Inspiration

It's fair to say that when one of your room-mates greets the day with the words "Did any of you used to watch Tenko?" you're unlikely to be in particularly luxurious accommodation.
 
In this particular case, I was sharing a room with five other 'ladies of a certain age' and one younger colleague at the Stayokay hostel near Arnhem in the Netherlands, as part of a study tour group from Reaseheath College, visiting the ten-yearly Floriade festival and the gardens at Appeltern.  To be fair to the Stayokay, the Tenko reference was a bit unfair as there was plenty of food and if anything the guards could have been a little more vigilant as our male colleagues awoke on the last morning to find an additional unscheduled guest occupying the spare bed in their room!

'Butterflies' at the Floriade

Unfortunately we had pretty poor weather on the day we visited Venlo where Floriade was taking place and in fact it appeared that the site had been hit by similar cold and wet weather to that which has plagued the UK this spring.

The exhibition was not quite as I had expected; I was expecting more conventional 'show gardens' of the type we see at Tatton Park, rather than the large scale planting schemes, large pavillions and conceptual gardens, and some things that were, to be honest, just plain weird!

Flowers in the rain at Floriade

There were some glorious examples of mixed tulip and perennial or spring bedding planting in a range of colour schemes.

Spring bedding

One excellent feature was a cable car running north to south across the huge site.  The rain rather spoilt the view from this, but it was the best way to give a sense of scale - the shot below shows just one huge glasshouse pavillion which was full of fantastic floral displays. 



From the cable car

  

 This huge pavillion really was truly spectacular, but there were also some things that were surprisingly odd.  One stand which we expected to have real tulips in looked more like the hold of the wretched spaceship at the beginning of Alien:

Knowing what happened to John Hurt, we left quickly without getting too close...

Appeltern was an entirely different experience; a vast array of beautiful show gardens under a clear blue sky and on a mild spring day.  Unfortunately, having been pretty chilly the day before, I erred on the side of caution and kept on my 'Darth Vader' boots and two pairs of socks, so didn't enjoy the fine day quite as I should.

There was a lot to see, so I'll write that up as a separate post shortly.

I also have a decision stillto make regarding future study at Reaseheath since, against my gloomy predictions, I managed to pass all of my RHS Level 2 exams again and, ironically, got the best results for the final paper (89%) which was the one I was certain I had completely flunked.  The big decision is, do I do the much-praised RHS level 2 'Practical' or go on to Level 3?  Either is an option, but I keep changing my mind!