The RHS Malvern Spring Festival in association with My Pension Expert will have plenty to celebrate when it makes a triumphant return on the 5-8 May 2022 after a two-year break.
This four-day extravaganza is the trailblazer for the RHS flower show season, a seed bed for emerging talent and an opportunity to learn from some of the country’s best-known gardening personalities.
Held at the Three Counties Showground in Worcestershire, with the beautiful Malvern Hills as a backdrop, the 35th festival promises to be greener, healthier and more joyful than ever.
Throughout its four-day run it will celebrate the positive physical and mental benefits that gardening has given us during the lockdown period. A series of show gardens, feature gardens and container gardens will provide plenty of inspiration alongside a new ‘Nurture Area’ looking at the many ways that horticulture can positively affect our wellbeing.
The Vitamin G Garden created by BBC presenter Jo While and designer Alan Williams from Landform Consultants, will be the first Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) feature garden to appear at Malvern. It will demonstrate the benefits to be enjoyed from a dose of Vitamin G – gardening – and is based on research conducted by the RHS’ Director of Science, Professor Alastair Griffiths.
The celebration theme will mark the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen with the 70th anniversary of her Coronation taking place a month after the festival. The event will feature giant eye-catching installations at each of the main entrances, school gardens to honour her reign and a new permanent feature garden – The Jubilee Garden – planted with the Sovereign’s favourite flowers and shrubs and the many cultivars named after her. Three Counties Showground’s gardening team, including young apprentices currently studying landscape and design at Pershore College, will plant and maintain the feature.
The re-imagined Floral Green will showcase an array of beautiful blooms from British cut flower growers and florists. Here visitors can immerse themselves in all things floristry, with regular demonstrations and unique photo opportunities with supersized suspended floral headpieces.
Some of the UK’s finest nurseries will make sure that The Floral Marquee and open-air Plant Arcades will be filled with tempting things to buy, and the shopping experience continues throughout the large retail area, offering a one-stop gardening emporium.
In addition, visitors can sample some of the best food and drink the region has to offer, complemented with world food cuisines and be inspired by demonstrations from TV chefs in the new Nourish Area, hosted by Mark Diacono, with Raymond Blanc, Valentine Warner, Jeremy Pang and Sabrina Ghayour due to take part.
The Festival Theatre promises a timetable jam-packed with special guests and inspirational speakers and will host the much-loved Gardeners’ Question Time. Monty Don, Frances Tophill, Jo Whiley, Arit Anderson and Jonathan Moseley will all be joining James Alexander Sinclair to present lively talks and fun and informative demonstrations.
Shows Manager, Jane Edwards commented; “We look forward to welcoming visitors back to our 35th festival for a celebration of the spring season and our shared joy of gardening. This year’s RHS Malvern Spring Festival will be the greenest yet, with a new sustainability policy seeing water bottle refill stations laid on around the showground and visitors are being invited to bring their own shopping bags for the floral marquee. These measures will join existing initiatives such as a free shuttle bus to and from Great Malvern Station.”
For further details about RHS Malvern Spring Festival, please visit the festival website.