Hampton Court Garden Festival

The Hampton Court Garden Festival is the largest flower show in the world. The show is held in early July. The show is run by the Royal Horticultural Society at Hampton Court Palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The show features show gardens, floral marquees and pavilions, talks and demonstrations. Erected on the north and south sides of the Long Water in Hampton Court Park, it is the second major national show after the Chelsea Flower Show but has a different character, focusing more on environmental issues, growing your own food and vegetables and cookery, as well as selling gardening accessories, plants and flowers.

The original Hampton Court Palace Flower Show was the brainchild of the management consultant Adrian Boyd, who saw an opportunity to connect two organisations facing times of uncertainty in a joint venture. The Department of the Environment had been dismembered in the 1980s, and one of the cuttings was Historic Royal Palaces, which found itself looking for ways of increasing revenue and attracting a larger audience. Similarly, Network SouthEast, one of the temporary aggregations thrown up by the pre-privatisation of British Rail, was looking for ways of making its rail services more profitable. Boyd's idea was that Network SouthEast should sponsor a flower show at Hampton Court, and provide the public transport to Hampton Court railway station. At the time the RHS Shows Department was working on four new events for 1993, in Birmingham, Harrogate, Wembley, and Glasgow.

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