Hampton Court Flower Show makes the shopping even easier

 Hampton Court is a very different flower show than Chelsea.  It's huge, and it's all about shopping.  Sure, there are display gardens here, too, but this is a festival of acquisition.  Regulars turn up with their own shopping carts and pack them densely.  My final haul this year … carefully hunted down to fill specific holes in the garden … is pictured left.  A couple new pond plants, hardy Alpines for my pond margins, a red-almost-black scabious and several fine specimens, including the stunning "Sum and Substance" to fill out my host bed.

For the first time in my memory, the organisers made some big changes to the traditional layout.  All of the areas for purchasing plants are now grouped together, near the main entrance.  Making it far more convenient for shoppers.  Now that we know, in future years we'll loop through the rest of the show and return to the front for our plants as we're on our departure path.  This year, we started at 10:30 and all had full trolleys by 1, making a drop off to one of the plant creches a necessity.

The show gardens are more spread out than at Chelsea and far more eclectic.  It's hard to pinpoint any specific trends.  Densely-packed planting interspersed with grasses or Queen Anne's Lace continues to be popular, as in the Macmillan Cancer Garden, below.  For a donation, they gave away seeds on the latter plant; I shall try my own interspersing next year.

Like any flower show, Hampton gives you examples you can take home.  I have this achillea in my own garden, and was deeply irritated when what was billed as red with a tiny yellow centre turned orange as it matured.  (I started out banning both yellow and orange from my garden, but they keep creeping in.) Sandwiched between purple and white, it's lovely here.  Maybe I won't move it beyond my walls, after all.

My favourite show garden was much quirkier, however.  This was inspired on a Roman hypocaust, the under-floor heating systems found in the great baths.  Flowers surround what would have been the support columns, and smoke trailed out to evoke the furnace once burning there.

Another "hot" garden was my pick of the conceptual gardens.  Each year, these have a theme and are meant to provoke thought and discussion more than show off horticulture.  They're the conversation starters of the show.  This year, the theme was the Seven Deadly Sins, and this cauldron of angry oranges, reds and yellows springing from volcanic rock was, of course, anger.  It spewed a jet of hot water every so often, if you waited around.

Elsewhere across the show grounds, working with the environment took centre stage, with lots of bug houses, composting, hedgehog friendly gardens, wildflower meadows and the like.  This included an impressive vegetable patch, where cabbages became high art.

Corporate sponsorship seems a little more present every year, though still not in an obnoxious way.  Here, Ocean Spray sponsored a garden to evoke cranberry bogs.  Lots of juice testing and coupon distribution taking place in the adjacent New England beach hut.

More puzzling … Viking Cruises had sponsored a garden at Chelsea.  No garden here, but they still sent the Vikings.  Upload your photo with them to Twitter with a specific hashtag, enter yourself to win a cruise.  Why not?

The shopping isn't just about potted plants. There's a great craft tent, acres of garden furniture and accessories.  Here, for £80 and up, you can have one of these instant wire-frame topiaries.  I fear our dogs would tear it to shreds in under 10 minutes.

And finally, for my readers in St. Louis.  Look, Clydesdales don't just pull the Budweiser beer wagon.  Here, they take tourists on a leisurely ride around the formal gardens at Hampton Court.