The best of RHS Chelsea Flower Show

There's a big emphasis on biodiversity and nature-friendly planting and, in particular, the idea that you can have non-native and native planting together.

There's also lots of rare planting, especially around the All About Plants area, which, um, plants that you will almost certainly have never seen.

You won't know the names.

So that's very exciting.

And then the other thing that I'm interested in is that there's a sort of a titanic tussle occurring on Main Avenue this year because the two designers with the most number of Chelsea gold medals ever are Kazuyuki Ishihara and Sarah Eberle, and they are both here this year.

And their gardens are right next to each other, so there is a great amount of dramatic tension.

[laughs]

[laughs] But that is a, that is a proper head-to-head.

Yes.

And isn't it wonderful, that juxtaposition of the styles? 'Cause you've got Ishihara's, which is so wonderfully curated and seen obviously through this very Japanese lens.

Everything is very controlled.

Every little piece of moss has been brushed with pine needles.

It's so exquisitely curated.

Whereas Sarah Eberle's is also exquisitely curated but in a much more kind of naturalistic, free-flowing style, and she's got lots of beautiful, like, native woodland grasses and meadow buttercups.

So there's a gorgeous Ranunculus acris 'Citrinus', which has these sort of moony, soft yellow flowers that dance above the grasses, and it's just wonderful to kind of see those two heavyweights opposite each other.

And it's a real feast for the senses.

That is such a beautiful garden.