News from Chelsea Show
- To: "'M*@ucdavis.edu'"
- Subject: News from Chelsea Show
- From: V* A*
- Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 18:47:04 -0400
Hello to all of you,
I am in London and this is the fourth day of the show - tomorrow it will
finish. It is an incredible experience, absolutely exhausting but
exhilarating as well. Build up days were labout and labour and labour,
everything had to be at its best -except for us crew, we were deep in the
mud all the time. Oh, of course the weather was dreadful, rain and cold -
really cold I mean, what we would have in February maybe, 11 C when I
arrived from a 28 C Rome. And it rained almost always. We have a really
tropical display, rainforest plants mostly, and our plants did not like the
weather too much -for instance, Victoria amazonica that we are displaying
for the 1st time ever at Chelsea just refused to bloom. As I may have
already told the list, the aim of this adventure is to make the general
public aware that this garden, La Mortella, exists and that it is open for
visits. I think in this sense we are having quite a success, we see every
day thousands of people and they all seem interested. We handed out millions
of leaflets, answered hundreds of questions, smiled billions of times. We
also received a silver gilt medal, (quite a strange name for anaward, isn't
it) however it is the second best, so we are rather pleased.
Today I met David Feix, on his way back from Crete, and we had a nice chat
about -guess- plants, and he told me about the plants he has mentioned to
the list recently.
The strangest coincidence is that at the very next stand behind ours there
is a woman from this list, whose name I can't remember now because we met in
a hurry duirng the build up phase, and we promised we would talk later but
we haven't managed yet. (So, if you are reading this now show up tomorrow,
just to say hi).
The stars of our display are four: Victoria of course, a tall composition in
pink shades towered by a giant Medinilla magnifica, Johannesteismanias palm
trees from Thailand, and a huge Aechmea maria-reginae. But the real star is
Lady Walton, an eccentric, good humored, dashing old lady that you'd all
love; and I' ll explain in the future why I say so.
And yes, Chas, we have hundreds of bromeliads and I am dutifully taking
pictures of them for you, and I wrote down a list that I'll send you when I
have time to tape it.
What else? It was nice to sit down here and talk to you all, but I am almost
fainting 'cause I am exhausted. So, more to come, for now
ARRIVEDERCI
Alessandra
