Eat, shop, garden: Chelsea Flower Show trends

The Chelsea Flower show is always something of a mixed bag of grow-your-own meets meets country house gardener. There’s also the fiercely competitive element of corporate landscape design, where worlds of finance, media, retail and eco-aware business vie for publicity on their highly prized patch of Sloaney turf.

Every year, working like a well oiled machine, the show sees long snakes of people through narrow entrances into bustling alleys of market stalls and stands, selling all manner of garden related wares from packets of seeds and wellies to bronze statuary and quirky gypsy caravans.

























Those fascinated by frost and fertilizer form orderly queues for lunch, tea and the loo. In this colony of cultivation, earnest devotees swarm like ants to and from their chosen attractions, occasionally stopping to indulge a Chelsea Pensioner in the odd spot of friendly banter.

Last year, I noticed there was rather an Eat, Pray, Love feel to the occasion, with many of the gardens displaying Far Eastern or spiritual influences.























This year, along with strange new varieties of plants and flowers (see below), I’ll be looking out for urban farming and living walls (as promised by B&Q's entry), and curious trends like edible art. The cleverest of designers will presumably have created rain gardens, not for collecting, but for making rain…


























Meantime, all things horticultural are happening in interiors – with an abundance of fabulously floral home accessories. I spotted plenty of these on Friday, when I visited sofa.com’s cool Chelsea showroom for the first ever Dabbler Summit – see the photos in my latest post at The Dabbler.













And do check out the curiously collectable vintage flower paperweights at ShopCurious too. At least they won’t need any watering.

Will you?

Sea shanty style

Get out your old Blue Peter badges, retro sea shanty style is the latest trend to inspire fashion and interior designers.

In case you’re wondering, sea shanties are ‘work songs that were used on the square-rigged ships of the Age of Sail. Their rhythms coordinated the efforts of many sailors hauling on lines.’









They are rarely used today, perhaps because modern rigging doesn't require many people to be working in the same rhythm for long periods. However, shanties are much loved by modern sailors, folk musicians and specialist choirs.





I may not be joining in the singing part, but we’ve got our own selection of maritime design art at ShopCurious in the form of quirky accessories for the wardrobe and home. Salty old seadogs will love our vintage maritime brooches, featuring Dutch barges and galleons – and this curiously collectable early Royal Navy anchor pin.






For the professional collector, we’ve a couple of fabulous Victorian hand carved conch shells. And we’ve added to our range of retro Perspex paperweights, with some rare, nautical curiosities from Portugal.









So, are you ready to have fishermen the world over as your new best friends?

Are you?

Princesses and paperweights for Papa

If your father enjoys collecting, he’ll be very impressed with a gift that’s a genuine retro curiosity. However, the art of collecting is largely a matter of personal taste - so if you want to find something that’s both collectable and also likely to appeal, it’s best to have a good idea of the recipient’s taste, as well as knowing where to source authentic collectibles from.











ShopCurious has a few suggestions for you, if you’re looking for especially unique and unusual gifts for Fathers’ Day. Retro curiosity number one is this totally beautiful 1960s perspex paperweight – a unique piece of tourist memorabilia.





You can tell it’s from Portugal because, as they say, it’s written on the tin (or at least within the divinely syrupy amber resin). Also inside, is a stylish filigree carved Portuguse galleon – the perfect gift if your Dad loves fishing, fish and chips or anything to do with the sea.







If your pa’s good with his hands, he might prefer this Steampunk style retro curiosity, which should keep him curious for ages.











Just how did they get all those nuts, bolts, cogs and horological paraphernalia into that square of honey coloured perspex?








Your Dad will love this if he’s the sort of chap who’s a bit of a tinker, and tends to spend quite a lot of time in his garden shed…









Alternatively, if he’s the smooth, well travelled and worldly type, some suitably unique accessories like these curiously exotic vintage African Princess cufflinks might be the order of the day.

Whatever his personal taste, there’s no better way to flatter and amuse any man than with a curiously appropriate gift.

Will you?

Wish you were here...

Actually no, I wish I was there… back in the day when Nelson’s Monument in Great Yarmouth (the precursor to Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square) was surrounded by cobbled stones. I’ve just searched on the internet and discovered (courtesy of Google Earth) that the road is now a common tarmac and the very stylish old warehouse buildings that once surrounded this awesome and curiously undiscovered landmark are now rather nasty looking light industrial units. Apparently, the ferry across the river Yare at that point no longer exists – but does anyone else in the blogosphere have fond memories of that delightfully cute little rowing boat?





It doesn’t get much better than when you are 8 years old and on holiday at your grandmother’s in glorious Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk. Mine lived in an annexe to my aunt’s house - formerly the Globe Inn, where it was said Nelson once stayed – and that was reputedly haunted (how cool is that?) Added to this were the attractions of plentiful supplies of sand, sea and Della Spina ice cream, plus divinely doughy smells wafting over the garden wall from the nearby Matthes bakery.





Great Yarmouth and Gorleston were resorts that were really in their heyday before I got to know them – during the 1950s and early ‘60s – so I decided to take a look at how they used to be. Here are some of the pictures I found on the internet. Plus this wonderful 1950s tourism video.





Noodling around on the net, I discovered that the iconic statue of Nelson was actually built before Nelson’s Column in London. Nelson was born in Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk and his first sailing was from Great Yarmouth. After the victory of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where Nelson died aboard the Victory, the townspeople of Great Yarmouth erected a statue in his honour. The 160 foot column was built to be seen from all sides of the town, though I'd hazard a guess that the magnificently monolithic power station now wins hands down - (note chimney on horizon in this pic).




The statue in London was built slightly later, by clearing some slums to create the open space now called Trafalgar Square and copying Great Yarmouth’s original version, but making it a few feet higher – and, therefore, more important (it was in London, after all!) ... and, besides, the seaside town later spawned a host of other famous landmarks.





The best thing of all for me as a child, was that Nelson's extravagant monument was on the way to the Pleasure Beach ... A place where you could enjoy the scariest of rides and the most curious of excitements – and, if you were lucky, take home a few interesting curiosities, ranging from candyfloss and bars of rock to goldfish in little plastic bags, ornaments made of shells and paperweights – plus star prizes that might include collectable seaside chinaware and dressing table sets.




Now sought after by the fashion and style conscious, an eclectic selection of these retro treasures is currently available at ShopCurious. Today they make rather unusual gifts, or uniquely quirky ornaments for the home – what's more, many of these are collectors' items that could turn out to be a great investment too.







By the way, do let us know if you’ve got any vintage seaside memories you’d like to share.

Will you?