Episode 13 RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Hello. Welcome Flower Show, an event supported by

M Investments. We are coming to the end of a memorable week. The

show was still in full swing. It is public day and that means that as

ever there will be a big crowd here. We have been here a week. We're

looking at the nitty-gritty of and combinations, plants themselves,

sculpture we like, but for the visitors today it will hit them in

the face. Where will they go? Do they like this garden? Yes, no, move

on. It is a show, a performance. My children came yesterday for the

first time. I showed them the show gardens. But the thing they loved

with the most energy was the Great Pavilion. We talk about a lot about

this but full impact there is a lot going on all over the place and

sometimes we overlook the energy. Maybe we are turning into

sophisticated gardening snobs, what do you think? Speak for yourself.

Later in the programme. Chelsea regular is Jacques Amand reveal how

specialising in rare and unusual bulbs has been the secret of their

continued success. Furniture designer David Linley shares his

opinion on the show. A good gardener -- garden fields where you want to

spend time, that you don't want rush out of. And what

spend time, that you don't want rush these Chelsea gardens when the show

closes its gates? Christine Walkden visits the medal winning designs

enjoying a second night. It is nice to see them together. It completes

the picture, there is a story here now. What is in the papers today? We

have seen quite a lot of coverage of Chelsea throughout the week. I have

got these from No Man's Land. They have published one from everyday of

the week, flower of the day, really interesting pieces from some pretty

good writers. All sorts. It is called the wipers Times. Why? I will

tell you, in the First World War, which relates to Charlotte's garden,

No Man's Land, the Ypres offensive was called Wipers. They printed

paper in the trenches in the dugout and distributed it. Under incredible

conditions. It had poems, articles, news, and raised morale hugely. The

officers tried to suppress it. But it was so popular. This newspaper,

that was produced, it was an extraordinary story. It is brilliant

they have resurrected that. Brilliant. Talking about

popularity, it is time to reveal who won the People's Choice Award. All

week we have been asking you to vote for your most favourite, popular

Chelsea Ladies -- Chelsea large garden. Popular with you. The voting

closed at midnight. Earlier today, we surprised the winner.

Here we are in the garden. Runners through the planting and the story

it is telling us to mark The planting links nicely with the

granite. What I tried to do is create a contrast between the hard

and soft landscaping. It is a really effective approach to take. You can

see in the middle. Here it is, the BBC RHS People's Choice Award.

Thousands and thousands of you have voted and we now have an outright

winner. The person who has won it has -- is just around the corner. He

has no idea he has won it. He thinks he is doing an interview with Chris

and Joe, but what is really going to happen is we are going to surprise

him. Ladies and gentlemen, he is just 29 years old. It is his first

time here at the Chelsea flower show. And he has designed a

beautiful garden, Hope on the horizon. It is the Help for Heroes

garden for injured soldiers on their road to recovery. The winner of the

People's Choice Award is Matthew Keightley. Congratulations! Thank

you. Is this live? Thank you. Thank you very much. Well done. Brilliant,

very well-deserved. What do you make of that? Tens of thousands of votes,

you have had. Tens of thousands of votes or people watching? I have to

be careful. I can't believe it, I can't thank all enough. It is

incredible. I think the medals went out of the window for me when one of

the veterans from Help for Heroes came through the garden and

explained how he felt and what the garden meant to him and how it would

affect other people going through recovery. I have used a few words

throughout the garden that just about sum up this whole process, not

just for me but sum up the garden as a whole. Those words read, it is

about the blokes. They are just blokes, but they are our blokes.

That is who this award is for. It is all about the soldiers, our brave

men and women of the Armed Forces. Thank you very much. Thank you. This

journey has been inspired by your brother, Michael, currently out in

Afghanistan on his fifth tour. I bet you can't wait to tell him. I can't.

I just got off the phone, so it is bad timing, but he will call back in

a minute. I can't wait, he will be proud as punch. Matthew Keightley,

winner of the People's Choice Award, huge congratulations. Very

well-deserved. A first timer, unbelievable. Thank you. That is

certainly a worthy winner. Inside the Great Pavilion one family of

growers have been sharing their memories with us. Since arriving in

the UK from Holland over 70 years ago, Jacques Amand has offered us

myriad of flowering bulbs to discerning God is. It is still a

family business today and brother and sister John and Nesta are

rightly proud of being able to sell their bulbs back to the Dutch.

My father Jean Jacques trained as a florist in Holland. In 1927 he

decided he wanted to start his own business and sell flowers. So he

came to England. He came with a few bunches of flowers in his hands and

walked around the flower shops of London selling cut flowers and later

on he got a couple of shops in the Strand. That is how the business

started. My father first displayed at Chelsea in the 1950s. It is great

looking back at the old films. You get a feeling of what it was like.

It was totally different then. When I was about ten or 11, I used to

hassle him all the time. Can I go and serve in the shop? In the end I

used to open up the shop on Sunday on my own and get a percentage of

profits for doing it. Great fun! You just acquire a love of plants which

never goes away. We have gone into the more rare and unusual things,

which my father never used to do. Let's have a look and see what we

can find for the show. Let's have a look and see what we

sunshine, we have Let's have a look and see what we

topple, if it is too warm. John is my older brother. We work together.

We always really have done. I tend to organise all the shows. John does

the sourcing of the unusual plants, so the team works quite well. Keeps

us apart for a little while, which is quite good as well

us apart for a little while, which brother and sister, you know. We

don't tend to brother and sister, you know. We

don't see each other to argue, she is always a flower shows and I am

usually hear or off in Holland seeing growers. I don't know if he

is sourcing bulbs going off on a jolly. He does come back with bulbs,

anyway, so I have to give him that credit.

This comes from Japan, grows as a hardy, outdoor orchid. A lovely plan

to have, look at that. Wouldn't you like that in the garden? It grows in

the shade, where other things don't grow. This is arisaema

candidissimum, it comes from China and has a lovely scent. A lovely

rose said. It grows in semi-shade, totally hardy. It does not normally

flower until July. Very, very easy. Over here we have the cypripediums,

flower until July. Very, very easy. lady slipper orchid. Shade loving

plants lady slipper orchid. Shade loving

cut leaf foliage there. These other varieties, this is an

looking plant. Totally hardy. Some of these plans go down to -40

Celsius. I am one of the few people that sells bulbs back to Holland.

The Dutch are world leaders in the horticultural world. They have a

history, the soil. There is 25,000 acres of tulips growing in Holland.

That is 5 billion tulips year. Which is quite amazing. That is just the

tulips. Everybody goes to them for all sorts of plants. Now people go

to them for the unusual bulbs. So they look around to see where they

can force them. So that is how I have managed to pick up lots of

customers for these unusual bulbs in Holland. I suppose the thing that I

really like, is the arisaemas, we sell 30,000 more -- or more a year.

They are the ones I am most proud of, a lovely feeling. Well, Nesta,

congratulations on yet another gold. Fantastic. We are really pleased,

all the hard work has come together. It is such pressure. It is there and

all the plants have performed beautifully. They certainly have.

Are all these grown in your nursery? All the plans have performed

beautifully. They certainly have. Are always grown in your nursery?

Olding-macro to our grown in the nursery additive hard work -- all

the arisaemas are grown in the nursery. I am fascinated you have

the coals to Newcastle thing of selling bulbs back to the Dutch.

They grow lots of bulbs. What are they interested in, and why? Because

we have the unusual arisaemas that they haven't got because they grow

the commonplace things like tulips and daffodils and things, that is

why they want them. They are amazing looking plants, aren't they?

Woodland plants. What is it about them that people are drawn to? They

are so different, not so loud and colourful. People are always looking

for something to go into woodland because that is the hardest place to

grow quite a few things. This particular one here, a COBRA lily, I

believe. That is right, it looks at you. Some people say it is very

sinister. You have a huge display of cypripediums as well. They are

coming into play now, we used to do a few of them but now they are much

more readily available in lots of different varieties. It looks

amazing, so thank you very much. Thank you.

Tonight we are looking at memories that have inspired this year's

Chelsea exhibits and in the show garden category designer Adam Frost

has taken reflections from his own past to help make the garden for

Homebase. Adam, this garden, memories are very personal and quite

poignant, aren't they? They are. I was really lucky in a sense I had

more freedom this year. It had to tie in with the Alzheimer's Society

and if I am honest the first piece of work I did was quite formulaic. I

felt it was not really nailing it. After that I went to the drawing

board and started to look at Alzheimer's is a disease and in

reality it makes you realise how important memories are. When you

take everything away in life, strip everything back, all you have really

got is memories. If you get to an age and they start to stop forming

memories and they fall off, it is really scary. I wanted to create a

space that people would stop and think about how important they are.

How does it work and translate? It translates in the sense that I went

back to 2012 and tied into somewhere I have really strong memories. My

none passed away in the January. -- my grandmother passed away. She was

my inspiration for gardening, she got me out growing veg. That was a

big moment. After that, my wife was really poorly in June and I have

four children and the thought of not having a wife and four children was

scary. In October, my dad passed away. I wanted to go back into their

and create a space not necessarily, it was not going to be a sad space,

a space to create new memories. I looked at my dad, who realistically

was not the best dad in the world, he had a disability with his hands

and he loved rock, water, geology. He loved the English countryside.

You pulled altogether. I put in a bag, shook it together and hopefully

got a space that a family could spend time together. There are

lovely memories. We have a Buttercup meadow, you put the butter cups

under, and things like down on the beach, you used to clamber around

rocks and there was always one rock that looked like it was either going

to move, or a bit too slippery. There are stories in there, maybe

you could jump. There are those things. It is a space to stop and

reflect and maybe get off this mad world we live in and reconnect with

nature. Just get our kids out there and enjoy the space. That is what it

was about. There is a second garden here that

is full of childhood memories. Patrick Collins has drawn

inspiration from his family home in Cornwall for his garden for the

charity First Touch. We visited him there last month.

This place is called Trethew and it is in Cornwall. Essentially, it is

my family home. Sit where I grew up as a child. -- it is where I grew up

as a child. We moved down here when I was eight. It was a fantastic

experience for a young child to move from London to the countryside.

There's fantastic open space, loads of places to explore, woodlands,

fields. They are the inspiration for our garden at this year's Chelsea

Flower Show. Gardening became very much a family pursuit. It is

something we all did together. I think because of that, I have this

kind of love of gardening today and it goes back to my childhood

memories, my time spent here with my parents and family as well as the

immediate family members. We had an extended family of animals. It was

really quite a full house. The First Touch gardens are a celebration of

the work of the neonatal unit at St George's Hospital. My daughter was

born prematurely and she spent a long time on the unit there. And the

garden is away of saying thank you to the doctors and nurses for all

they have done. I think the main elements which I

loved about the gardens were the rock work, the granite, which is a

part of Cornwall, the water and then the trees as well. They give the

structure to the garden, the enclosure and the shade and the

dappled light, which is wonderful at this time of year. The Chelsea

Garden is a combination of my childhood memories here, my

experiences as a child, but also the experiences and the journey which my

own daughter has gone on, for example the main feature of the

garden is that water feature and that's quite turbulent and, as the

water progresses, it becomes calmer, as the journey goes on and becomes

tranquil at the end. Water is such an integral part of

this landscape. It defines the landscape and gives the gardens

their unique properties. It originates from half a mile away

from a spring and it follows the line to the watermill and from there

down into the garden into this beautiful cascade here. It flows

down the field, down to the woodland at the bottom.

Well, this is where the water from the garden

Well, this is where the water from woodland, which is where I used to

play a lot. It is a really quite a magical place and I have many fond

memories of being down here. I have discovered the old seat we chiselled

out of the rock here. It's - discovered the old seat we chiselled

inspiration is here. We have our living wall which is made up of

woodland species. A lot of the family favourites from this garden

have ended up in the Chelsea Garden, the ferns, the hostas. This is one

of the woodlands where I used to play as a child. Surrounded by these

beautiful trees. We are trying to take the essence of

those woodlands and re-create them in the wooded part of our garden at

Chelsea. This was my first bedroom when we

moved to Cornwall, with this fantastic window and outlook on to

the garden. I remember with great fondness this ash tree, it is a real

character, and the architecture and landscape have merged together. It

is almost like the tree is This garden is a very happy place to

be. I love coming down here with the family, my two daughters, they love

visiting grandma, love seeing the garden. It is all those things which

I did as a child, which they are now doing as well.

What a lovely place to grow up in. A beautiful garden. Thank you so much.

To be able to take that as an essence of a Chelsea

To be able to take that as an have you taken

To be able to take that as an turned it into this Show Garden?

To be able to take that as an main feature we have tried to take

is the water feature and to re-create it here at Chelsea. The

water here represents the journey that premature babies and their

families follow. It has a turbulent families follow. It has a turbulent

source, but it becomes more and more tranquil as it flows through the

garden. I love it. tranquil as it flows through the

theme off. This rusty steel is a major feature. Why have you used

that? It represents the major feature. Why have you used

the landscape. I guess what I have tried to create is a stylised

landscape with the water creating a valley through the rock work. Yeah.

Like it does at home. It works really well. It is warm and modern

and it sets the plants off really well. That's right.

and it sets the plants off really glass are a bit too cold. It warms

the garden up. Planting, I think, is lovely as well. These irises are

looking stunning. They are wonderful. There are some old family

favourites here as well, the hostas and the ferns. It's got better as

the week and the ferns. It's got better as

With these charity gardens, it is a very important charity that you are

involved in. People often ask me how can a charity afford to do a Show

Garden at Chelsea. The charity is First Touch, a small charity based

at St George's Hospital in Tooting, they support the neonatal unit

there. We have created this garden through the goodness of people and

their kindness. It's been built with volunteers. We have had plants and

materials donated free of charge. We have had a fantastic contractor, who

has provided the labour for free. So, it's been done on a tight

budget? On an extremely tight budget! But we are proud of what we

have achieved. You are the first one in here every morning and the last

one here every night because you are watering the garden. That's right.

Have kept It looking beautiful all week. It is worth it. Thank you.

Unusual plants and new introductions are launched on to the market here.

One Chelsea stalwart with a prolific history of plant breeding is Hillier

Nurseries. In their 150-year history, they have introduced over

200 new plant varieties. Carol has been looking back at some of their

classic cultivars. Yes, she is still in there. We might let her out

tomorrow! This is typical of the kind of

plants that this nursery has introduced. It's been around for

more than 100 years. Since it was founded as a chance seedling. I have

grown it myself for ages and ages, not quite 100 years! It's so easy to

grow and it's really, really tough. It's stood the test of time.

Andy, how on earth do all these wonderful plants come to be on your

list? Well, there is a number of different ways that new plants

arise. One of them is just from sewing seed and finding out what

variations occur. When plants come from seed, there can be great

variation amongst the seedlings. That is the thing about seedlings,

they are random and you never know what you are going to get? Some

might produce particularly good flowers and you are always looking

for that one seedling that has star quality. It is all to do with

selection and having an eye and recognising a winner? Yes, it is.

You might spot something that produces a fantastic flower at an

early age, but then it doesn't turn out to be good grower with a nice

habit. Once you have selected your seedlings, how long before you

actually take them to Chelsea? Well, I mean, from the time a cross is

made to the plant making it to Chelsea, it is probably, it could be

ten years or more. Along the way you have got to trial it, you have to

test it and also, of course, you have to propagate it to get a

commercial quantity to launch on to the market. We have always had a

section within the nursery where we do, what we call today, research and

development, which is a fancy name for bringing plants together from

potentially different parts of the world. A great example, I remember

from the first Chelsea, that I was involved in staging this exhibit,

and that was choisya Aztec Pearl. What it produced was that wonderful,

hardy shrub which is so popular in gardens. Occasionally, it is is a

question of somebody giving you a plant? Sometimes a shoot will arise

which has a particular characteristic, and somebody finds

that plant that has come from nowhere in their garden. That

Saltwood Summer that we launched a few years ago. We see lots of new

plants coming on to the market here at Chelsea. Some, like Aztec Pearl,

are here 30 years later. Some last a few years and some disappear after a

season. I can't imagine you disappearing! You are a stayer! I

hope so. We are celebrating 150 years this year. We are looking

forward to the next 150 and beyond! I hope we are here to stay!

All this week, we have been asking people from different creative

worlds to review Chelsea for us. Tonight, we welcome the furniture

designer, David Linley. Thank you for joining us. You are no stranger

to Chelsea? No. I love being here. My shop is just around the corner. I

have been coming here all my life. And every time I come here, I always

see something that inspires me, or gives one some kind of thought that

you never believe that you would see anywhere else. What did you pick out

this year? I have seen all sorts of things here, from the tree, with I

spouts water, which was inspired by my father when he saw it at

Chatsworth, where he made for us in the garden the tiny spray that

turned into miniature rainbows. It was lovely to see those sort of

things and the vegetables are the things that I enjoy. As a designer,

as a craftsman, how do you feel gardeners are approaching Chelsea in

particular and gardening in general? Brilliantly. It is always inspiring

to see the new designs, the new ways that people think about the actual

fragments and the way that you put gardens together. And I think it is

always inspiring to see the young coming through, which is what I am

always passionate about in terms of making people, getting people to

make things, seeing things and designing things, which is what this

country is so good at. Do you think you can apply the skills that you

have to gardening? Absolutely. We had an exhibition in the shop about

a month ago. That was all about celebrating craftsmanship,

engineering, all the things that we do in this country in tiny

workshops, small manufacturers, and our back gardens are no different.

The inventiveness of this nation is fantastic and should be celebrated.

That is why it is lovely to come here. How do you think - you want to

see young people come through - but the fact is not enough are. Can we

imply that ingenuity to get people interested? Get gardening is to have

the opportunity, of either coming here, seeing things, having a small

opportunity to look at ways of planting things, what they can do

and see results. Also, maybe the speed at which you see results is

sort of probably something quite fun, which you can do with pots.

That is what people like, the instant gardening. Finally, when it

comes to garden furniture, what should we be looking for? What is

the key to really good garden furniture? To me, it is about

longevity. I want something that I can put in the shed for the winter,

or have the ability to sit out on the London terrace, have the same

ability - longevity is the important thing. I made some furniture for our

garden about 15 years ago. It was made in chestnut. It's gone white

now. It is beautiful. It's got better with age. I tell you what,

you will look around the show for us, so we will see that and we will

review that later. Thank you for talking to us. Thank you for asking

me. There has been lots of discussion

this week about the shortage of women building gardens here at the

show. One of the exceptions to this is Jo Thompson, who has built not

just one, but two Gardens. Hello, Jo. I am so thrilled to be here. I

think your garden looks utterly beautiful. You have gold for the one

outside and silver gilt in here. It is brilliant, I am thrilled. Let's

take a closer look. Let's start with that corner. Lets go. That orange

and purple go wonderfully together. What I was inspired work by were the

colours of sunset reds and origins that I wanted to reproduce that in

this garden. This is that I wanted to reproduce that in

cashmere purple, isn't it? I love that I wanted to reproduce that in

the way it starts to grow through all the other plants, finding its

own way, getting higher. It is a fabulous plant. This corner is

completely different. It is so soft and woodland. These foxgloves, so

subtle. Is it certain's apricots? I love this apical pink, tinged with

white. The white carries on with the cow parsley. It has a completely

wonderful flower shape. You just want to touch it and squeeze those.

It is fabulous, really want to touch it and squeeze those.

is an enemy won Plant Of The Year at Chelsea, didn't it? --

is an enemy won Plant Of The Year at It is White Swan. The whole garden

is surrounded by these stone It is White Swan. The whole garden

They are beautiful. I had never made a dry stone wall in my life, but

weak at the curving walls built in three days, quite a feat. They are

very feminine. This whole space is friendly, isn't it? I wanted

somewhere you could walk through and where people would stop and be able

to sit and have a nice time. Why do you think that there are so few

women garden designers exhibiting on the main avenue? It is

extraordinary, considering they are so good at it. I don't understand

why they are not there. Maybe a lot of women give up, when they have

children. I had children. You haven't given up though. I took a

year out. It is efficiency. You have to be efficient, like you are at

home, doing the school run, organising a house. The same here.

It is a question of being in control. They need to be given the

chance. And they need to persevere. Push, push, push. A shrinking

violet, that I am. We started the week looking at

Gardners -- Gardens associated with World War I but we have left a

special story until the end. An intriguing tale that has come to

light is the amazing relationship between the RHS and a group of

English refugees trapped in Germany in 1914. I'm joined by Fiona

Davison, head of RHS libraries and exhibitions and Norman Wilkinson,

whose father was one of refugees. What happened?

He had been working in Germany and was rounded up with 5000 other in

which men and was sent to the concentration camp. It was near

Berlin. When they were there, was it an established prison? What were

prisons like? It was a racecourse, just outside Berlin, six miles

outside Berlin. The horses had been removed. There was nothing there.

Nothing there except horse dung, which they had to clear out. How did

the RHS get involved? The prisoners had to fill their time and

eventually some began gardening in biscuit tins on a small scale.

Wanting to do things properly, they set up a horticultural Society and

they wrote to us to ask if they could be affiliated. We have copies

of those letters. There is one sentence I read that I found

incredibly employing it -- it was incredibly poignant. We are unable

to admit the usual fee but trust we are enjoying the privileges of

affiliation. These are people in a concentration camp. Your father.

Yes. So you sent them seeds and materials. Absolutely. The fee did

not trouble us! We said bolts and seized and instructions -- we sent

bolts and seeds and instructions. We sent them instructions on how to do

a flower show. Their main concern was to improve what they called the

melancholy appearance of the camp, so they planted climbers to cover

the barbed wire, that kind of thing. This is almost like something out of

ripping yarns. Did they have prizes at the flower show? Absolutely, they

did it properly by RHS standards. They had fruit and vegetable, rock

garden, show gardens outside the barracks. What were the living

conditions like for your father? Very bad. There were people in their

cramped together. In the stable he was in, there were five other men.

It was very cramped. No beds. They slept on a concrete floor. Did he

keep any record of this? Yes, he did. He had a diary of what took

place and what happened there and the conditions under which they

suffered. This is it. This tiny little book. It had to be small.

Tiny, tiny writing. It is beautiful. I must look with my

glasses. It is an extraordinary record of 100 years ago. We had to

go and break ice out of the lake and stuck it in the woods. Yes. These

harsh conditions, the war raging on, they were having a flower show. Were

they not growing field at all? Eventually, they did. In 1917 they

borrowed money to buy equipment to build quite a large patch of ground

in the middle of the racetrack, for vegetables. Eventually, it

snowballed into a market garden. 2000 tomato plants, 8000 lettuces,

16,000 leagues. So a lot. It is an extraordinary story. Thank you for

coming along and sharing it with us. Thank you, absolutely amazing. The

First World War as a theme taken by a number of exhibitors this year.

One of the smaller Artisan Gardens has captured a very different moment

from 1914. Joe went along to have a look.

I am here on the Potters Garden and it represents a snapshot in time. A

time when the potter who worked here went off to war as a volunteer in

the First World War. It is a wonderfully evocative space. You do

get the sense of someone just abandoned here. Probably full of

hope to go and fight in the war. 200,000 people left in 1914. We know

that over 1 million throughout the course of the war never returned.

There are things dotted around here that we now know are from the war

itself. Did he come back, or didn't he come back? That Mr E has been

left open for us to decide. -- the mystery. There is a lovely

harmonious feel to the garden with the potter's clay. The tiles on the

roof are punctuated with this semper Vivian and the mosque. The discards,

you can imagine them creating the pavement to this garden as well. He

made his own hot out there, and original hopper, in 1914. The

downpipe feeds the water with a lovely water lily in it. That has

2014 on it. It is 100 years on, commemorating the start of World War

I. There are things in this garden that bring us up to the present

date. In a way, it is also looking back. There are two different sorts

going on. It is quite interesting. Every single thing in this garden

has been thought about meticulously. I love these little bullet shells

dotted through the plants and also studying the steps and the paving

here. The thing about these Artisan Gardens and especially this one is

you get a real sense of intimacy about it. It is a fantastic garden,

a beautiful garden in its own right. But the more you understand about it

and the story behind it, the deeper it goes and the better it gets.

Our guest designer today is David Linley, the furniture maker. As we

heard earlier, he is a Chelsea regular. What has he made of this

year's show? Cleve West garden here, as you can

see, is a very interesting design. It is a very peaceful place. It is a

very tranquil place. Build high and English cross man. -- built by an

English craftsmen. If a look at garden design from furniture design,

it is an interesting perspective. There is furniture in Gardens,

whether it is benches or outside darning -- dining areas, some

lounges. All sorts of things. I look at how I can bring a sense of

tranquillity and a sense of excitement and surprise but again,

using the elements you have here such as box, yew hedges, things that

move with the wind. Something I would love to incorporate is a sign

when you look out of the window in the morning you can see the change

of seasons. We are here in a vegetable patch mainly because I

particularly enjoy vegetables and I enjoy planting vegetables. I

encourage my children to enjoy planting vegetables. I

join planting vegetables as well. It is very important for them to

understand seasonality, in a time now when we can get anything from

any convenience store at any time of year, it is fabulous to look forward

to the first asparagus, the first strawberry that you planted and

really enjoy that taste of getting a bit of grit in your teeth.

really enjoy that taste of getting a occasional hosepipe. With my design

hat on, looking at the way a vegetable garden can look also quite

a part of what I enjoy. Whether they are raised beds or if they have

wicker around the side, that to me has an incredible part of the

We are standing in Adam Frost designed garden. The wind is blowing

through the wild flowers, the grasses. My thoughts on seeing this

garden very much remind me of my childhood. Just seeing lovely

Meadows is a very important part of what I like to do, go walking in the

hills or grand spaces. For me, this is a lovely space where you can

allow your mind to expand and relax. I think a good garden feels

somewhere that you want to spend time, that you don't want to rush

out of, that you want to sit. And enjoy, particularly in the sunshine.

Somewhere you can read a book in the corner, out of the wind. Somewhere

to enjoy the work that you have put into creating it.

There has been a long history of city councils exhibiting here at

Chelsea and two displays by Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent will

this year leave really good memories for tens of thousands of visitors.

But for the councils themselves, how important is it to be here?

Particularly in such tough economic times. I'm joined by the designer

Annita Gibson from Stoke-on-Trent and Darren Share, head of parks and

nurseries at Birmingham City Council. I am not sure I got your

title right, Darren! Why are you here? We promote the

city and raise the profile of the city. It is important we are not as

a Gotham City in between Manchester and Birmingham and people realise we

have developed into a contemporary technological city -- we're not a

forgotten city. It is important we are here. It gives us an opportunity

to get the wider community involved, schools and local

businesses, in an event they may not otherwise be able to come to. It is

taking Stoke to London and boosting the city generally. Is that true of

Birmingham? Profile is really important for us to get people to

understand what we are about in Birmingham. It is about keeping

traditions alive. As we move into grounds maintenance we want to get

horticulture back into Birmingham parks. We have been using our

apprentices down here. I gather you have fired six new apprentices. Six

new apprentices this year, working not only down here in Chelsea but on

the design in the nursery is doing the carpet bedding, which is really

important. How many plants do you produce a year? About 2.5 million.

It is a lot. Is that the safe in Stoke? Do you produce a lot of your

own material? I am afraid I can't say any of it has come from

Stoke-on-Trent, although the roses have come from Staffordshire, from

David Austin, who has donated them. We used to have nurseries but

unfortunately due to the cuts we have lost close. It is something I

hope will come back providing we can get some money to fund that. Talking

about cuts, how much do these cost? How much did your display cost?

How much do they cost overall? Around 35,000. How much came from

the council? We haven't sold the plants off. At the moment between

3,000 to 5,000. As little as that? Yes. What about Stoke? With Stoke it

is more about the value. How much did it cost? The short answer is I

don't know! OK. Like, Darren, a lot of the items will be sold off. Was

there not a budget for the garden? There was. What was it? I probably

shouldn't say. Why not? Please do. I don't know what it is. OK. Are we

talking hundreds of thousands? It was a lot of money. How much of that

came from the council? Well, there's - Bartholomew Landscaping have put

half of the costs. A lot of the items have been sponsored. The

question is - is it good value for money for the council to be here at

Chelsea? Is the return good enough? Last year, we did a quick cost

estimate of the value of the publicity. You have to be very

quick. "Yes" or "no"? It was around ?1.5 million. Same for Birmingham?

Yes. Brilliant. I am delighted because I want to see you back. You

have given a lot of pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. One parks

department which has exhibited at Chelsea for years was Leeds City

Council. Christine Walkden has been to

Roundhay Park. Anyone who has followed the Chelsea

Flower Show over the years would instantly recognise the stunning

gardens created by Leeds City Council.

What makes these gardens so special is they live on here at Roundhay

Park in Leeds. So that hundreds of visitors can

enjoy them as Chelsea visitors have in the past.

I'm here to meet Dean Lockwood, a pivotal force in all of Leeds

gardens at Chelsea. Why was the decision made to bring the gardens

back home? The vast majority of people in Leeds are not going to go

down to London and see the gardens down there. It is so nice to see

them altogether? It is. It completes the picture. There is a story here

now. This is our 2008 entry, the Largest

Room in the House. It was the first of the four that we have re-created

at Roundhay Park. How difficult was it? You don't just dig it up and

throw it in the back of a lorry? The hard landscaping gets taken down

piece by piece, gets put in crates and brought back. It is probably

just as difficult to take it down and keep it in order as it is to

build it. It is like a jigsaw puzzle, really? It is, yes. So this

was the 2009 Rain Garden? It was. puzzle, really? It is, yes. So this

How does it work? It works by, if you look at the garden as a whole,

it is in the shape of a bowl, so it captures all the rain water and

contains it in this area. Fairly straightforward garden plants?

Irises, hostas, the geums. Lots of architectural shapes as well? Yes.

There is nothing in here that you would struggle to buy in most garden

centres. So, this was the garden that got Leeds its first Gold. How

did that feel? Incredible. I don't think you can put it down to words.

It is very hard to describe. The sense of pride was tangible? It is

amazing. You don't think it is scriptured. When something like that

happens, it is unbelievable. How does the planting differ? I remember

a meadow over there and it is now not a meadow. Why have you changed

it? We have to. These gardens are real gardens. It's not - it's still

got that wow factor with the lock gate that we had

In 2011, another Gold for their stunning Water Wheel Garden. You are

using general garden plants here. You have a sunny area, a shady area.

Look at that? It sets the scene. Then, when people that come along,

and they see the plants that we have got here. If we can grow them here,

they will be able to grow them as well.

Do you feel there is a great sense of pride in bringing a garden back

from Chelsea? Definitely. I wish they had the money to do it for

successive years. I had friends who were going to move from the area.

They decided not to because they love Roundhay Park so much. So a

very important part of the community? Definitely. It is well

supported. We love it. I think it's incredible, that the

skills, the I think it's incredible, that the

knowledge of a park's department taking a garden to Chelsea

knowledge of a park's department live on. Here at Roundhay Park,

these gardens are going to live on. Here at Roundhay Park,

I was talking to Wayne Hemingway the absolutely splendid.

I was talking to Wayne Hemingway the other day. He was keen that all the

gardens should be recycled. That should be in the brief? It should

be. People always ask me what happens to these gardens after the

show. The plants, where do they go? Do they live on? Pretty much all the

plants have another life. The trees get lifted, they are very expensive,

the perennials are planted in their pots anyway, nurseries take them

back and grow them on. There are some elements that can be lifted,

sculpture, furniture... You are talking about breaking them up?

Things like paving, to lift a slab of paving that's been properly laid,

you have to lift it, clean it, transport it, store it and it

becomes uneconomical. It is impossible, it is not worth it. The

Rich Brothers are taking their garden as it is to Beechwood

Autistic College near Cardiff. It has a purpose built into it from day

one. I like that idea? Hugo Bugg, that is going to Brixton in Lambeth,

they will lift part of it. They have to adapt it. They are not going to

drop that entire garden in. You have to re-design it. I called Hugo Bugg

"Matthew Bugg". I do feel that the public like the idea of a second

life, apart from anything else these are wonderful gardens. We want to

see them as gardens rather than rescuing bits of them? Certainly. I

think the whole aspect of recycling is important, but this is a show.

The amount of energy and cost, it's a seriously big bill that goes into

a show, three weeks build and it is here for a week and it gets

disbanded. It is just a show. What a show! All of us come to Chelsea

Flower Show and take something away, even if it is not a complete garden

- ideas, inspiration, maybe something we have bought. We have

asked our team if they could take one thing, anything, from the show

this year, what would it be? What would I take home from Chelsea?

This Pavilion would be good. Imagine this for entertaining.

This is going to be a deep and enduring love. This is one of the

most beautiful things I have ever seen. It comes from Japan. Isn't it

lovely? The Cave Pavilion by Sophie Walker. I love it. It's fantastic to

see innovative, modern design that is very attractive, full of

horticultural interest, done by somebody young, by a woman, and

which really engages its subject with passion. And the subject is the

need to conserve our plants. I never thought I would get so

excited about concrete paving, but what I would take home from Chelsea

is this. Each piece is individually cut, it is beautiful, it is a work

of art. It is like the bottom of a dried-out pond. Superb! How could I

not love these? On a personal level, if I could get away with it, I would

steal the Japanese designer! Looking at his garden, if he came home with

me, hopefully he could create the same magic in my back yard!

If there was one thing I would take away from the show, it would be a

view, it would be the view on he the Cloudy Bay Sensory Garden. The eye

is drawn all the way down to this wonderful marble sculpture. It is a

brilliant idea. That view would be mine!

So often we think of Chelsea Flower Show as being all about the

aesthetics and, for me, the piece I would take home is slightly more

intangible. It is the most evocative and sensious element of a garden -

it is fragrance and no better than that of the rose.

Well, I have got with me here Sue Biggs and James Alexander Sinclair

from the RHS. I have to ask you, Sue, what would you take home from

this year's show? I think the thing I would take home is what a happy,

fantastic Chelsea this has been. It really reinforces how great

gardening is for everybody's soul. It makes everybody so happy. It has

had a good vibe? It has. There's been an energy and a happiness about

it that I have certainly never felt in my four years at the RHS. That is

pretty good. I thought you might want to take a garden bench with

you! I'm interested from you, James, about the judging process, the new

process, how has it gone down? What feed back have you had from

designers and exhibitors? The vast majority of designers and exhibitors

are happy with the way we have done it. You think we got it spot on the

button and the gardeners and the designers agree. One thing I want to

ask is you have your nine categories. Where's the category for

love? You are such an old hippy! I am! We are being asked to judge

apples against pears. Some judges would love one more than the other.

In order to do that, we have to remove the love from that and we

leave the love with the designers and the people who have created

these gardens and with you who are looking at them. It is interesting

that the BBC viewers' award went to a garden that people felt very

passionately about? As it should. Something that concerns me is

because you have this new tick box system, their gardens might become a

little formulaic? What we are not doing is telling them how to design

their gardens. This is giving a way of judging. Well, I have a feeling

this will run and run. OK. You will have the final word, Sue. What will

you take forward to next year? I think, for me, the most important

thing to take forward is to have the courage to make changes. We have

made changes by bringing, whether it is new judging rules and our judges

are fantastic, or for us to bring in really young talent. We have the

world's best and the new talent and the sponsors have been brave enough

to believe in those youngsters. Thank you. Thank you very much. And

that is it for this evening. We will be back here tomorrow on BBC Two at

8.00pm. Nicki Chapman will be joining us for the excitement of the

traditional Chelsea sell-off. Until then, bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Ted, I wondered if... I'm not interested

part of the big bumper bank holiday comedy 50th birthday weekend.

MUSIC: "Black Wave" by the Raveonettes

And you must be the famous Dr Quirke.