeria ‘Dreamland’ came second.

Iris sibirica ‘Fran’s Gold’, despite everything came fourth!

The Queen and our new RHS president, Mr Weed (call me Keith please), in an electric popemobile pass close by just before the gala night begins (4,000 tickets at £1,000 each for a two and a half hour drinks party) and the corks begin to pop.

2021 – CHW
Today we go to look at around 40 different plants where the identity is unknown or uncertain so that Susyn and Brian can take away samples for identification or give us a pointer as to whether our naming is correct.

This is a wonderful suckering and multi-stemmed plant of Quercus coccifera in full flower in Penvergate.

During the day, where we were joined by Tom Hudson, we found quite a number of naming errors in young oaks collected by Allen Coombes and grown here from seed. These were planted out 2003 to 2007 and some have died as we know. However the survivors, with their original planting labels, are a muddle to put it mildly. Whether we muddled the seed labels or if mice moved seed about in seed trays or quite what has happened is hard to say. Subject to confirmation we think we have now sorted out Quercus morii and Lithocarpus corneus but the three Lithocarpus lepidocarpus are, Tom believes, Lithocarpus hancei. Quercus gilva has died or vanished and we are left with a number of queries which will need an oak expert to help sort out. Quercus monimotricha is not true to name by the George Blandford and neither is Quercus dolciholepis by the Paulownia ‘Lilacina’ according to Tom. All very frustrating and confusing to put it mildly.

Magnolia ‘Moonspire’ in Old Park. Not a great find!

This was labelled ‘Fiax barumina’. It looks like it is a Fraxinus with yellow leaves initially but is clearly very tender and has hardly grown at all in 10 years. Sample taken for identification.

The ilex in the old Charlie Michaels Nursery has also partially reverted to Ilex x altaclerensis ‘Hendersonii’ from what was originally Ilex x altaclerensis ‘Belgica Aurea’. The variegated leaves are very variable.

We believe this is Quercus affinis although I thought it was Quercus castanifolia when looking at the spiny acorns cups last autumn.

This is labelled Quercus monimotricha (90-0250) but Tom believed it was not.

Azalea ‘Elsie Lee’ a good late show.

We now await Susyn’s conclusions and I will resist writing more now to avoid muddying the water further. We did identify a mystery plant near the Engine House as Ilex verticillata (near the Windsor Ilex spinigera) which gives us a second Ilex verticillata. Tom also confirms the much debated Lithocarpus nearby as Lithocarpus edulis (not Lithocarpus glabra). However it is quite dissimilar to the L. edulis at Rosemoor.

Susyn brought samples with her of Ilex colchica and a copy of her 1995 article in the Plantsman on the Black Sea holly which was only reintroduced to cultivation about 35 years ago and had long been thought of as a form of the native Ilex aquifolium. We have a plant in the greenhouse which Susyn confirmed is correctly named as is a young plant of Ilex fargesii subsp. fargesii var. fargesii. The latter used to grow here but had died out.