Alice Cairns talks to Alexandra Denman, creative force behind the Windsor Summer Show
Alexandra Denman and Peter Seabrook at last year’s Windsor Summer Show
Ah, July. Warm days, short nights, the spirit of horticulture blazing like the summer sun: the natural habitat of Alexandra Denman, an Englefield Green resident who was Show Manager of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for seven years.
“I loved it,” she tells me, when we meet in the Windsor Farm Shop cafe on the edge of Home Park. “Chelsea is gardening at its very, very best – its highest level – and what was so good for me was seeing people push the boundaries every year, sometimes despite great adversity.”
This month she has the opportunity to witness something similar. For Alexandra has now brought her talents upstream to help rejuvenate the Royal Windsor Summer Show, an annual feast of horticulture, flower arranging, baking, crafts and more, organised by The Royal Windsor Rose and Horticultural Society and held in the grounds of St George’s School.
“It’s a great Windsor event,” she enthuses. “Very locally rooted. I’m really looking forward to the day.”
Enthusiasm, indeed, is a key characteristic of Alexandra, if today is anything to go by. With relish she reels off the results of studies about the benefits of spending time in the garden. In a world where front gardens are frequently given over to driveways and grassy spaces smothered in concrete, Alexandra believes that a little more greenery would do us all a power of good.
“Gardening gives you time to concentrate on things, to allow your troubles to float away. I can have a problem on my mind when I go into the garden, but after a couple of hours I’ll find a way through it.”
A garden, she insists, should be more than just a scrubby patch of browning grass. Instead, it should constitute “an outdoor room where you can focus on your mental health, potter about and relax”. She makes it sound almost trendy; a pursuit that fits seamlessly with our contemporary culture of mindfulness and self-care. To Alexandra, however, such an interpretation is slightly misleading.
“Gardening has always had those benefits,” she laughs. “All it needs is rebranding for the modern day.”
Clivden Rose Garden
Gardening, baking, crafting: in cultivating skills such as these, says Alexandra, lies the antidote for our addiction to immediacy. And as Trustee of the Summer Show, she has set up an event that brings them all into play.
“We want to get people away from their iPads and encourage them to spend time doing things together as a family. Gardening teaches children where their food comes from, how to care for things responsibly and that good things don’t always deliver instant gratification. With gardening you have to wait for the results.”
Alexandra’s own garden, one imagines, must be rather special. Overlooking the arboretum of Royal Holloway at Egham – part of the University of London – it includes a vegetable garden, pizza oven and fire pit. The irises are flowering beautifully, she says, while the apple trees are “putting on some really good fruit”. Is there one plant in particular that she would never want to be without?
“Perhaps my hydrangeas. There’s a fantastic one called Strong Annabelle that has massive, dinner plate sized white heads and really shines in the dark.”
And what of her horticultural hates?
‘Overuse of plastic – I prefer more natural materials. Nowadays, we expect a garden to have environmental value. So, for instance, providing nectar plants for bees, or butterflies; cutting a hole in the bottom of the fence so that hedgehogs can travel; perhaps leaving a nettle patch or a few logs in one corner to provide habitats. Not being overly tidy is important in the modern garden.”
And there is still room for a little whimsy.
“I’m ok with garden gnomes,” she laughs.
The task is set. In an area crammed with celebrated gardens, it’s time to make our own the very best it can be.
Royal Windsor Summer Show is on July 14; rwrhs.com
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