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Travelsleuth Stuart Buchanan MacWatt trips a light fantastic to London. He enjoys Maytime in Mayfair after Spring in Park Lane, visits the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in Chelsea, and looks at a Wren masterpiece.
Britain is in bloom now and London has its lilac. Newly planted lobelia burgeons blue in floral window boxes on the smart frontages of Regency Belgravia, Victorian Mews properties in Mayfair, Chelsea and Kensington. Further afield in the newly yuppy areas of Fulham, Balham and Tooting the Lonodoner's passion for gardening is everywhere apparent and garden centres are doing a roaring trade in plants for window boxes and pots. My son, who is blessed with the family green finger gene and cursed with a frustrated passion for landscape gardening which he cannot satisfy with his small backyard in Tooting, has rented an allotment plot from the local council. He is now pouring the energy and expertise of a latter day Capability Brown into creating a kitchen garden that will see hium enjoying an abundance of fruits and vegetables later in the year. It is amazing to find such allotments in the middle of urban London on land that would be worth a fortune to a building developer. Long may the builders be kept at bay! The Royal Horticultural Society is there to spur him on with the annual Chelsea Flower Show which takes place this year 24 - 28 May. He will be there on the two 'Members Days' to suss out new trends and exciting new plant varieties and will doubtless gain much inspiration from the stunning array of show gardens.. This is the Royal Horticultural Society's gardening highlight of the year, as well as the launch of the London social season. Thanks to blanket daily reporting from the BBC this show goers from strength to strength and over ¼ million visitors, headed by the green-fingered Royal Family, will head for this show which takes place in the formal gardens of the Chelsea Royal Hospital, bordering the River Thames in the centre of London. I think London is at its most joyfully beautiful in May. The Royal Parks, originally set apart as hunting preserves of Henry VIII, (when he wasn't hunting the Ladies of his Court and corralling them in his bed), are havens of peace and beauty at any time of year, Right now they are looking particularly colourful.
The copyright of the article Maytime in Mayfair - London in Bloom in Royal Britain is owned by Stuart Buchanan MacWatt. Permission to republish Maytime in Mayfair - London in Bloom in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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