Virgin snow in Regent’s Park and along the Regent’s canal.Freezing wind chilling my cheeks and shaking the last red leaves off the Metasequoia glyptostroboides. A pool of red spread around the tree and across part of the lake beside. Scent of pine wafting across the path.
Puzzled ducks wander about on the ice. So few people are walking to work in this beautiful sunshine. Why? Especially on Monday when, once again, the tube strike hit. I came into Paddington and walked across Hyde Park and St James Park (my fave) to work at the FT on Southwark Bridge.
What a wonderful start to the day.
This evening I walked back across the Millennium Bridge. St Paul’s was floodlit in red. It looked magnificent. Then onto Salt Yard for Tapas with Barbara de Lacey and finally a number 24 bus through the snow back to Camden.
    

Tony Heywood’s thing. Some people were comparing it to Niki de Saint Phalle’s stuff. No way.


Bruno Marmiroli’s tree through coal.Followed by: classic Ivan Hicks; golden dog turds (odd, even for FG);sitting hole in Hugo Bugg & Maren Hallenga’s modestly named Narratives of Nature; Peter Thomas’ Metamorphosis and the beehive bogs.

    

Biggest numbers by far, with some having to watch on the monitors outside the Gardening Matters forum tent, were for Sarah Eberle’s talk. Sarah http://www.saraheberle.com/ is the pixie-like star of Hampton Court and Chelsea with the energy of a nuclear reactor. This year, with six week’s notice, she built three gardens on £15,000. Peanuts. Larger Chelsea gardens can cost up to half a million.    

Out here in Taiwan looking at the Floral Expo and stuff has started to kick off with the Baka people in Cameroon. I think I’m on the wrong continent. Damn.    

Il Presidente Dominic demonstrating the Mexican Cough.
2 The Hort Week mob proving that their Champagne Tracker Device is infallible.
3 Matthew Appleby shortly before he throttled Bob Sherman to get Garden Organic’s Guru to spill the Green beans.
4 Nice gate
5 The world’s only ugly Regency feature: a Gardenesque Mound as invented by poor, boring, worthy old John Loudon who died standing up while dictating his latest book.
6 Rosa Mundi, swoon.
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Ulf Nordfell, this year’s king of Chelsea, strolls in with a posse of sleek-looking Swedes. They are staying at the Swedish Embassy which sounds swish until he tells me that it’s full of Ikea furniture. I wonder if our diplomatic outposts are furnished from Homebase.
Tricky moment when sound man tries to clip a mike to Ulf’s new black leather Armani jacket but GP James smoothes ruffled foliage with an even smoother introduction for Ulf’s ‘conversation’ with me as his bit of the afternoon is billed.

Arrived last night after making it through tube-strike-chatoic London (only just). Here to see the Taipei International Floral Expo http://www.2010taipeiexpo.tw/mp.asp?mp=4
    

The Cardinal reminds me of Blake’s Sick Rose picture

Not that this tree peony star he is sick. He started waving his finery around just before Chelsea after six years twiddling his thumbs and refusing to flower much despite sitting in a pot of my finest Chateau Owen compost.
    

Gorgeous pouting (GP) James Alexander Sinclair, author of outstanding garden blogs for the BBC and himself http://web.me.com/blackpittsgarden/Site … ment_layer as well as being a famous, fabulous person, is co-chairing Chelsea’s Gardening Matters forum with me today.
Mark Gregory and Ian Dexter are first up to talk about the Marshalls garden – The Street http://www.marshalls.co.uk/transform/chelsea/. The Street is buzzing.
I’ve admired Mark’s excellent Chelsea construction work (and more recently his own eco designs) for years. And I loved Ian’s Marshall’s garden last year with its clever climbing frame/ pavilion. But what I liked most about seeing these two on stage together is that they were still speaking – just a couple of days after the exhausting marathon of a Chelsea build which has a lot of designers and constructors ripping each other limb from limb .

Which plants to leave out? Can’t bring them all in. The orange tree has retreated inside, ditto a couple of scented leaf geraniums. The eucomis are sitting in a sheltered (I hope) area beside a brick wall.
But the wormery will grind to a halt and there’s nothing I can do about it apart from bringing it inside…