New Forest Hostas and Hemerocallis owner Vicky Meads wins double gold and chats with King at Chelsea Flower Show
IT REALLY was a dream come true for green-fingered Vicky Meads after she won double gold and chatted with the King at this year’s Chelsea flower show.
Vicky, who owns New Forest Hostas and Hemerocallis in Boldre, answered questions from His Majesty after her displays, featuring sculptures by a Forest artist, caught his eye.
“The King had a private visit to the show,” explained Vicky, “and he has a set route so everyone knows who’s going to speak to him prior to the visit, and I wasn’t going to be one of those people.
“He walked past my display – I know he loves hostas, and he has got a national collection of them in his garden at Highgrove.
“So, he walked past my first display and got about halfway past the second one when he seemed to just stop dead and spin around.
“He came over and asked me, ‘Who created this?’ and I said, ‘me’. I told him about the inspiration for the displays coming from a dream.”
She continued: “He asked me how business was and I said that it’s fine, but it could be better.
“He said, ‘You must have a lot of people working for you,’ and I said, ‘No, you’re looking at her’.
“He said that he was always looking for new hostas and one of his men took my business card.
“I gave the man a bit of a cheeky wink and said ‘oh alright then’ as I handed it over. It was all a bit of a blur really and it was over in a few moments.”
Vicky said the dream she described to the King – in which “everything was green” – inspired her displays, which won gold in both the hostas and the ferns and foliage classes.
The hostas display, entitled When I Daydream Everything is Perfect, features a statue of a woman lying in a bathtub, created by New Forest sculptor Jane Young.
Jane, who also attended the flower show, sculpted a sleeping man for Vicky’s ferns and foliage display, entitled I Had a Dream and Everything was Green.
Following Vicky’s fourth visit to the Chelsea show – and bagging her fifth gold medal – she said: “The ideas for this year’s displays came from some crazy dreams I had.
“I like to do something different each year, so I contacted Jane to sculpt these pieces for me. She did a fantastic job and they look great.
“There were so many people stopping to photograph the displays during the show, and the word I kept hearing from people to describe it was ‘serene’.
“And if the King wants to invite me to view his hostas at Highgrove, I’ll be straight in there.”
Jane, who had never sculpted prior to the Covid lockdown, said she was “intrigued” after Vicky approached her about making her “green dreams” a reality.
“It was my first time doing a commission for a garden display, and it was my first time crafting figurative human forms, but I think they turned out fantastic,” said Jane, who works as a freelance sculptor from her home in Burley.
