MORE than 80,000 people braved the elements to attend this year’s Malvern Spring Gardening Show.

Despite the blustery showers green-fingered enthusiasts turned up in their droves to the first national gardening show of the year.

Sharon Gilbert, communications manager of the Three Counties Agricultural Society, which co-organises the event with the RHS, added: “We have had many people comment on the quality of entries and the feel good factor of this year’s show, which is very encouraging considering the difficulties many people had getting ready for it.”

A lady from just down the road took a main award with a plant she ignores for most of the year.

Clare Dolan lives at Mathon, only a few miles from the Three Counties showground, and won a gold medal in the open gardening class with a rhododendron she claims “thrives on neglect”.

Mrs Dolan originally bought the plant five years ago and installed it in the garden of the house she then lived at in Great Malvern.

“We moved to Mathon three years later and I liked the plant so much I decided to dig it up and take it with me,” she explained. “But I didn’t get round to putting it back in the garden. It’s been stuck in a pot for two years and basically forgotten about. In fact I only really remembered it a few weeks ago and decided to water it for the first time for ages.”

But, much to her surprise, the plant thrived. The rhododendron is a variety called Grace Seabrook and grows a mass of crimson flowers.

Among all the floribunda, the show’s sculptor-in-residence Caro Sweet, from Malvern, was busy creating a model which will eventually to be turned into bronze tribute to television’s celebrity gardeners.

“We are affectionately calling him ‘Saint Percy’,” said Ms Sweet. “And he will represent the spirit of all the TV gardeners from Monty Don and Chris Beardshaw right back to Percy Thrower.”

The project will be completed at Ms Sweet’s studio at Bransford and nine bronzes and 25 acrylic bronzes will go on sale later this year.

In the floral art classes, the show’s best use of colour award went to Sandra Snell from Much Marcle, near Ledbury, while there was a gold for Bromyard Flower Club with its exhibit on a ‘fashion house’ theme, which represented the Three Counties and South Wales area in the section for the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies.