Barbados has picked up the gold medal at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show with the exhibition, “Moonlight 13¡N Barbados”. With its win the Barbados Horticultural Society are claiming that warmer temperatures across the UK now mean the English Gardener can create bright and bold tropical planting - “a little piece of Barbados in your own garden”.
In Britain, the planting season is now three weeks longer than it was in 1980, and a trend of hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters, gives English gardeners the perfect opportunity to grow spectacular tropical plants, which can now survive in the UK.

Jean Robinson, Head Coordinator of the Barbados Horticultural Society, revealed her new-look tropical ideas at the “Moonlight 13¡N Barbados” exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show today, saying:

“With new weather patterns in Britain, we want to encourage gardeners to think creatively with striking bold colours and vivid, exotic plants that lift ones’ spirits! Raucous ‘Sexy Pink’ Heliconia chartacea, which we’ve introduced to Chelsea for the first time ever this year, look fantastic - and varieties of banana plant such as musa basjo, and Strelitzia, which already grows naturally in some parts of Cornwall, are gorgeous lush plants that can now thrive in the UK.”

“Moonlight 13¡N Barbados” (the latitude of Barbados) is dominated with a 29-foot purple-blue painted moonscape backdrop given a slow dreamy quality by five 12 foot-tall palm trees that sway across the scene.

Jean Robinson commented on the exhibit:

“Moonlight 13¡N Barbados” recreates the authentic feel of Barbados flora in its natural environment and is dedicated to the true Bajan gardens, rather than stylised and manicured gardens so often paraded at Chelsea”.

The exhibit would not have been possible without the help of the whole island, as all the materials used were grown, collected and flown 4,200 miles from Barbados.

Pictured: Ainsley Harriott and Linda Barker enjoying Barbados exhibit at Chelsea Flower Show.

——-