Shot! Leon Kluge’s Cape Flora exhibit at the 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show
After a four year absence, South Africa were back at Chelsea with an eye-catching protea display that won both admirers and no less than three prestigious awards
Once a year the best growers from around Britain and throughout the world, bring their best specimens to the world’s most prestigious flower show, Chelsea. With thousands of varieties all competing for attention, it’s hard to stand out. Naturally, the rarer species — at least those not grown in abundance or in Western Europe, tend to catch the eye. And from year to year, whether on the show gardens or in the Great Pavilion, certain blooms seem to get more attention than others.
Last year, it was a close call between bearded irises and aeoniums. And it just so happened that both played a starring role on Sarah Price’s gold-medal winning Nurture Landscapes Garden. The garden was inspired by Benton End, the Suffolk home of artist and plant hunter Sir Cedric Morris who produced no less than 90 bearded irises in all shades of unusual colours, many of which carry the Benton prefix.
Tall and graceful, like exotic birds, bearded irises were the most memorable, most iconic flower of Chelsea 2023. The question this year was what have the same effect in 2024? Well, for me, there was no contest, it was without doubt the protea, making a return to Chelsea after a four year absence, two years due to COVID and another two because the South African Botanical Institute decided not to.
This year, as part of a private sector led initiative, landscape designer and two time Chelsea gold-medal winner, Leon Kluge was back with his biggest and most ambitious exhibit designed to showcase the unique flora of South Africa’s Cape region.
The protea, or more specifically the king protea, is the national flower of South Africa. Named after the Greek God Proteus, there are 136 different species, most of which are found in Africa, with 82 of them endemic to the Cape area of South Africa. More than a third of proteas are considered endangered species.
Whilst they grow wild in South Africa, you have to have a licence to harvest them, indeed it’s a crime to illegally pick wild proteas. In recent years, a number of growers have begun farming proteas on a commercial basis. This has led to cultivating new varieties so production could be scaled to make growing them commercially viable.
Protea flowers are large and heavy, often having a tendency to droop as they cannot be supported by their stems. Farmed protea need to be sold with an upright stem so they can be displayed in a vase, which means focusing on varieties that grow in a similar way in order to making harvesting easier and of course to ensure the plants produce more blooms.
The flowers are picked when they are 50 per cent open. They are cut by hand using special secateurs which spray disinfectant onto the harvesting wound. Some varieties have a bag placed on the flower to protect them from insect and bird damage. Typically, cut proteas will last up to 14 days, but this can be extended if the flowers are cold-stored. That in itself creates a huge conundrum when London is 6,000 miles away from the Cape.
As Leon Kluge explained:
“One of the biggest challenges is the timing of the show — mid-May. The proteas from the Cape fynbos are just about to start to flower, while those from the northern part of South Africa have all finished flowering. That means for Chelsea there’s a dependence on hybrid flowers from growers in the fynbos.”
Meaning ‘fine bush’ in Afrikaans, the fynbos is the name for a small belt of natural heathland located in South Africa’s Western and Eastern Cape provinces.
For the exhibit, no less than 22,000 flower stems were sent from South Africa, including 14 species of protea some of which had never been seen at Chelsea before.
The proteas were harvested from various remote farms and first transported to Cape Town. From there they travelled to Dubai and then onto London. The flowers had to be kept at a very low temperature throughout their journey. That meant by the time they arrived at the show, many were already a week old.
It took a week to build the exhibit and another week to install the flowers.
At almost 100 sq m, Cape Flora was one of the biggest exhibits in the Great Pavilion.
It also looked good no matter which side you viewed it from. Sculpted with natural clay by artist Tristan Woudberg, the holes in the undulating walls represented vistas into new biomes.
The Cape is the most biodiverse plant area in the world, with each area having species that don’t occur anywhere else in the Cape. But, as Leon Kluge admitted, there was a time when it was touch and go as to whether the exhibit would even make it to Chelsea.
“As late as February 2024 we still thought we wouldn’t make it because we were not nearly as far as we wanted to be in regards to the funding. It all pulled through at the last minute.”
In the end, all the effort was rewarded as Cape Flora not only won a gold medal, but was also named Best Exhibit in the Great Pavilion as well as receiving the New Design Award.
I remember some of South Africa’s previous exhibits, thinking they were spoiled by having naff photographic backdrops. The use of the sculpted clay was an inspired idea and it’s what made the installation such a success.
That being said, if I were to be a tad critical, I think it was actually too overstuffed with flowers. Personally, I would have made the planting a little more naturalistic, with more clay walls and more space between some of the varieties, rather than having them all butt up to each other and filling the entire surface.
Behind the shot: Unless labelled otherwise, all these images were taken handheld with the iPhone 14 Pro. Despite its size, the Great Pavilion isn’t the best place to photograph flowers. The lighting isn’t great and the roof is ugly. That means it’s almost impossible to get ‘clean’ photos without other exhibits, people or the building itself getting in the frame. As always, it was all about looking for interesting compositions and avoiding the labels, which the RHS require each species to have. Photographed at Chelsea Physic Garden on 20 May 2024.
About the author: Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in creating out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens, not forgetting an array of automotive exotica.
On the writing side, he has used his research skills to author deep dives into some noteworthy songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials, ‘Real Wild Child’ by Ivan and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople.
He has also written a biography of Robert Palmer and the stories behind Whitesnake’s blatant Led Zep rip-off, ‘Still Of The Night’, Harry Styles’ anthem to positivity, ‘Treat People With Kindness’ and the little known Queen track ‘Cool Cat.’
Most recently, Gary has penned the fascinating story behind George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ as well as ‘Believe It Or Not’ a look into the rise of fake news.
All these can be found here on Medium, along with his reviews of gigs and events and chats with musicians including the likes of Royal Blood, Joe Satriani and Wolf Alice.
