The Beacon’s resident travel writer Nigel Heath and his wife Jenny went to the Press Day opening of The Malvern Spring Show where he produced this article for Mature Times the online newspaper for the over 50s which has around 500.000 readers and for which I am the travel writer.

He was kind enough to share it with us ahead of the Open Garden Scheme which returns on Sunday, May 17th.

“We were like two expectant bees buzzing off across country from our cottage and flower filled garden on a hillside just outside Monmouth,”.

Our destination was the Royal Horticultural Society’s Annual Spring Show on the Three Counties Agricultural Society’s showground against the magnificent backdrop of the Malvern Hills.

Here my gardening enthusiast wife Jenny and I would find some ninety acres packed with simply everything an amateur gardener could ever dream of or wish for..

We knew for certain there would be many other expectant bees like us heading for Malvern with the ideas of purchasing specific items for their much-loved gardens while thousands more would be enthusiastic signed up members of the RHS all looking forward to a grand day out.

And always a bonus of course was having the golden opportunity of listening to talks and having the chance to question some of the country’s most famous gardening personalities including Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh as well as food legends Mary Berry and Raymond Blanc.

There were of course a myriad of stands displaying a huge range of products associated with gardens from a large and striking range of beautiful outside furniture, some pieces carved from wood, together with stylish and eye-catching metal animals and birds through to terracotta pots, log cabins, greenhouses and country clothing.

For hundreds of gardening enthusiasts crowded around literally dozens of stalls manned by highly experienced gardeners from across the country selling flowers, plants and shrubs of every kind.

Luckily it was not long before Jenny had zoned in on a stall run by Chelsea Gold Medalists the Kitchen Garden Plant Centre of nearby Newent in Gloucestershire where she picked out a small medicinal plant called Stalked Bulbine which can be used as an alternative to Aloe vera as a skin burn salve.

Several more purchases later we finally emerged through the crowds and out into the sunshine to come across a most welcome sight namely one of two plant creches run by members of The Malvern Hills Gardening Club where showgoers can deposit their purchases and collect them when they are leaving in exchange for a charity donation.

Not to be missed of course were all the show gardens showcasing the talents of some of the best emerging and established garden designers working in the UK and each with different themes from nurturing woodland responding to climate change through to a nature rich garden designed to support British bird wildlife.

Another favourite show feature of ours is always the Schools Garden Challenge where this year eight schools from across Worcestershire and Gloucestershire were invited to use their fertile imaginations to design a garden based on myths and legends.