The Chelsea Flower Show has been taking place in London this week. It concludes today. I like gardens and plants, and can be persuaded to have a glass of rosé at lunchtime, so when a friend organised for a team of us to attend this famous gardening extravaganza to mark his milestone birthday, I was delighted to join. And I loved it. Well, with one wrinkle.

Now, for any of you who don’t know your daisies from your derrieres, or have somehow avoided this very British event, a small explanation. The Chelsea Flower Show, organised by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), opens with a party attended by the royals – the king and queen both rocked up – and a lot of TV celebrities who are definitely in the daisies-from-derrieres camp.

The first two days are exclusively for RHS members and their guests (that was me), then anyone can go. And they do: thousands come from the shires for a day out to see new plant varieties, perhaps order a pergola for their country house or snap up a giant 18th-century stone trough about the size of a London apartment. People dress up. You can wear a hat.

Much of the press coverage is lavished on the show-garden competition, where leading designers, in partnership with a flush sponsor, create innovative creations that perhaps reflect on climate change or mental health. But this is the wrinkle – you can barely see them.

Each tiny patch is roped off with crowds of nice elderly people – often in granny-scrums four or five deep – craning to get a view. It’s the gardening equivalent of a mosh pit – a mulch pit? Sponsors, of course, have access to their miniature garden but risk ending up looking like exhibits in a zoo. “Look, is that a lesser-spotted chairman behind that pine tree?”

But the real reason they seem to be fenced off is to give all-day access to the BBC camera crews (there’s a show from the event every day). And it’s then that you realise that these are not gardens, they’re TV sets. Each one needs a place for the crew to stand, easy sightlines for the cameras. A gardening presenter, waiting to be given their cue, stares at a bloom as though it were a love interest.

Meanwhile, I watched the carer of a young man in a wheelchair just give up trying to get a view of the vegetation. A woman wiped tears from her face as she tried to take in the Parkinson’s UK garden – she had just lost her husband to the illness. It’s a shame that these people can’t be more front and centre. But you can escape this part and then the real fun begins.

At the heart of the show is the Great Pavilion, a vast marquee filled with exhibitors showcasing their particular obsessions – bonsais, hostas, roses, water lilies. It’s part village fête, part Victorian showground. It’s colourful, even a little brash in places, and truly glorious.

Meeting people who have dedicated their lives to perfecting one thing, to becoming the go-to person for a particular plant, is wonderful. I soon find myself eyeing up a display of water irises even though I have no pond and they would have to take over the bathtub. Perhaps I need that trough.

You could spend all day here because passion is a very compelling thing to be around. You can even get a glimpse of the new Sir David Beckham rose – a flushed, pink-faced little number. The rose that is, though I was a little taken aback by its flawless petals. Surely modern horticulture could manage a few blue tattoos by now.

To read more from Andrew Tuck, click here.

What are you up to on Sunday 30 May? If you’re in Zürich, stop by our annual Badi Market to peruse a selection of fine print, cool drinks, clothing, seasonal snacks and more. You can find the details here.

Paris-based fashion label Lemaire is opening a new boutique in one of the French capital’s most coveted retail spots, the Palais-Royal (writes Natalie Theodosi). Similar to the brand’s flagship, tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Le Marais on a quiet corner of the Place des Vosges, the new space on the Galerie de Montpensier faces the garden and is designed to capture the same sense of tranquility with stone floors, soft grey tones across the walls and ceilings, and large windows that allow natural light to flood in.

Designers Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran always consider both their fashion collections and retail spaces within a wider cultural context. That’s why the new shop is designed to host exhibitions and spark conversations, and why the opening coincides with a photographic exhibition, Box of Impressions, curated by Tran along with London-based writer Lou Stoppard. It features the works of 21 photographers, including Hayahisa Tomiyasu, Ana Vaz and Manon Lutanie. An apt way to pay homage to the label’s new neighbourhood, which is often credited with redefining shopping culture in the 18th century, when the first magasins de nouveautés and cabinets de lecture opened along its famous arcades. 
lemaire.fr

Looking for more places to shop in Paris? Consult Monocle’s City Guide.

We’ve put together a list of this month’s best cultural releases, including a film told from the perspective of a plucky hen. Here are three more to have on your radar.

‘Let X=X’ by Laurie Anderson with Sexmob 
“Good evening, this is your captain,” begins Laurie Anderson’s new live album. Recorded on tour in 2023 with jazz band Sexmob, the 23 tracks include some of her best songs, interspersed with charming chatter. It’s the kind of record that only reveals its full power when you lock in. Pick up a physical copy to enjoy Anderson’s paintings, which are featured on the packaging.
‘Let X=X’ was released on 8 May.
 
‘Hilma af Klint’, Grand Palais, Paris 
In late 19th-century art circles, women weren’t meant to experiment. Abstract painter Hilma af Klint hid her peerless abstract work, even stipulating in her will that it wouldn’t be exhibited until two decades after her death. The world is only now starting to catch up to her, some 80 years on from her death. The highlight of this major retrospective? Her Paintings for the Temple cycle.
‘Hilma af Klint’ runs from 6 May to 30 August.
 
‘Berlin and the Lady with an Ermine’, Netflix 
Spanish franchise Money Heist has become an unstoppable juggernaut. A follow-up to 2023 prequel Berlin, this latest outing features elite criminals travelling to Seville for “the biggest heist in history”. They have their eyes on Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, though the real target is the scheming Duke of Málaga and his wife.
‘Berlin and the Lady with an Ermine’ is out now.
 
For more cultural highlights, pick up a copy of our May issue. 

The fabric descriptions on Man-tle’s website are a pleasure in themselves (writes Tyler Dane Wingco). The newly developed 160 Crunch, for instance, is an ultra-fine, high-density typewriter cloth that “rustles and crunches with movement”. Nevertheless, its fabrics need to be felt to be believed. Anyone fortunate enough to live on the postcard shores of Perth, where the brand is based, can do so in person. International stockists from C’H’C’M’ in New York to Neighbour in Vancouver provide other opportunities. And now, Man-tle fans in Melbourne can also count themselves lucky thanks to a new shop on leafy Gertrude Street in Fitzroy.

It’s the brand’s third bricks-and-mortar space since it was founded by husband-and-wife duo Larz Harry and Aida Kim in 2015. “We have always believed in physical stores,” says Kim. The couple are hands-on with the Perth shop’s merchandising, so “it was a challenge for us to set up shop in another city,” she says. “To be honest, we never actually felt ready. But [after] 10 years, we decided to push on with some of our more ambitious ideas.”

The shop’s interior, designed in-house with help from architect Alexei Haddad, acts as “a compact kiosk” made simply from wood panels “to let our fabrics speak for themselves”, says Harry. “Our products contain stories and well-documented processes in their make-up.” For the occasion, the shop is stocked with limited-release remakes of previous shapes in new materials, including the brand’s Weather shirts and black moleskin versions of its Jebok workwear. A small selection of Korean Market homewares will also be available later this year.

Even though Man-tle has moved into a global fashion city, design development remains strictly in its Perth studio “to maintain clarity, [which] defines our point of difference”, says Harry. “There are no plans for another shop,” adds Kim. The point was never expansion in the brand-building sense but rather to share the experience of feeling the work. “Our focus is mostly to make better products.”
man-tle.com