After an absence of four years (due to the withdrawal of a 30-year sponsorship) South Africa came back with a bang to this year’s Chelsea Flower Show hosted by the Royal Horticultural Society by not only winning a gold medal with a perfect score from the RHS judges, but also winning the “Best New Design” as well as “Best in the Great Pavilion” categories.
South Africa’s exhibit was described as one of the most outstanding in the history of the Great Pavilion. The display, which featured 22 000 stems of fynbos cut flowers, was inspired by the windswept slopes of the Cape Mountains.
Flora from the Cape Kingdom, from high-altitude fynbos to Strandveld bulbs from the coastline as well as rarely-seen hybrids such as the “Snow Leopard” protea and others, were included in the exhibit in London.
Lindsay Madden of Tesselaarsdal had the great honour of having some of his proteas that he grows on Heilfontein farm used in the award-winning display.
He told Hermanus Times: “We’ve been supplying proteas to a South African agency, and when I recently spoke to the agent he was telling me what strain he was under because of the Chelsea Flower Show and having to get all these shipments off.
“It never occurred to me it may include our shipments. When a friend sent me a photo of the London Times front page featuring the winning South African exhibit I looked at it and said: Hang on a moment, those flowers on the bottom right-hand corner are unusual. They are Lady Di proteas, which is a specially bred and not a common cultivar, and we grow them.”
Madden said he decided to “interrogate” his agent a bit by asking whether he was still under such pressure for the Chelsea show, to which he replied that was the previous week. “The week in which I supplied all my flowers. And yes, they are there, he told me. My agent supplied them.”
This year contributions by the Rupert Nature Foundation, Grootbos Private Nature Reserve as well as numerous private-sector contributions provided the financial support enabling the SA team to exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show. And what a wonderful return they got for their support.
