BARBARA SEGALL looks at some of the submissions and makes her selection of things to look out for while the show is on from 20 to 24 May

Pictured: Andy Sturgeon's design for the Cancer Research Show Garden at Chelsea 2007. Photograph by Michael Walter/Troika


Arguably the best garden show in town, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is a garden-lover's spring picnic. So get out your sunhats (and a brolly, just in case), and do make sure you wear your walking shoes - for all its glamorous appearance, if you are going to do Chelsea properly, you need to feel comfortable on your feet.

KEY THEMES this year are learning about gardening, with children centre-stage; the environment and sustainability, and the grow-your-own-fruit-and-veg roadshow.

There is glamour, too, from the world of fashion, with a perfumed garden – “The World of Jo Malone” (site number GPE 9). Jo Malone's scented candles fill the air with fragrance and this garden will hold the aroma of roses, peonies, Lily of the Valley, foxgloves, mint, thyme, sage, lavender, wild strawberries and honeysuckle. Check out the LK Bennett Garden (RHW45) - an urban garden with yearnings towards the romance of a country garden, designed by Rachel de Thame and one of H&G's Showgardens to Watch.

THE FACTS
The statistics that describe the show are overwhelming. Most of the 157,000 visitors who attend the show take an average of five hours to complete their visit. During that time, if you're nimble, you will see 600 exhibitors, including 22 major Show Gardens, 22 small gardens (the Courtyard Gardens and Urban Gardens), 100 floral exhibitors in the Great Pavilion and approximately 300 garden product exhibitors - and around 400 plants launched.

HOT TIP
Do a spot of background reading before you arrive – ask for a catalogue when you book your tickets so that you can pre-plan your route around the show.

SUGGESTED PITSTOPS
Fruit, veg and herbs
The first stop for me is always the Great Pavilion. This year, in line with the fruit and veg theme, I'm going to head for organic herb farmer and 12-times Chelsea gold winner, Jekka McVicar (site number GPF 6, www.jekkasherbfarm.com). Jekka's herbs with history offer flavour and health for today's gardens and kitchens.

For vegetables of flavour and beauty there is W Robinson & Son Ltd (site number GPF 15, www.mammothonion.co.uk). The 2008 show will be the eighth time that this family-run nursery has exhibited at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, and its exhibit of a growing garden is designed to inspire people to grow their own and experiment with different tastes and ideas.

“Food Miles or Metres” is Gill Oliver Garden Designs' (site number GPE20) contribution to the sustainable food debate, with a kitchen garden featuring plants grown from seeds in the Thompson & Morgan (www.thompson-morgan.com) 2008 catalogue, including runner bean 'Saint George', lettuce 'Blackhawk', kale 'Reflex' as well as the latest health-giving fruit, goji berries.

New plants
Look out for new ornamentals including Gaura lindheimeri 'Rosyjane' (named after Rosemary Hardy) and Campanula 'Jenny'. Both of these varieties have been produced by Hardy's Cottage Plants, from the nursery's own breeding stock. (Site number GPE 6, www.hardys-plants.co.uk.)

Another hot stop is at Dibleys to see Streptocarpus 'Alissa'. This plant represents the pinnacle of the company's substantial breeding programme, and is the first-ever yellow streptocarpus. It has taken Lynne Dibley more than 10 years to reach this colour breakthrough and the variety will be the 44th streptocarpus that she has bred and introduced over the last 20 years. (Site number GPD 4, www.dibleys.com.)

Stipa ichu (Peruvian feather grass) is a find that will be brought to Chelsea by Neil Lucas of Knoll Gardens. With hair-like foliage, it is perfect in borders and containers. (Site number GPE 4, www.knollgardens.co.uk.)

Climate change
Not surprisingly, climate change is on the agenda at this year's show and the Municipality Parks Department of my old hometown, Durban (eThekwini), is taking a lead with an exhibit representing a waterwise garden from the region of KwaZula Natal in South Africa. Look out for water-wise methods such as grouping plants with same needs, using containters well and mulch, mulch, mulch! (Site number GPF 5).

Heritage gardening
While Chelsea is generally regarded as a place of innovation and challenging design, it also champions the history of gardening and a number of this year's show gardens take this as their driving theme. One such design is the Liverpool City Council stand, which also celebrates Liverpool's status as European Capital of Culture this year. “Mr Roscoe's Garden” is based on William Roscoe's plant collections which formed the basis of the 205-year-old Liverpool Botanical Collection. It uses many of the plants that Roscoe (MP,writer, botanist, abolitionist and founder of many of Liverpool's institutions) cultivated, as well as plants from the Himalayan genus Roscoea, named after him. Central to the design is a small greenhouse, just like Roscoe's own greenhouse. The designers have used a naturalistic style to showcase the diversity of the plants in the collection (Site number GPD 15).

UNMISSABLE
The show gardens
There is little doubt that these are the biggest crowd-pullers each year, and the section of the show where everyone wants to see both cutting-edge design and glorious tradition. Everyone will have an opinion about which garden is the best, and one look is never enough so if you're on a very tight schedule, make this your first port of call.

The first big question is where to start? Going through the pre-show submissions, it is clear that there are some common themes running through the show gardens this year – tranquility; ornamental and useable water features; sustainability and our place in the garden - so take your notebook with you to jot down some useful ideas.

One garden I particularly want to see is “From Life to Life” by Yvonne Innes and Olivia Harrison for The Material World Charitable Foundation Garden. The designers have taken the life of another of Liverpool's famous sons, former Beatle George Harrison, as their inspiration, and have divided the garden into four areas to represent his life. Childhood shows his father's vegetable patch where his own love of gardening began. As you would expect, the 60's are full of vibrant colours and contrasting textures, complete with a flower-power Morris mini. Harrison's mature years feature a tranquil moss lawn, ferns, grasses and white-stemmed birches. His spiritual life is reached across a narrow rill and expands the tranquil theme of his mature years.

Make sure you see Cleve West's design for The Bupa Garden, where the emphasis is on well-being and sanctuary (site number MA15). Cleve's contemporary garden is based on the figure eight, creates a journey where there are no dead-ends. A path through planting and a screen of carpinus hedging leads you to an open space at the back, with seating and a giant 'boulle' sculpture by French artists Serge and Agnes Bottagisio-Decoux. The huge sphere offers both drama and tranquility in an outdoor space that offers a stimulating outdoor space for people of all abilities and conditions, including dementia, to sit in and enjoy. It aims to be more subtle and tranquil than the all-too -familiar cliché of a sensory garden.

After Chelsea the garden moves to a care home, where residents will enjoy its range of plants, including amelanchier trees, selected to enrich the sensory experience – whether sight, sound or scent. Roses bring not only colour and scent but, as they are the most popular plants in a survey of Bupa's care home residents, will be a strong contender to evoke memory.

The sustainability issue, and the concept of growing our own food, are grasped firmly by a number of the designers, with each offering up solutions that you can cherry pick to try in your own garden.

In his “Real Life by Brett” (RHW43), for instance, Geoffrey Whiten shows us how to garden for all stages of our lives. His flexible design features water fountains, seating areas and glorious, colourful beds where ornamentals and vegetables mingle.

This garden can sustain your needs throughout a lifetime. The summerhouse can be used as a gardening and potting shed, for storing gardener's tools, fertiliser, seeds, pots and compost. But it could easily be converted into a home office, offering the perfect environment for young professionals to work and relax.

When children come along, the building can be turned into a family room or a child's play area; the fountain areas can be converted into sand pits and small plots where the youngsters can learn how to grow fruit and veg; and some of the borders can be converted to lawn to provide a safe and fun outdoor play area for the whole family.

Northeast@Home (RHW42) follows the sustainability theme with imaginative ways to collect and conserve rainwater. For vegetable and herbs, designers John Carmichael and Penny Denoon use coloured perspex planters, with an integral reservoir that collects rainwater via deck-edge channels from the building's run-off. They have used reclaimed softwood floor joists as deck planks - very chunky with good wood grain and varying colours and recycled, resin-bound glass offers an alternative surface to concrete paving, which allows rain water to pass into the existing strata or it can be collected and stored.

A partnership made in heaven is a phrase that might have been made for Tom Stuart-Smith and Laurent Perrier. Tom Stuart-Smith's design for The Laurent Perrier Garden (MA20) is the perfect place to sample the elegant champagne of the sponsor. It is a contemplative space, defined by 30-year-old cloud-pruned hornbeams, with an apparently random tapestry of mainly green herbaceous plants flowing through the garden. Foliage predominates, offered by rodgersias, hostas, epimedium and molinia, combined with white-flowered peonies, gillenia, foxgloves and Astrantia shaggy. Zinc tanks designed by Andrew Ewing appear to brim and overflow with water, adding to the calm and slightly dreamy atmosphere, where form and texture are so important.

Prepare for delight, since this is the intended aim of Arabella Lennox-Boyd's design. I am sure she will succeed, as she returns to the Chelsea Flower show after an absence of several years. Her design for The Daily Telegraph Garden is a model of simplicity, inspired by the calm and restrained atmosphere of Japanese gardens. The search for the perfect plants, all of which are supplied by mail order specialist Crocus, has taken her to nurseries in Holland, Germany and Italy, as well as to UK sources, including bulb expert Jacques Amand. I cannot wait to see the mirror-like pool at the front of the garden, crossed by a curved Burlington stone path, winding through bands of white waterlilies, Nymphea alba. (MA19).

Inky black is how Andy Sturgeon describes the four pools and stone decks that appear to float through the garden he has designed for The Cancer Research UK Garden. A series of concentric ripples like raindrops falling on the water appear to dance backwards and forwards through the pools symbolic of the progress made by Cancer Research UK. Thought-provoking and engaging is his intention with this garden that balances bold geometric hard landscaping with softer plantings in a woodland setting, where tree ferns and the Antarctic beech (Nothofagus antartica) predominate (MA21).

Finally, but importantly, children and gardening comes to the fore with several gardens including that presented by Chelsea's show sponsor, Marshalls. To arrive at the design by Ian Dexter, Marshalls travelled the country, visiting schools to find out exactly what children would like if they had full design control over their garden. Fun, excitement and risk are all part of the mix they created, where they can connect with and learn about wildlife, horticulture and biodiversity (MA14).

Will it be a good day out? You bet! There will much to see and so much to absorb, to put into practice in our own gardens, and we will be reporting on what everyone thinks about this year's Chelsea here, on the Homes & Gardens website, once the show has officially opened.

Read more about the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2008.