An Open eyed Dream

Tim Penrose – owner of Bowdens – a family run nursery business at Sticklepath which now incorporates award winning hostas, ferns and bamboos decides to really go for it, stir up something at Chelsea Flower Show and make rather a splash.

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.”

Ever since 2004 when I had purchased my father-in-law’s business of Bowden Hostas I had dreamt and wondered about what display I could put on at Chelsea Flower Show. I will admit to having a rather unhealthy obsession with the central monument stand which was taken every year by Hillers Garden Centres,. It was the fulcrum of the Great Pavillion at Chelsea, was a size of huge proportions and (in my view) had not changed much over 103 years. Here was a challenge I could get my teeth into. But where on earth was I to begin?

Well, a contact knew a contact, knew a contact…..and before you knew it I was sitting in front of Belmond UK Marketing Director with an idea to haul a carriage from the Belmond British Pulmann (which was the sister train to The Orient Express) to Chelsea Flower Show and create a floral stand around the train – well that had never been done before!

The RHS were in equal measures, bemused, amused, surprised, amazed, sceptical and worrying (they did a lot of that), but in the event, we brought together the carriage, after a 94 mile detour around the M25 – despite the fact it lived only 1 mile away - £35,000 worth of vintage luggage, 2 genuine real life stewards that were borrowed from The Orient Express, a full size Alitex Glasshouse that was worth £45,000 and thousands of plants – including ferns, hostas, tree ferns and bamboos. It was an enormous undertaking! And well worth it. We were visited officially by Her Majesty The Queen and various other members of The Royal Family, Carrie Fisher from Star Wars, Lord and Lady Heseltie and managed to put Devon as an award winning nursery well and truly on the map. And all this, I kept thinking from a small Devon nursery.

We were clearly punching massively above our weight, but as they say, fortune favours the brave and indeed it was after all was said and done worth the nightmares and the sleepless nights worrying about what might go wrong. Of course, in the event, lots went wrong, but it was all fixable and we opened on stage bang on time as we expected to.

It was enormously popular with the public – over 5 days almost 30,000 people passed through the train on their journey through time and plants. It was ground breaking, unique and if you put all the worries to one side – rather fun.What next year? Well, a surprise – not quite so large, but even more exclusive – a carriage of surprise awaits.

Tim Penrose

Bowdens