Chelsea inspirations

Friday was a beautiful day down in London. The sun was shining and it was a comfortable 20°C - for a northerner who has been lamenting late frosts and the fact that I've had to crack out my winter coat in May, I could as well have been in Marbella.

But Friday wasn't just beautiful because of the weather. For the first time, I went to Chelsea Flower Show. It feels, bizarrely, like a coming of age, like the first time you go to a concert or legally buy beer. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised: Chelsea is the event everyone in the horticultural world talks about and it's a real milestone in the garden design calendar. It brings with it so much hype and anticipation that the uninitiated can only be excited at the prospect of going to the Show.

My first thought was that the Flower Show is totally surreal. With greatest respect to the designers, there is something artificial about the concept of a show garden. Everything is geared towards optimum presentation for one week - and one week only. In short, everything is staged. This worried me for the whole of five minutes, while I stood, elbow-to-elbow looking into the first show garden on Main Avenue. But gradually I realised that this may well be the point. Chelsea is the world of horticulture putting on a show - but it doesn't just do this for the sake of it.

After all, Chelsea is made to inspire. It's a coming together of great designers and plantsmen to produce something of great beauty. The plots are far smaller than you would imagine from TV or images in magazines, and the designer's skill is really put to test as they work with an area and optimise the use of space by manipulating the observer's experience through clever selection of lines, texture and colour.

This leads to another point, too: style. Chelsea show gardens host the crème de la crème, those who have a finger on the pulse of the latest styles in garden design. The winning show garden, the Laurent-Perrier Chatsworth Garden, was designed by Dan Pearson, who is at the forefront of naturalistic perennial planting and whose achievements include landscape design for names such as Paul Smith and Nigel Slater. 

Matthew Wilson of GQT fame, a designer with an eye on the gardening game, took a show garden to Chelsea with the Royal Bank of Canada, and showed us an impressive array of daring features such as a pollarded olive and a curved (spiralling) bench which is an aesthetic masterpiece. This is not to mention the 'Fresh' category of gardens, where gardening is transported into the sphere of modern art.

And it's not just about style, either. I was totally inspired by the innovation showcased by the plant specialists in the Pavillion. These collectors and breeders bring the latest trends in plant breeding to the fore. The good ladies from W Robinson in Lancashire talked me through their new releases for 2015, which included the caigua (an exotic gourd similar to a cucumber) and the kiwano (a horned melon that tastes like banana). And on top of this there is the whole range of new hybrids and crosses that make their premier on the show benches at Chelsea Flower Show.

But the great thing about Chelsea is that you can take the inspiration home with you. Yes, you can buy garden ornaments and order bespoke furniture. You can buy or order seed, plugs or plants from the breeders in the Pavillion. You can take a wheelbarrow on the last day and take half a show garden away with you if you're lucky. 

But fundamentally, seeing Chelsea gardens in situ really teaches you what works (and what doesn't). It gives you ideas aplenty for ways to bring new life to and old space or design a new space from scratch. 

Now with so many photos and new ideas under my belt, I'm really looking forward to challenging myself in the months ahead.