The vast majority of the boys and girls had been closer to the land and to reality

The vast majority of the boys and girls had been closer to the land, and to reality, than they had ever before been in their lives.. THERE WAS once a canon forbidding Christians to decorate their houses at Christmas with green boughs of holly. Pagans had for a long time used the same evergreen in celebrations of their saturnalias, which usually started a week before the Christian festival. The authorities naturally wanted to keep a distinction between the two groups, but nobody would give up their holly. A survey of London, published in 1598, notes that every house, every parish church and street corner, and all conduits and market crosses, were decorated with holly, ivy and bay at Christmas. Better than the Birds Eye lights in Oxford Street last year - a hideous travesty of Christmas cheer.Since ancient times, the holly has been associated with celebration, so it would be a happy choice for a millennium planting. Growth is slow, but not so slow as people think, if the situation is suitable.Fortunately, the English native holly, Ilex aquifolium, is an adaptable tree In the New Forest it grows in gravelly soil Round Aberdeen it grows well on granitic clay.

It likes to be shaded by deciduous trees, but not overtopped by them.Trees can be male or female; only the females bear berries. Most of the biggest holly trees in public parks such as the Derby Arboretum and Calderstones Park, Merseyside, are Ilex x altaclerensis `Hodginsii', handsome but non- berrying males. For berries, plant female `Camelliifolia', with brightly glossy, almost spineless leaves.. If you have sharp elbows and are above average height, there is much to see at the Chelsea Flower Show, which opens next week.

But if there is only limited time to take it all in, you end up gaping like a goldfish, uncertain whether you are looking at cinerarias or snapdragons. You could easily bring the show back down to a manageable size by banning all the "ideal home" elements - the plastic chairs, umbrellas and so on - and focusing the spotlight firmly on plants. But since the sundriesmen pay for their stands and the plantsmen don't, this notion is unlikely to find favour with the RHS, who spend pounds 2m putting on the show in the splendid grounds of the Chelsea Hospital. The show's great strength is its eclecticism. Outside, there are gardens designed for the most exquisitely tuned Sloane cheek by jowl with gardens from the outer reaches of Dunroaminland. Inside the Great Marquee, you lurch away from the magnificently weird display put up by Hampshire Carnivorous Plants - where every one looks as if it has been dreamt up by Walt Disney - and bump into Medwyn Williams exhibiting his range of beautifully grown vegetables (yellow and purple carrots, white aubergines, tomatoes that look like plums), all carefully transported from his Anglesey home to the Royal Hospital Road in London.The display gardens are the biggest magnet, and busy Independent readers with only an afternoon to spare for the show should not miss the following:Archadeck Deckscapes Garden, designed to show what timber decking can do to transform a town garden. On the upper level, a timber walkway leads to a bridge over a pond. A sundeck fills the lower level, with a summerhouse of classical design (but up-to-the-minute, electrically operated awnings for shade).