FROM THE EDITOR IN LONDON

Today is the first day it has been warm and sunny here. I suppose I should not be talking about warm and sunny. I believe in Karachi it has not only been hot but there is 14 hours of loadshedding ! Phew!

You will all be dying to hear about the Chelsea Flower Show. Yes, I did go to it but first on May 20 was the launch of Paradise Found: Journeys Through Noble Gardens of Asia at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. It was a wonderful occasion getting together garden writers and others associated with horticulture, academics, people from the media and yes, royalty too. The book was being launched by Princess Alexander who came looking very elegant in a beautiful maroon outfit with matching bag and shoes. I also got a chance to meet the lovely Malaysian Princess Soraya Dakhlah who was the editor and, along with Joan Foo Mahony, the moving force behind the book. I also met one of my favourite garden writers Made Wijaya, the Australian, who has designed more than 1000 gardens and who so fell in love with Bali that he has adopted a Balinese name.

The book is being published to raise funds for the Royal Hospital Chelsea Pensioners’ Appeal and is stunning. With two hundred pages of magnificent photographs it showcases forty of the most beautiful gardens of Asia. Each garden has an accompanying text contributed by leading horticulturists, academics and celebrities with descriptions, impressions or thoughts inspired by the garden. At a time when Pakistan is getting such bad press everywhere it was thrilling to see that the book begins with Pakistan!

Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan’s first woman architect and whose name here has become synonymous with the preservation of our heritage, has written on the Hiran Minar, Professor James L.Wescoat Jr professor and head of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois has written on Jehangir’s Tomb Garden and I have written on Wah Garden.

At 8.00 pm when the reception had concluded we were all invited to visit the flower show. I quickly went around the show gardens but what I saw was so tantalizing that I decided to come back and visit it properly another day. Accordingly a friend and I got tickets two days later – we were lucky to get some returns as the show is sold out before it starts.
For a review of the show you will have to wait for next month’s newsletter, I am afraid. Suffice it to say that the trends this year seem to be simplicity and sophistication