A Green Thumbs Up to Chelsea 2004
Layered Greens and Yellows
Every year at Chelsea the garden writers and more recently the TV gardening celebrities begin a week of 'This Years Chelsea Colour is' - defining and redefining, stating, restating and overstating.
This endearing annual process closely resembles the slow mixing of different colour paints. Initially gardening pundits had picked a delphinium blue to be the 2004 colour of Chelsea choice - a colour consensus took several days to form, delphinium blue lightening up to a light blue eventually blending to a palette of light greens.
The Royal Role
I am suspicious of the Queen's role in the selection of 'this year's Chelsea colour'. She has an uncanny knack of arriving dressed in 'this year's Chelsea colour'. Too uncanny, I say. Does she have MI5 agents rifling thru desks and stalking garden designers through garden centres? Or do all the garden writers just follow the Queen's suit, so to speak?
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Variegated.
Photo © & courtesy of the RHS
Is it silly of me to suspect something suspicious is going on? Perhaps I am not paying due attention to the Royal part of the Royal Horticultural Society. 'You'll be wanting GREEN tea in the thermos this year Maaaam?' Someone with access to the garden approval process is all that would be required for this coincidence to be perpetuated year after year.
Foliage VS Flowers
Silliness aside, the predominant colour at Chelsea 2004 was green, especially the lighter hues. While the more botanically-minded reader might argue that every year's colour is a variation of 'Chlorophyll Green', the colour statement Chelsea made in 2004 was foliage. Hosta greens striped with soft whites, well-watered greens strong in colour. A resounding Royal vote for foliage in the age-old 'Flowers vs. Foliage' debate.
It was interesting that the range of colour also changed across the course of the week, but not in the way you'd expect. Early predictions spoke of a narrow colour palette with single colour gardens common. The final green foliage palette takes in all ranges of greens from almost white flaxy cream greens to rich dark hosta leaf greens.
A Green Thumbs Up to Chelsea 2004
A selection of greens and yellows from Chelsea 2004
Moosey would have been in ex-pat foliage heaven.