Postcard from Chelsea: Saturday

A rare treat this year: waiting for a taxi after finishing particularly late, I went for a wander up Main Avenue and got to see the magical world that is Chelsea after dark.

Andy Sturgeon's garden in particular came to life after the sun went down. I'll confess that until this point I haven't really been that taken with it. It was all right - the planting was lovely and it was beautifully judged - but I felt the copper sculpture was swamped by the monolithic and mildly brutalist walls marching down the back. For me they were too distracting and diminished the rest of the garden.

By night, though, those walls fade into the background and the copper bubble sculpture shines and dances like a thing alive. The holes in the walls are black by daylight: but by night they light up like glowing circles of gold, echoes of the gleaming sculpture winding through the plants.

There were other gardens, too, which were transformed by light: Tony Smith's "Green with..." was positively funky in red and silver while Diarmuid Gavin's tower became more like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and less like a theme park as the scaffolding retreated under gentle lighting.

There should be special tickets for people to come in and see Chelsea's gardens lit up like this. In fact I think Andy's should have stayed under wraps until post-9pm just so people could see it at its best. It completely changed my mind about it: which begs the question, why show it to the public at a time when it's patently not the most beautiful it can be?

But then that would mean all those bankers and society sorts couldn't have their swanky parties (for this is what Chelsea becomes after the gates close at 8pm: one huge party in which there are no longer ropes around the gardens and everyone gets to actually use those beautiful buildings for which Chelsea is so famous). I think one evening, though, could be set aside to let the public in: this is one sight which really shouldn't be missed.

Postcard from Chelsea: Friday

(c) Thompson & Morgan

 The Plant of the Year stand is a funny one: a motley collection of plants out of context, drawn from all over the Pavilion. It's a bit like the 'remainders' trolley in the garden centre, only with good-quality plants.

Anyway, almost everyone who brings a new plant to Chelsea nominates it for the award: but only the very best make it onto the white podiums for the public to look at.

Among this year's 20 finalists were a massive pitcher plant (Nepenthes 'Linda') from Hampshire Carnivorous Plants, rubbing shoulders with one of Peter Beales's roses ('Queen's Jubilee' - of course), a ridiculously vivid blue hyacinth ('Royal Navy', from J S Pennings de Bilt) and two new aeoniums from Trewidden in Cornwall - 'Cornish Tribute' is compact and has extraordinary purple rosettes with a glowing lime green centre: and 'Logan Rock', which turns purple in summer.

My own tip for the top was a foxglove, Digitalis 'Silver Cub' - a fabulous silver-foliage perennial white foxglove which just shone out from the stand and made you want to stroke its leaves. It flowers in its first year from sowing and has multiple stems - seriously lovely thing.

But the winner was another foxglove altogether, D. 'Illumination Pink', bred by Thompson & Morgan. Though on appearance I still prefer the 'Silver Cub' you've got to take your hat off to them for achieving what was thought impossible: a cross between Digitalis purpurea and the evergreen Canary Island foxglove, variously referred to as D. canariensis or Isoplexis canariensis depending on whether you think it's botanically a foxglove or not. T&M's achievement would suggest that it is.

Its exotic origins have given it a very un-foxglove like colouring of candy pink with butter yellow centres. On the plus side, it's perennial, semi-evergreen, flowers for absolutely ages, and is nice and sturdy so it doesn't need staking. On the minus side, it's sterile - clever marketing ploy, but disappointing for gardeners who like to raise their own plants from seed.

Postcard from Chelsea: Thursday

Podophyllum 'Spotty Dotty', a gorgeous specimen and in flower, too: my plant of the week, spotted on the Edulis stand (also my exhibit of the week - I'm so delighted they've made it to Chelsea at last, and though they're first-timers they've shown off an exceptional collection of edibles, many of which I'd never come across before).

I adore podophyllums - big, blowsy foliage plants and as this one shows, no slouch on the flowering front either. 'Spotty Dotty', a cross between P. delavayi and P. difforme, is one of the most colourful with its generous brown-spodged leaves.

I've always struggled to grow them a little in my old garden, bone-dry acid sand that it was: but I think I might have another go in this one as it has plenty of nice shady damp corners - right up Dotty's street. I was a little surprised to see it nestled among the other Edulis plants until I found out that though most parts of the plant are toxic, its ripe, yellowish or red fruit is known as the May apple (in this case, the Chinese May apple). About the size of a crabapple, it's said to taste a little inspid - but I'd really like to give it a try.

Postcard from Chelsea: Wednesday

Sorry - this simply doesn't do justice to the spectacular exhibit that is the HW Hyde & Son lily display in the Great Pavilion, winner not only of a Gold but also of the coveted award for the best exhibit in the show.

It's a walk-through stand - this is one of two paths around a central island. There are more walk-through displays than I've seen for a long time this year: Hardy's, both David Austin and Peter Beales' Roses, and Hyde's allow you to wander through the plants, immersing yourself in them and surrounding yourself with them.

Massive-flowered oriental lilies are almost impossible to place in a garden: they're just too big, too blowsy, too 'look at me'. I don't care: I love them anyway.

I have several in containers around the place: they get very little care, far less than they should have I expect, but they come back year after year. As long as I can defend them from the horrors of the lily beetle (can there be any larvae more disgusting than those of the lily beetle, I wonder?) they're incredibly easy, yet incredibly breathtaking when those long fat buds finally break.

Not one of them, though, is a patch on the sensational glamourpusses on Hyde's, though. Here are just a few.

 'Choco'

 'Big Brother'

'Nymph'

Postcard from Chelsea: Medals Day

Congratulations - once again - to the wonderful Cleve West, winner for the second year running of Best in Show for his sublime topiary garden for Brewin Dolphin.

Rumour has it he thought they'd made a mistake when they told him. But this is a garden which creeps up on you gradually: go back a few times, take another look, and you'll find yourself slowly falling in love.

At first glance you take it for your standard formal symmetric stately home style layout.

Then you take some photos, and realise it isn't actually symmetrical at all.

The craggy well head wall sculpture at one end has a corner knocked off; the weighty topiary, like anchors holding the garden in place, is a little wonky in places.

Unlike conventional 'symmetrical' gardens, you can't see it all at once: you try taking a photo of the whole thing and it's just about impossible.

Slowly it dawns on you: the whole thing is one big illusion, a mischievous game played with a twinkle in the eye. I found it enchanting.

And the planting... It was vintage Cleve: romantic, beautifully judged, passionate. Soft umbels, little fireworks of green and sparkles of white valerian over a froth of Geranium pyrenaicum 'Bill Wallis' (one of my own favourites - I have it gambolling about my garden and adore it with a passion). And all lifted with just the perfect splash of ravishing scarlet here and there from dancing 'Ladybird' poppies.

I loved the contrast between the solid, reliable topiary sitting there like grumpy old granddads while the light twinkly fairy plants danced about their knees. Here's another picture. Actually I took quite a lot. It really was very, very lovely, especially today when the sun came out.

It took me a little while to 'get' it but when I did, this garden stood head and shoulders above the rest for me. Quite, quite brilliant.

Postcard from Chelsea: Press Day

Oh I know: Press Day at Chelsea is all about celebrity spotting (Michael Caine, Jerry Hall, Sir Cliff Richard, gardening telly presenters passim, and I was working with the marvellously talented and charming Johnny Ball all morning, since you ask).

But for me the real stars of today were these wonderful Chelsea pensioners, who are deceptively sprightly and climbed on to that grown-up's playground glorified climbing frame spectacular 80ft tall vertical show garden by Diarmuid Gavin to have their photos taken this afternoon.

The garden towers above the BBC compound, where I'm working this week, and the delicious sight of rows of red-clad pensioners waving and smiling had us all out of our Portakabins en masse amid a mad scramble to find cameramen (and for those of us who like the still kind of picture, cameras) to capture the moment. Now that's what I call star quality.

Chelsea 2012: A sneak peek

Chris Beardshaw's Chelsea 2012 design recreates
Furzey Gardens in the New Forest

November is not, it must be said, a glamorous month. So it was a bit of welcome light relief to be reminded today at the launch of the RHS Chelsea FlowerShow 2012 that there is such a thing as May and flower shows and summer.

Next year's show looks like it's going to be a vintage edition: it's the 99^th Chelsea, and they still haven't stopped coming up with new ways of shaking it all up a bit.

There are 18 full-sized show gardens, around 15 small gardens (though most have yet to be finalised), 107 exhibitors in the Great Pavilion, fencing, caravans, Formula One motorcars and a demilitarised zone.

So without further ado, here are the highlights for Chelsea 2012:

Show gardens:

The rollcall of designers for next year's Chelsea reads like a who's who of gardening.

Sarah Price, rarely out of the headlines these days what with her 1/2-mile long garden for the 2012 Olympics Park, is designing her first solo Main Avenue garden for the Daily Telegraph (she did a City Garden in 2007 which won a silver medal). Can't wait to see her planting which is unfailingly dreamy.

Joe Swift is another first-timer, and long overdue, too: his design for Homebase has frames of cedar running through the garden on an angle, giving a double-framed view along and diagonally across the garden, with Prunus serrula and Cornus mas emphasising natural woodland-style planting.

Korean designer Jihae Hwang – memorable for winning best Artisan Garden with an exquisitely beautiful outdoor lavatory this year – is graduating to full show garden with a recreation of the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea; and Jo Thompson's first full-sized show garden has an Airstream caravan called Doris and a hammock: the ultimate staycation, and I can't help thinking the place you'll probably find most gardening hacks hanging out on press day (there are rumours of a fridge full of icecream and beer inside).

Andy Sturgeon's design for show sponsors M&G - though I have to say this doesn't remotely do it justice

Returning champions Andy Sturgeon and Cleve West are slugging it out for the honours: Andy has an exquisite sculpture of copper rings winding its way 'like an energy wave' through and around a central sunken pool (there are cleft rocks and monolithic walls involved); and Cleve is going for topiary in a big way. 'It's as good a time as any to let my sponsors know I've never done a formal garden before,' he said, with questionable wisdom. But don't worry: it's promising to be vintage Cleve nonetheless, with abstract stone sculptures and lovely herbaceous planting to set off all that yew.

Chris Beardshaw is back recreating a Hampshire garden cultivated by adult learners, and there's another welcome return from Arne Maynard, known and revered for his wonderfully sensitive, natural planting style, at Chelsea for the first time in 12 years.

Tom Hoblyn's design: minimalism meets the Villa d'Este

Tom Hoblyn is planning a minimalist garden inspired by the Villa d'Este – which sounds like a contradiction in terms if ever I heard one – and Nigel Dunnett is moving from rain gardens to dry meadows in the Blue Water Garden. There's also a sky-scraping sculptural tower from Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins, who seem to have cornered the market in superhumanly tall structures at Chelsea.

I would say something about the small gardens if I could, but there's not much information out there at the moment: all I know is that there's what they're calling a 'large artisan garden' (oh please return to calling them courtyard gardens, I do hate that name) by Japanese master Ishihara Kazayuki, and it'll be a recreation of a garden in Nagasaki 50 years ago. That alone is worth the trip to Ranelagh.

Great Pavilion:

The headline news here is that Edulis, my all-time favourite unusual edibles nursery, is at last making its debut at Chelsea. Be prepared to be wowed. Aeonium lovers need look no further than the Trewidden exhibit: also first-timers and bringing their collection of tender succulents with them including several new home-bred varieties.

There will be fencing displays at Hillier Nurseries, who also get the prize for worst pun of the year with their exhibit title 'Duel and the Crown' (it's the Queen's Diamond Jubilee... geddit?) And here's a snippet for Chelsea trivia fans: did you know that Ranelagh Gardens was the venue for fencing tournaments right up until the Second World War?

Other things to look out for:

• Fresh Gardens: It could only be a matter of time. Conceptual gardens have been stealing the show at Hampton Court for years; they dipped a toe (successfully, mostly) into Tatton under the 'Visionary Gardens' label and now Chelsea has taken the plunge and commissioned some of these most risky and challenging of gardens (and renamed the category, again).
Mind you, they've chosen a past master of the art in the unfailingly exciting and thought-provoking Tony Smith, whose 'Green with...' garden looks very odd (as all his do on plan) and is said to evoke the 'human emotions of envy and desire'. The other one we were told about, 'Places for People' by Noel Farrer, looked frankly safe; though I'll be ready to be surprised on the day.
• Sir Harry Veitch: Victorian nurseryman extraordinaire, and the owner of a truly enviable beard, celebrated by Plant Heritage this year
• Pot art: little plant pots are being painted even as I write by the great and the good in the world of gardening, to auction in aid of the RHS Campaign for School Gardening.
• Topiary: there is more. Not just Cleve's, and I believe a bit in Arne Maynard's, but a huge topiary sculpture in the Great Pavilion celebrating the Monaco Grand Prix, in the shape – you guessed it – of a Formula One racing car.

Roll on May, that's all I can say. Can't wait.

Postcard from Chelsea: New plants

Rosa 'York Minster'
(Harkness Roses)

Clematis 'Abilene'
(Raymond Evison Clematis)

Hakonechloa macra 'Samurai'
(Knoll Gardens)

Lewisia 'Little Mango'
(D'Arcy & Everest)

Iris 'Discovered Treasure'
(Claire Austin)

Lilium 'Lankon'
(HW Hyde)

Primula euprepes
(Kevock Plants)

Rosa 'Friendship of Strangers'
(Peter Beales Roses)

Erythronium 'Hidcote Beauty'
Harveys Garden Plants)
This is just a small selection of the new plants I discovered on my way round the Great Pavilion: if you want more, Matthew Biggs has said a bit more about a few of the ones above plus a few others in an article for the RHS, while Graham Rice has also been forthright and rather justified in his comments about 'new' plants which aren't really new before for the Guardian: thankfully, none of the above are among the culprits...!

Postcard from Chelsea: Friday

Astrantia 'Roma', Astrantia 'Buckland', Digitalis x mertonensis, Pimpinella major 'Rosea', Iris 'Dutch Chocolate', Anthriscus sylvestris 'Ravenswing' and (you'll have to take my word for it as it's just outside the picture) Nectaroscordum siculum, besieged by bumblebees.
The surprisingly gentle, calm and utterly sublime planting combination used by Luciano Giubbilei on his Laurent-Perrier garden to evoke rosé champagne. I spent all day yesterday looking at it as I was handing out leaflets and explaining what was what to the public; and I never once tired of it.

I seem to remember going on about Luciano's planting last time he was at Chelsea; this is a man who knows his way to a girl gardener's heart.

Postcard from Chelsea: Wednesday

The picture doesn't remotely do it justice, but this is the Crûg Farm stand in the Great Pavilion: winner of a Gold Medal and the President's Award.

I'd heard how good Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones's nursery was, but I never realised just how good.

I'd already set aside a separate visit to the Pavilion just so I could concentrate on their stand: but then I met Bleddyn and he showed me around it, and I filled three pages of my notebook with excited scribbles I suspect I may never be able to read again, and filled my camera with shots of plants I particularly adored, and coveted every single plant on the stand. I was there for ages and still want to go back again.

This was among the plants which really made my mouth water: Paris lancifolia, collected on one of Bleddyn and Sue's many trips to Taiwan (Paris has a reputation for being tricky to establish but top tip from the team: they don't like being disturbed. Leave it completely alone, have patience and it'll grow).

Bleddyn told me they find around 500 new plants a year in various far-flung places (they're off to Korea this year) which they think might be worth introducing to the UK: it used to be much more, he said. They have a hotline to the botanists at Kew, and the RHS sends someone up to their nursery in north Wales each year from the Plantfinder to keep up with their prodigious output.

I came away with beautiful plants dancing before my eyes, a coveted mail order list and a map to their nursery: a pilgrimage to North Wales may be imminent.

Postcard from Chelsea: Medals Day

Cleve West's garden for the Daily Telegraph: one of eight gold medal winners and also this year's Best in Show. Dramatic sculpture, the most wonderful ochre-painted wall, cobbles, Sophora trees, artless, jewel-like planting.... oh, I love this garden!

So much so that I've got another postcard today too - here's a closer look at that planting.

Myrtus communis subsp. tarentina, Dianthus cruentus (plant of the show for me), bronze fennel, Artemisia 'Valerie Finnis', Allium nigrum, Euphorbia cyparissias 'Fens Ruby', Eryngium eburneum, and Libertia grandiflora, in case you want to do this at home.

Postcard from Chelsea: Press Day

(click to enlarge)

Where the wild things are

Ever since I saw the wonderful wildlife tower Nigel Dunnett built (with, no doubt, the aid of a small army of helpers) for his 2009 Chelsea show garden, Future Nature, I've had a bit of a thing for them. It's not often, after all, that you come across something that's useful in the garden, doesn't cost a penny, yet - unlike most things with what might be called an allotment aesthetic - looks fabulous.

I came across this one at a spring open day held at the Magdalen Project, a sort of experimental eco-smallholding place just round the corner from where I live. It was tucked away at the back of a not particularly inspiring - mainly because it had only just been planted - forest garden. Though the jury is still out, for me, on forest gardens, I am totally sold on the whole idea of bug blocks, wildlife stacks, call them what you will.

It was made from old pallets, sawn in half and stacked: if you use full-width pallets you'll only fill the outer six inches or so, therefore to save space you really only need the end bit (this also means you only need three pallets for a six-storey stack, if you get my drift, as you use the two halves on top of each other).

Then you just let your imagination rip to create as many little hidey-holes for bugs and beasties as you can. I loved the way they used roof tiles on the top stuffed with holey stones gathered from the beach.

Bits of old garden hose inside a flowerpot on its side....

...and these rather pretty old slates, interwoven with larger stones to create not only gaps for small things to crawl into (looks like this bit is a favourite with spiders) but also a range of textures and colour, part of what makes these things so pretty.

You can just about make out next door another flowerpot filled with hollow stems - the dried-out remains of cardoons, run-to-seed parsnips and carrots, or Queen Anne's lace from the hedgerows are ideal.

Anything can be co-opted for use: here some old engineering bricks with bits of cane stuck into the holes. You could of course just leave the holes open: the canes just add a bit of quirkiness. The blocks which hold the pallets together have holes of varying sizes drilled into them, too.

And if you don't like the whole pallets thing, there are other shapes and combinations you can use: here a tower of marine ply circles built up like a wedding cake on sturdy lengths of fencepost and topped with a bicycle tyre. Personally I prefer the 'conventional' pallet look: and whichever you choose, it's a fantastic project to do with the kids on aimless school holiday weekdays.

There's a very serious point to all this imagination and frippery: there are so many benefits of attracting insects to your garden. Pollinators - and pest-devouring creatures like beetles, frogs and toads - need every bit of help we can give them, thanks to our tendencies to throw pesticide cocktails around and remove every wildflower we can strip out of the countryside in favour of executive homes. By giving them somewhere safe to live, not only are you helping out your garden (especially if you grow veg), you're doing your bit for biodiversity too.

I've already squirrelled away my first pallet (is there anything, I wonder, for which pallets are not useful?) and I can no longer pass a skip without having a quick peep inside just in case. I've even got the perfect spot for it: just below the window in what will, one day, be my fruit cage - a place where I need as many pollinators and pest-eaters as I can get. Time to get creative...

Perfect partners #6

Trollius 'Alabaster', Iris sibirica 'Dreaming Yellow', and Rodgersia aesculifolia

as seen in 'Music On The Moors', winner of Best Courtyard Garden Chelsea 2010

Postcard from Chelsea: Saturday

A little wander through the Floral Pavilion for you just before it's all taken to bits and Chelsea is over for another year....

Postcard from Chelsea: Friday

One of my very favourite small gardens: the Global Stone Bee Friendly Plants Garden, designed by Janey Auchincloss and Paul Hammond. I'm not entirely sure why it 'only' got a silver: the planting was delightful and there were some great ideas - a crinkle-crankle box hedge, a funky multi-storey herb garden and a sunken centre leading to a fountain. Janey's friend tells me they got marked down because of the fountain was too high, which seems a bit rough.

Here's a bit more of that planting: just can't get enough of it...

Postcard from Chelsea: Wednesday

The structure I would most like to nick from Chelsea and take home: Roger Platts' wooden summer house from The M&G Garden. Traditional, classic, and utterly beautiful.

Wouldn't you like to be sitting having tea right there?

And the craftsmanship was superb. This finally made my carpenter hubby understand the point of Chelsea. Carved from Sussex oak by 'a local craftsman' (who clearly wants to stay anonymous - don't know why, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops if I'd made this), it's held together with traditional oak pegs and perfect proportions.

Postcard from Chelsea: Medals day

The Daily Telegraph Garden won Best in Show for the second time running - though unlike last year's rather cool and unengaging garden I totally fell in love with Andy Sturgeon's passionate, warm design.

The write-up goes on about Southern Cape fynbos and Mediterranean maquis in a rather overblown travel guide sort of way that entirely fails to do justice to what is so engaging about this garden. I could go on for ages about all the things I loved most about it: but I'll just pick out a couple that everyone could borrow easily to adapt in their own garden.

• The first is the echoes that run right through the planting. For example: he picks up the silver spikes of those Verbascum bombyciferum 'Polarsommar' with relatively low-growing Eryngium giganteum nestling by the ground and then echoes it again in the tall, stately Onopordium acanthium at the back (now I know where all those onopordums I saw at Crocus earlier this year were destined for). The result is a three-layer planting with symmetry running like a thread to draw your eye through the garden.



• The second is the simple trick of picking up the colours of your hard landscaping (in this case, corten steel) very precisely in your planting. Here's a pic to prove the point. I have yet to find out what the cultivar of these bearded irises is: but when I do, I shall acquire some forthwith (and hopefully some corten steel to go with it: it is a match made in heaven).

• And last but not least: quite simply, the planting was sublime. Quite a muted palette of silver, bronze and purple: which has now become one of my all-time favourite combinations. This is the one which is going in my notebook so that one day I can nick it pretty much wholesale for my garden.

I haven't quite got it all yet, but a good start would be:

Verbascum 'Clementine'
Salvia nemorosa 'Caradonna'
Euphorbia 'Blue Haze'
Euphorbia mellifera
Geum 'Cooky'
Eryngium giganteum
Libertia peregrinans
Nepeta racemosa 'Walkers Low'
Ozothamnus ledifolius
Stipa tenuissima

Postcard from Chelsea: Build-up day

The Great Pavilion is slowly filling up with flowers.... though it always amazes me how late they leave it to finalise their displays. Most of the stands are still only half-finished by the night before judging; and right now, the whole place looks like a building site (even more so than Main Avenue does outside).

I'm having a slightly odd Chelsea this year as I'm spending most of it in an edit suite in an obscure back street nearby watching the lovely James do his thing as elegantly and wittily as ever, if rather disjointedly as we're cutting his links together with footage in a telly sort of way. You too can hear his wise words on BBCi (aka Red Button, aka the nice people who have employed me as part of the team covering the show this year).

But I'm back in the showground on Wednesday for a swanky party... all will be revealed in a multiple postcard winging its way to you then.