At Chelsea, starting early rewards the floral faithful

Though a Chelsea Flower Show veteran, it's been well over a decade since I went for a full day. The need to take a whole day off work, the more expensive entry ticket and the rush hour train fare all argued for the 3:30 entry. Yesterday revealed that's a false economy.

The hours between 8am and noon are blissful. It's easy to see the gardens. The main avenues are thriving, but not uncomfortable to navigate. We took our time, and were able to see all the show gardens by 3:30. By the time the afternoon ticket holders swelled the crowds, we could turn our attention to shopping. (This year's prizes: gladioli, sweet pea seeds, tulips and a few carefully-chosen plants to fill holes in my water garden. The last two for home delivery, as Chelsea doesn't allow plant sales.) 

Even though I'm a member and could have gotten tickets for the members' preview days (Tuesday and Wednesday), we went on a Friday. Since all tickets always sell out, the numbers are no different on member or general public days. So other than some roses and tulips in the Floral Marquee starting to look a bit tired, there's no real difference. Go early; which day doesn't matter.

It was a year of glorious diversity. Sometimes a style or colour scheme seems to take over the show, spreading a worrying sameness across proceedings. Not this year. There were naturalistic gardens that captured the spirit of Exmoor, Jordan and Provence. Highly structured gardens of sharp lines and box-hedged precision. Crazy gardens with dancing plants (on hidden hydraulics). While sponsorship has always been important to Chelsea, this year it seemed more intrusive than in the past. Most of the small gardens are sponsored by charities, bringing us a lot of planting with grim messages. Death, slavery, impoverished children ... it could all get a bit heavy. Inside the Floral Marquee, thankfully, it remained all about the pure beauty of the plants, and the technical achievement of getting them all to hit their peak for five days in late May.

Let's let the photos speak for themselves.

This evocation of Exmoor interspersed soothing blue and white planting with monumental stone.

The LG garden was heavy-handed with its sponsorship (it was all about how you could control home and garden with their smartphone app) but the strip of planting down the middle of the outdoor living room was effective.

The perfect garden for the obsessive compulsive: Straight lines, precision box hedge cutting, a sunken manicured lawn. I thought the dark red, blue and purple colour scheme worked well.

This one divided opinion. Voted best in show by the all-male judging team. Loved by men, left women lukewarm. Few flowers, mostly orange. Big, black, phallic monoliths. Large fire pit. I was unimpressed.

The mathematical garden. Everything related back to maths or geometry. Intellectually challenging but also lovely; shows that a gravel garden can be more than a low maintenance plot with a few architectural plants.

The Yorkshire garden. Panels of stained glass inspired by York Minster, mirrored by the colours of the flowers below.

Crowds queue up to see the Harrod's garden's spinning trees and whirling borders. Performances on the quarter hour.

Not just about flowers, Chelsea is where you can spend a fortune on garden art. Like these amazing driftwood sculptures.

Huechera. I really need to do more with huechera.

A floral art installation leading to the military hospital. Each crochet poppy was made and contributed by someone in honour of a friend or relative who died in combat.

My favourite garden: Jekka McVicar's exquisite herb garden, where every plant has a medicinal purpose.

Oh, clever Blom's Blooms. Order now, pay on delivery! Of course I did. Bought these two and plan to mix them together for a suitably Northwestern purple and white display.

Had never heard of hepatica until this show. Now, I'm wondering where I can fit this shade loving, late-winter blooming woodland plant.

Berry's celebrates the joy of gin. And challenges our after-dinner choices.

First things first. Gin, without juniper, is just vodka. The Bencard household's favourite spirit is defined by what's infused into it. While juniper is legally required to earn the gin designation, careful combinations of additional botanicals are what tend to differentiate today's brands.

Though we think of gin as the quintessential English spirit, it was actually developed by the Dutch as a medicine. Juniper-infused spirit was thought to calm the patient and bring focus, thus was often provided as a dose for soldiers before battle. Giving us the term "Dutch Courage". It was the English, however, who really kicked it off as a recreational drink. By the 18th century cheap, mass production had made it an opiate of the people, demonised in Hogarth's famous engraving "Gin Lane". Regulation scaled back the problem, and gin has been rising and falling in popularity ever since. Though a gin and tonic has been the quintessential welcoming drink as long as I've been in England, in the past few years the resurgence of cocktails and the fashion for small-batch spirits has seen the traditional old drink rise to giddy new heights.

Mix alcohol, English tradition and the latest market trends ... looks like it's time for another tutored tasting at Berry Brothers & Rudd.

Ben Foxley took us through five small batch varieties in an impromptu classroom set up at the back of the warehouse shop in Basingstoke. These have become so popular (see my report from last year's rum tasting here) that they're planning to do more. Good news for the Bencard household, if not for the budget, since an informative tasting always seems to lead to buying bottles you didn't know you wanted or needed.

This time, my favourite discovery was Junipero. In a world where makers are trumpeting ever more exotic infusions, this is a rigorously traditional London dry gin with in-your-face juniper. Though there are 11 other botanicals in there, they're a subtle backdrop. The result is a strong flavour that's going to hold its own against the tonic; like getting a double shot for the price of a single. Too bold for fruity cocktails or for sipping straight, I thought it was the perfect tipple for that pre-dinner G&T. Rather surprising given its traditional profile, it's American ... from the same company that makes Anchor Steam beer. I know what I'll be asking them to pour during our upcoming trip to San Francisco.

For cocktails, I'd pick the Old Tom Bathtub Gin. London dry and bathtub are both styles of production. Where London dry requires a sophisticated distilling set up so you can pass vapours through your botanicals, you can do bathtub at home. Start with pure spirit, plunge your botanicals into it and let it all steep like tea. (Exactly the process we followed when we made a trio of home-infused vodkas our signature gift one Christmas.) Old Tom has plenty of juniper, plus a good whack of sugar and a bunch of other botanicals. Add soda water, a straw and parasol and you're already on your way to the beach. The possibilities once you start blending other fruits are intriguing.

For martinis or sipping straight, my vote was either the Berry's No. 3 or the Tarquin. Berry's spirits
team created their house brand with the idea of the perfect martini in mind, and this could definitely get me drinking them more. It's reminiscent of the slightly more-complex-than-usual flavour profile of Tanqueray 10, but with a bit more ability to pick up some of the secondary botanicals (citrus, angelica, cardamom). Tarquin's is from a tiny distillery in Devon, notable for being a British producer of that French classic, pastis. Their gin is distinguished by its strong hit of English violets, which made it probably the most distinctive of all we tasted.

My least favourite was the most experimental. Dutch Zuidam goes back to the drink's national roots, even calling itself a genever rather than a gin. But then they go completely off piste, distilling it from a mash of malted barley, rye and corn, then ageing it in Bourbon casks. Sound familiar? It will do if you're a whisky fan. Because that's what this would be called if it weren't for the juniper infusion. If you're a fan of the honeyed, vanilla tones of Speyside (which I am), you'll find this a pleasant after-dinner drink. But I'd be just as likely to go for a Macallan. As an intellectual exercise, Zuidam is interesting. As a gin, I'll pass.

This one split the Bencard judges, however. My husband, who is not a whisky drinker, really liked this one ... and would definitely have it in the house for nursing after a nice meal. But we'll put off buying a bottle of this until we've reduced our stocks of Armagnac a bit more.

Crowds make Badminton a challenge, but the shopping's worth the crush

As with the rest of the British Season, Badminton has become so crowded that it takes some work to enjoy it. Unless, of course, you're in one of the hospitality tents, which have expanded in proportion with the overall rise in gate entries.

If you're after a pleasant walk through rolling countryside, punctuated by passing riders tackling impressive jumps, you might actually enjoy one of the much smaller events on the circuit. But if you're after a piece of glorious tradition, Badminton is hard to beat, so prepare to queue and jostle along together.

For the uninitiated: The Badminton Horse Trials is a three-day equestrian competition comprising dressage, show jumping and eventing. The last, always held on the Saturday, sees competitors gallop over a four-mile course, dotted with challenging jumps, that winds through the Duke of Beaufort's sumptuously landscaped estate. It's one of six Trials classified as four star, attracting the best competitors in the world and contributing to their international ranking. The fact that we're just months away from the Rio Olympics no doubt contributed to the crowds. Performance today mattered even more than usual.

Any eventing day is a joy for fans of horse, hound and countryside. The tradition is casual and laid-back. It's customary to bring your dog, and a picnic if you wish, and drift gently between course and trade stands. On a beautiful day, as this was, there are few things more glorious than settling on the grass beside a jump with a jug of Pimm's, soaking up the sun and watching a horse and rider emerge into your line of sight every few minutes to vault over the obstacle before you.

Two problems. First, our young and troublesome spaniel Bruno barks with gusto at the sound of galloping hooves. This is not the done thing, thus one of us always had to stay well back from the course while the other one went up to check out the action. Second, the crowds were so intense there was no chance of seated observation. It was more like viewing a Chelsea Flower Show display garden: a 10-deep crowd stands at the barrier, shuffling forward patiently as people at the front depart, until you finally get to the front and get your turn to see what's going on. As it's not polite to hog the spot for too long, and it's not the most comfortable of situations to stand in the press of bodies for the minutes between horses, you probably only end up watching one or two riders. For me, an appreciator of the sport but not expert enough to differentiate much between the top riders and the youngsters, I actually prefer watching the action at our local Wellington Horse Trials.

But it's not just about horses. Especially at Badminton. It's about shopping. Badminton is renown for its shopping village, where a massive, open-air mall dedicated to crafts, artisan foods, country clothing and every item imaginable for horse or hound pops up from the fields. We emerged with goodies as diverse as well-cut tweed jackets, specialised brushes to clean garden pots, laser-cut three-dimensional greeting cards and custom-created shoe insoles. You could easily enjoy Badminton without ever seeing a horse.

As with all of these things, I'm sure that frequent attendance yields secrets to enjoying yourself and beating the crowds. There's a 12-foot-wide stretch of open grass between the two main hospitality areas, for example, on which the general public can stake a claim. We discovered it far too late to take advantage of that patch. To avoid frustrating hours in traffic, it's critical to get there early. We arrived by nine even though the first horse didn't take off until almost noon.

Given the crowds, I'm not sure we'll make the effort to get to another four star event any time soon. Then again, with Blenheim happening a few weeks after the Olympics close, maybe interest will have eased off a bit. Maybe. In between, we'll inevitably head up the road two miles to the Wellington Trials on 27 August. Without the irritating spaniel.

Medieval boundary beating is a stroll through London's past

Most Americans are suckers for British Ceremony. There's something about the way that Brits weave ancient, often ridiculous-looking traditions into their contemporary lives that appeals to children of young countries. If you're an American expat, it's probably one of the charms that enticed you to move here.

Grown men wearing ridiculous blazers at Henley. Swan upping. Black Rod hammering the door at the State Opening of Parliament. Incinerating the Guy. The Ceremony of the Keys. I love them all, and will rearrange my schedule dramatically to get to anything of the sort. This week, fortunately, I didn't have to juggle any appointments; ancient ceremony fell right into my professional lap.

A colleague invited me along to to a meeting of the Worshipful Company of Marketors, of which she is a member. Professional networking is usually the same the world over. Listen to a presentation, have a few cocktails, work the room. Things get a lot more fun when you hook them in to London's glorious traditions of medieval guilds and parish churches.

The occasion: Beating the bounds for the parish of St. Bride's Church. Known as the journalists' church, this is a place of legend in London's communications industry. The first printing presses were set up in the alleys nearby and journalism grew to maturity along Fleet Street, which runs down the middle of the parish. It's a stone's throw from Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, storied watering hole of writers and a favourite bolthole of mine. (Story here.)

We started with a church service of exquisite traditional beauty. Officers of the organisation processed down the aisle in colourful robes of medieval origin, holding aloft signs of office like an intricately-wrought, crown-topped gold mace and a sword of state. A professional choir contributed haunting melodies, including the spine-tingling Allegri's Miserere. Even beneath a mask of scaffolding necessary for current renovations, Christopher Wren's dignified architecture lent an aura of gravity, while memorial plaques to great journalists, publishers and printers of the past reminded us of that even the most seemingly mundane of our corporate communications jobs springs from greatness.

So far, so expected. Things got more surprising as we left the church to beat the bounds. This ancient ceremony began in a time when people's identity was tightly bound up with their parish. Few people could read, and maps were rare, so public demonstrations of where the boundaries were mattered. Not just for identity. The church was once the main provider of social services, and history is filled with anecdotes of one parish dumping the indigent over the border so the other parish would have to fund their welfare. (There's nothing new in these immigration debates.) Thus, boundary marking was important, and moving markers would have been a grievous offence.

Once each year, the vicars and other church worthies would lead the congregation around the boundaries to formally mark them. The tradition continues. Bamboo canes distributed to each of us, we set out for a circular hike taking in Ludgate Circus, Farringdon Street, Fetter Lane, The Temple, a swathe of Thames riverfront up to Blackfriars Bridge, and back to Ludgate Circus. At each point where a boundary marker once stood, the vicar led us in a prayer that called to memory something of the immediate surroundings, and then we commenced beating. Three lusty, repeated bellows of "Cursed be he that removeth his his neighbour's landmark!" while pounding our sticks on the pavement below. At first we were a bit hesitant, getting to know the words and awkward beneath the stares of puzzled London commuters. By Fetter Lane we'd gotten over that, and after a few glasses of champagne served up in the garden of the Master of The Temple (I can't imagine a more august venue for a London happy hour) we were performing our duties with gusto. I like to think the folks in Southwark heard our riverside warning.

If Addison, Steele and the other scribblers of Georgian words had stumbled upon us, they would have recognised the ceremony ... but not large swathes of the parish we were circling. The famous tiers of St. Bride's steeple (reputed to be the model for the tiered wedding cake) which would have once been visible from anywhere in the parish are now almost completely hidden by other buildings. The stretch between Farringdon and Fetter Lane is now entirely comprised of gleaming, glass-sheathed office buildings. Even journalists from the mid-20th century would be puzzled, as all of those famous newspaper offices have now been put to other uses since the trade moved away.

But every footstep covers rich history. There are the now-vanished sites of the western gate into the city of London, the infamous Fleet Prison and the homes of giants like Dr. Johnson, John Dryden and Tom Paine. The most venerable remaining architecture is in The Temple, through which the parish boundary cuts. As in so many cities, journalists and lawyers set up side-by-side. While the writers have gone, the lawyers still occupy their gracious complex of Georgian offices around the round medieval church that once belonged to the Knights Templar.

Finished with the annual beating we retired ... probably much as our medieval forebears would have ... to recover in a pub. London may constantly evolve, but there are some things that never change.

British Museum's new Sicily show is a compelling celebration of mixing cultures

The less you know about Sicily, the more extraordinary you will find the British Museum's new exhibition.

The British, on the whole, know the Mediterranean's largest island as a holiday destination. Dependable sun, good food, child-friendly hosts and reasonable rental apartments an easy flight away. They'll have seen a handful of mafia films, and they may have noticed that some of the most dependable value-for-money wines on supermarket shelves come from here. After that, their awareness may get fuzzy. The idea of Sicily as a melting pot of diverse peoples that has twice dominated the whole Mediterranean with the dazzling genius of its culture may ... unless you opted for some serious sightseeing on that beach holiday ... come as a surprise.

The British Museum's new show Sicily: Culture and Conquest aims to change that. It focuses on two periods in which Sicily was, arguably, the most dynamic, exciting and intellectually advanced place in the Western world. First, you'll explore the late Greek period, when a culture far older and more sophisticated than Rome's became the jewel in that empire's crown. Then jump forward a thousand years to the dazzling Norman court, always in my top three for time travel destinations if I ever get the chance.

You're greeted not by artefacts, however, but by an enormous photo of a lush, green valley beneath warm blue skies and Etna's looming bulk. It's the kind of picture that draws you in, enticing you with beauty and reminding you of exactly why everyone was always conquering this place. First it was the Phoenicians, who also founded Carthage, then the Greeks. Their cultures merged here, evident in statues, altars and masks that aren't quite of one place or another. The altar held up by three alluring yet slightly alien maidens could be something dredged up from a mythical Atlantis. A stone slab with a dramatic, modern, spiralling design rewards study with shock when you realise it's obviously a man's organ penetrating a uterus topped by breasts.

Perhaps significantly, the female form is on top. This was the island where the goddess Persephone disappeared and her mother Demeter haunted the landscape searching for her. There's an evocative case of their devotional figures. Medusa contributes a slightly more threatening slice of femininity in a face that once served, gargoyle like, to decorate a temple's roofline. But she's more comic than threatening, picking up on a sense of fun that flows throughout the ages here. Further on, you'll see the first preserved use of paper in a European court, holding instructions written by the king's mother. Anyone familiar with Sicilian families will know that, however powerful the men seem to be, Mama calls the shots.

The show doesn't spend much time on the Arab era, using it as a transition between the ages rather than exploring it in any depth. Which is a shame, as I would have liked more. Instead, you can ponder an exquisite ivory casket, made by Arab craftsmen in Islamic style yet depicting Christian saints. Nearby is another enormous photo, this time of a sunny Palermo with the medieval Christian palace at the top and the towers of an ancient mosque (now a church) in the foreground. Both drive home the point that the melange of cultures here was a fruitful one for both the people, and the art.

The Normans took Sicily from the Arabs late in the 11th century. While they captured government, they let Islamic culture continue to flourish and bound it into their own ... leading to not only a model of productive tolerance, but one of the artistic triumphs of the Middle Ages. There's an exact replica of Roger II's magnificent coronation robe here (the original is too delicate to travel), on which Norman lions ... who look suspiciously like they've just come out of The Arabian Nights ... conquer placid camels while flowing Arabic script celebrates the regime.

The single most beautiful thing
in this section is a ceiling panel from Roger's palace, containing a whole forest of animals fleeing the hunt, framed by sinuous foliage inside precise Islamic geometry. Each animal is no more than a few inches high, and would have been completely invisible to people on the ground, yet the carving is a masterpiece. It shows the passion for beauty that permeated the island.

The most evocative piece, however, was a simple tombstone in four languages. Nothing else so powerfully evoked the multiculturalism the British Museum was celebrating here. I wonder, when they started putting the show together years ago, if they realised just how timely their message would be. In a world of growing xenophobia and factionalism, the brilliance of Sicily's melting pot is an uplifting message.

The Norman section has a challenge, however: the greatest glories of that age were architectural. The curators make noble attempts. There's a lovely mosaic of a madonna and child. They've made clever use of a light box to suspend a full-colour photo of the ceiling of the Palatine Chapel above you. But the photo lacks depth, thus you have no sense of the stalactites of ornamentation dripping towards you from heaven. And one small mosaic, no matter how fine, can convey the jaw-dropping awe that the golden jewel-boxes of the Palatine Chapel or the Cathedral at Monreale convey. (For more on the delights of seeing these things in person, read my take on Palermo here.)

This is probably the reason for my biggest disappointment with the show: it simply wasn't big enough. And that's inevitably because to really tell this story, you need to walk around inside it. See how the Christian church in Syracuse is built within the walls of the Greek temple. Marvel at the size of the complex at Agrigento. Wander around the crazy, compelling cultural mash-up that is the streets of Palermo. Maybe this show will inspire you to do that on your next holiday. Meanwhile, get to the British Museum for a taste.

PS. If you want to finish your day appropriately, then head off for dinner at Luce e Limoni, London's only properly Sicilian restaurant. Review here.