Garden Guru: Chelsea reigns

Paradise in Plasticine (top), by TV personality James May, and a water feature designed by Robert Myers. Photos / Supplied

Even the greatest flower show on Earth has been heavily pruned because of the global recession and lack of sponsors.

Instead of the usual 22 show gardens last week in London there were only half that number.

However, despite the shrinkage the crowds flocked in, and the Chelsea show remained a beautiful affair with all the usual gloss, pomposity and eco-friendly flaunting we have come to expect from hopeful young designers - more than usual this year because they were cheaper to commission than big-gun names. It's getting harder to find the truly original among the irises, pebbles and stucco walls. Subtlety is still the safe option with a few too many calm rills, pleached avenues or, at the other extreme, thatched cottages dripping in roses and drowning in wildflower meadows.

There were living-wall gardens everywhere, impractical though they are. Thankfully, the tidal wave of potagers has subsided and drought-tolerant global-warming designs have been replaced with stormwater accommodating features after two very rainy English summers.

Here's the pick of the crop:

Standards in garden design are either dropping, loosening or just making way for a welcome breath of fresh air, whichever way you look at it. Traditionalists were choking over their teacups to find that the normally ultra- conservative Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) had let in an artificial grass company for the first time as well as a groundbreaking garden featuring not a real plant in sight. Paradise in Plasticine (pictured), by TV personality James May (of Top Gear fame), sported moulded trees, flowers and even a laden picnic spread. May's inexperience with all things horticultural showed, but everyone took it with a big pinch of salt to the extent that the RHS gave him a special gold medal - made of plasticine of course.

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The best water feature I've enjoyed for a long time (pictured), designed by Robert Myers for Cancer Research UK. The epicentre to his restfully curvaceous garden was a sculptural orb by Simon Thomas, which seemingly floats on a series of clever water tanks bubbling down ripple-shaped crevasses.

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Designers never seem to run short of ingenious ideas for recycling. Used-car windscreens were used to make useful rain covers to reduce the risk of tomatoes getting blighted in wet weather.

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The Daily Telegraph Garden won a gold and was the judges' choice for its use of stone and tastefully trained plants. Submerged slabs are integral to a design where water bubbles from beneath decking.

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Tony Smith's Quilted Velvet Garden was certainly not the prettiest of the gardens but it was refreshing and stimulating. The city-slick geometry was intentional - Smith wanted visitors to feel they were negotiating the arduous world of work. I liked the twist on the conventional lawn.

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There was a real New Zealand aspect to The Key, a touching partnership between gardeners and those who have found themselves homeless or on the wrong side of the tracks. It sported rocky mulch, twisting path and spiky pseudopanax. One side of the garden depicted the dead-ends and desolation we can sometimes experience in life. But once past a wooden palisade scribbled with poetry you emerged into a lush edible oasis - a recycled table set for a feast, symbolising better things to come. All the 10,000 plants in the exhibit were grown by homeless volunteers and prison groups. When many are feeling the pinch this was a timely reminder to keep a sense of perspective.