Chelsea week is a busy one for the advice team as in addition to carrying on as usual with the Member’s Advisory Service we provide an advice desk to help all show visitors.
Two advisors have been busy today at the show site stocking the stand with all the equipment and materials the advice team will need to answer the expected 3000 questions from show visitors. The computers and printers have been tested, but because electricity at shows is subject to ‘outages’ back up in the form of printed material is ready.
As well as a team of horticultural experts, RHS scientists will be present;
• Botanists – They will be able to use our On-Line Plant Finder to tell you where you can buy plants and will also identify plants (pictures or samples of flowers are usually necessary)
• Plant disease experts – we expect many questions on Phytophthora blights that have been in the news recently.
• Entomologist (insect experts) – they expect to have many questions about wisteria scale, that has also been in the news, as well as the usual slug, snail and vine weevil questions
The commonest questions last year were:
1. Why won’t my wisteria flower?
2. Why is there no fruit on my trees?
3. How do I know when my potatoes are ready to gather?
4. What do I do about rhubarb flowers?
5. My Japanese acer has died back – why?
6. Why have my potted camellias have gone brown?
7. How do I make my lawn grow better?
8. What can I plant in dry shade?
9. How do I prune spring flowering shrubs?
10. How do I look after my potted olive tree?
A word of warning; the phrase we hear most is ‘I put out samples ready to bring today but I left them behind’!
Many people bring pictures of plants and problems to help with their questions, which greatly help us, but are best printed out. Peering at camera or phone screens in a bright marquee can be unrewarding.
When you answer over 3000 enquiries there are always some that we cannot fathom on-the-spot and which we have to take back to Wisley to examine, test and research before writing back to the enquirer – only queries from RHS members are eligible for this in-depth answer.
Of course it is not all giving advice – Chelsea, even more than other RHS shows, is an important source of information for the advice team who gather information on plants, products and services, to add to our information resources to help us answer member’s questions. If you see something you think we should be aware of, that would help solve a gardening problem for example, we would be pleased to hear about it: gardeningadvice@rhs.org.uk