Chelsea Sneak Preview: What's Your Plant of the Centenary?

There's plenty of beavering away happening with the special preparations required for this year's RHS Chelsea Centenary Show. These include Roy Lancaster and his crack team of experts pondering and cogitating over their shortlist of nominations for 'Plant of the Centenary'. They have the task of selecting just one plant introduced per decade the show's been running. These will be exhibited in the Great Pavilion in a similar way to 'Plant of the Show' in previous years.

Visitors to Chelsea have the opportunity to vote for their favourite, which will then be named as 'Plant of the Centenary'. It'll be interesting to see which plants have stood the test of time, particularly those from the earlier days of the show. I'd also like to find out which plants launched previously during Chelsea still grace today's RHS Plant Finder, but that's research to do for another day.

It won't just be the show's visitors who'll have the chance to vote. There'll also be the usual 'People's Choice' vote available online to include 'Plant of the Centenary'. I thought we could have a bit of our own fun with this concept and come up with our own shortlist of plants ahead of the publication of Chelsea's list. I wonder how many of our favourites will be in their final 10?

Have a think and either name your plant in the comments below, OR write a blog post about your choice and why it's the one. We had a lot of fun with Shirl's Desert Island Plant Challenge a while ago, so I hope we can have fun with this one too. I'll set up a Mr Linky on Wednesday, 6th of March for you to add the link to your post.

It'll probably be too difficult for us all to restrict our selections to those introduced in 1913 or later, so I won't be discriminating on the age of origin for your choice. NB there may, or may not be a clue to my final selection in the photo chosen for this post ;)

Update: Helen's just commented her mind has 'gone pouff' at the thought of selecting just one. I'll probably have the same problem too. However, I think it'll be a bit of fun to have a ponder on this - especially with the current gloomy weather - and try to decide. I'm happy for your blog posts to say you can't select just one - I'm sure Roy Lancaster and his team have faced the same prospect during their deliberations!

Update 2: In view of Karen and Helen's comments, if you find selecting just one plant is too hard, then I'm also happy for you to select up to 10 plants to blog about instead and for us to choose 1 of them in your comments :)