Episode 5 RHS Chelsea Flower Show

They say it's the taking part that counts, but let's be honest,

if you've put your heart and soul into something,

Which is why today is all about the medals.

And believe me, all the exhibitors and designers

So join us over the next 45 minutes as we reveal this year's roll call

Hello and welcome back to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

After the glitz and glamour of yesterday's royal visit,

it's down to the serious business of the medals results.

Yes, medals day can make or break a designer's career,

so we'll be looking at the gardens that struck gold and revealing why

our instant gardener, Danny Clarke, shows us how to get some

Today he's looking at creative ways to spruce up the walkways

Carol continues her journey around the world, discovering how plants

Plus former news correspondent Kate Adie shares her love of Chelsea

and tries her hand at our plant challenge - pot luck!

And don't forget we want to hear from you.

Get in touch on twitter @BBCFlowerShows using

All that and much more to come from the Chelsea Flower Show,

an event supported by M Investments.

But earlier this morning we were both very lucky to be

invited along on the annual RHS medals hand-out, with the main show

Not perturbed by the dawn alarm call, Nicki and I joined the RHS

It really felt like the calm before the storm, as people gathered on

Main Avenue for the main announcements.

And when the medals dash starts, you've just got to run with it.

And believe me, that's not easy in these heels.

It's an early start and I'm sure the designers and exhibitors didn't get

a wink of sleep last night, because it's medals day. I will see you on

the other side. This is Matthew Wilson. It's his second Chelsea

garden. Got a silver gilt last year. I wonder what it will be. A silver

medal. I'm really pleased with everybody who's been involved in

this garden. It's been a fantastic effort for Yorkshire. Were you going

for the gold? Of course we were. Sam is one of the youngest gardeners in

Chelsea. I'm over the Moon. Really chuffed. This is James.

Congratulations. What are you going to do for the rest of the day? I'm

going to bed! We are on the hunt to see if we can find Nick Bailey. It's

his first ever Chelsea garden and I think he's pulled it out of the bag,

with some really unusual planting. Congratulations on a fantastic

garden. Fantastic, thank you. Well done, a silver gilt. I know why we

didn't get gold I think. It's the motivation to go in even harder next

time. Cleve is one of my all-time design heroes. He's won Best In Show

with five golds. Thank you very much. A gold medal.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. Thank you. It's the best garden I've done here, so

I'm very happy. How are you feeling, Jo? I don't think I can actually

speak. OK, I'm going to hold your hand. Jo's been here eight times and

describes Chelsea as her mountain to climb. Congratulations. Thank you!

Well done. I've got a gold! Jo Thompson, congratulations. You are

going to love this week at Chelsea. I know it's been a painful build...

But it's been worth it. Tears of joy. Thank you, thank you! As ever

it was a real privilege to be part of the present ace this morning. In

total, there were six gold medals handed out on Main Avenue alone, so

James, what does that say about the standard this year? Six is only one

less than last year. The thing about perfection is it is difficult to

attain. The standards are high for a reason. We are standing on a gold

medal-winning garden, Paul Martin. He must be thrilled. Why in your

opinion did the judges decide this was worthy of a gold medal? It is

hard to tell unless you can see the brief, but the attention to detail.

It is dripping in glass. You step in and you do feel the sense of

atmosphere, like you've been transported somewhere else. That's

what designing is all about. Everyone is appearing for these gold

medals, and you've won a couple in your career here alone, but you have

won silver gilt and silver. What goes through your mind? That's

because no-one sees me when the medals are handed out, because I am

one of those people who can't hold their disappointed face. It's tricky

isn't it? It is totally worth it. There'll be more analysis tonight.

Monty will be revealing who has won the Best Show Garden for 2016. The

margins between a gold and silver gilt medal can be minimal. Toby

Buckland reveals why he thinks these gardens just missed out on gold.

I've been coming to Chelsea for a very long time and I have never

heard the crowds whoop at a garden like they do at Diarmuid Gavin's

before. He got a silver gilt, not a gold. I can't help but think if this

garden and the other winners of silver gilt just a decade, they

would have a gold award. What's changed in that time is the judging

has become harsher, more picky. This is a theatrical garden, and that's

its Achilles heel. I don't think the resin matches the real stuff in the

garden below. While the planting a joyous, it works brilliantly, I

don't think the judges would like the way the plants brush and bruise

against each other as they move. When I heard that Hugo Bugg's garden

hasn't won a gold, I was as surprised as anybody. It is based on

the landscape of Jordan. No-one knows that one better than Hugo.

He's been out there for two years designing a botanic garden. Its

brief was about the preciousness of water. Then I was looking at the

planting. I thought, well, it's a lovely mix of arid plants, plants

that will survive in the driest of conditions. But I feel really bad

saying this, the grass in particular, it just wouldn't grow

like that. Normally you have a parent plant and the progeny seeds

itself outwards from it, with different sizes, some up from the

gravel, and some around its feet. This looks a bit plonked in. It is

splitting hairs, but it's true. Catherine McDonald's garden is

another triumph. It is a lovely mixture of lush planting and the

pool and the trees conspire to create a soft humidity that's so

welcome here in London. What's let her down is technology and new

materials. Inside the greenhouse she's got a glass floor. Glass is a

difficult material to snag, because it doesn't show its faults

immediately. It needs to bed in before flaws inherent within the

glass start to show. The other thing the judges might not like, and this

is just my opinion, is the pond. It lacks the technology, the filtration

system needed to keep it clean, particularly with large fish in it,

and the drag out the leaves when the birch trees drop them in the autumn.

But these are minute points but they are exactly what the judges use to

differentiate the brilliant silver gilt winners from those that have

the top mark of gold. One man who knows from experience the enormous

effort needed to strike gold here at Chelsea is Cleve West, winner of two

Best In Show awards, he's back this year bringing a very personal vision

of Exmoor to Main Avenue. I was born in London and grew up in

Thames Ditton. When I was 14 years old, in 1972, my whole family moved

to Exmoor, to run this hotel, the Lorna Doon. I think my fondest

memory of this place is the fact that we came here exactly at the

same time as Fawlty Towers was popular on TV and my dad was Basil

Fawlty. It was hilarious. Quite a culture shock coming to a quiet

little village, but on the other side we had the lovely countryside

to roam in and escape into. I used to high tail off into the hills down

to the sea. It was just perfect. We are in this wood, which is just up

Porlock Hill. The atmosphere of this place was really powerful. That

stayed with me for such a long time. I used to do athletics and run in

the hills. I competed against the likes of Daley ey Thompson and

Linford Christie - obviously I let them win! It's come as quite a shock

that I've become a gardener and a garden designer. I'm trying to evoke

a memory. That's the most difficult thing at Chelsea. I've decided I'm

going to have oak trees. Oak trees are key to the whole garden. I will

use things like blueberries in the garden, just as a token, but I

really don't want to recreate this. You can't do it in a 10 by 22 metre

space. The amazing thing about Exmoor is the diversity. You've got

the rockscape, the sea views, moorland, Coombes, valleys, fields.

It is so diverse it's incredible. Stone is going to play a large part

in this garden. Not in a natural way as you see here. It's going be more

contrived so they form retaining walls and benches. We are going to

have a mixture of rough hewn stone and sawn stone, so you get

contemporary edge to the whole thing. It is interesting on the way

up here we were passing all sorts of woodland plants like wild garlic and

Angellica. All the things you associate with woodland. But I don't

think I was conscious of that when I was in my teenage years. I certainly

wouldn't have known the names of them. I wasn't interested in

gardening at that time, but now it is a new experience for me coming up

here and being able to read the landscape more clearly. When I was

about 18 we moved back to London as a family. I went to a college to do

art and physical education. Very fortunate to have worked in David

Hockney's studio for a week. I had an aunt who lived just around the

corner. I used to spend lunch times with her. She had a big garden in

Chiswick. I suddenly got hooked on gardening. The penny dropped at that

moment. When my aunt died she left me a small legacy and I was able to

support myself at the Hampton Court Flower Show. That got me on the

first rung of the ladder. So I'm eternally grateful to her for that.

It is curious how things work out. This wasn't planned by any stretch

of the imagination. What I want to try and do is to make a very

contemporary space that acknowledges the memory of living in Porlock and

Exmoor. Iving in Porlock and Exmoor. We've got the ingredients - oak

trees, stone, water and woodland planting. The trick is going to be

to mix those up and make it a modern, contemporary garden that

evokes Exmoor without it looking like Exmoor. It's a bit of an

experiment really and I'm a little bit nervous about it. It's a

challenge. I always enjoy a challenge at Chelsea.

The man has smashed it. One of the really tricky things as a designer.

How do you get the feeling of it without copying it? How do it

without creating a Las Vegas or Disney creation? You feel as if

you've been dropped into Devon, but in a really, clean, crisp, amazing

way. You've got this super, modernist landscaping here, matching

traditional materials and some attention to detail. So this water

feature for example, I think many other designers might feel the

testimonidation to dye their water. What that does, it means you can

hide all the stuff underneath the water. Here you have almost like a

herring bone pattern. Crisp and clean. I have pictures of people

with perpits cleaning around every rock. It says a lot. Cleve how are

you feeling? Exhausted, but very, very happy. What's the trickiest bit

of the build? Well, it all went to plan. The trickiest bit pass putting

the posts up. I got the measurements wrong! This lush naturalistic look

is the hardest thing to achieve and make it look natural. Formal blocks

are easier to put together? Well, we practised a lot with this. We

practised at the nursery. You've won so many golds, does it still feel

exciting? It is a big thing winning a gold medal. I'm happy for

everyone. Great teamwork. Ideas bubbling for the future? I may have

peaked with this one. It is a very personal garden. I may have to think

carefully before I do another one. Well done. Thank you very much. The

gardens here at the show may look wildly out of reach, but that

doesn't stop them from being inspiring. This week, the Instant

Gardener Danny Clarke is looking for clever ideas to max maougs your

garden's potential. Today, he has got a step by step guide to pathway

perfection. Chelsea is a great place to have a

look at landscaping. It is a show room of exquisite building

materials. They might be high end and expensive, but the ideas are

there for free. So what ideas are there out there for our paths? Now,

this is Andy sturgeon's garden. This is high end Chelsea. It is so

pristine, I've even had to take my shoes off! This is what you call

crazy paving. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Although, it is

expensive, it is possible for you to have this in your garden, but what I

would be inclined to do is get off cuts from a local builder's

merchants and get large ones and that will do the trick. It doesn't

have to be expensive. The pathway, in Hugo Ugg's garden

appears to be deconstructed. It takes you around the garden so it is

a voyage of exploration, he is not just using concrete. He's using

gravel as well. Now, by using gravel, he is giving himself extra

planting opportunities because what you can do, is plant straight into

the gravel here. Like he has done all over the plot over there. If

you've got a small garden at home, by using this deconstructive

principle that Hugo used, you can make your garden look bigger than it

actually is. This is Nick Bailey's show piece and

I love it! Now, unlike the previous garden this is all gravel and the

pathways are defined by the plants. Now you can literally get up close

and personal with them and you can go off in any direction you wish to

choose. Now, it is a win, win situation here because the gravel

will also mean that you've got a low maintenance garden. It will keep the

weeds down and it will also keep the rainwater in. This is the same sort

of agoey gate they use at the palace of Versailles, but at the end of the

day this is just gravel and you can get it from any garden centre.

Whatever path you create in your own back garden, make sure it takes you

on a voyage of discovery. If you don't have the luxury of having a

garden to put Danny's advice into practise, there is a wealth of house

plants that can add serious wow factor to your home like these

plants. These have become big name in house plants over the last 40

years and they have got 26 gold medals here at Chelsea. They have

become the biggest grower in the UK of the popular flowering plant,

Streptocarpus. We caught up with Lynn Dibley as she prepared to win

40 different varieties to Chelsea this year. I love Streptocarpus

because they are easy plants to grow. They flower for such a long

time and there is any colour practically that you could want for.

I like to think that my family have been instrumental of bringing

Streptocarpus to the fore and turning it into the supermodel of

the house plant world. There is all sorts of colours. There

is patterns, there is speckles, and there is lovely mixtures of yellows,

blues, pinks, purples. They are one of the most popular house plants in

the UK now. They're beautiful plants. It all started over 40 years

ago when my father was given plants of Streptocarpus. I don't have as

much input now as I used to. It was once upon a time practically all me,

but now I leave it to the youngsters to do most of the day-to-day work!

My father is always around. If he is not in the greenhouse, he is

probably out with a gauge rail where he has, but he is always around

here. And coming down and criticising what's going on

occasionally as well! That's my job! I was looking at the Chelsea plants.

I think they want some work doing on them. This is our main glasshouse

here where we produce the Streptocarpus and we'll somewhere in

the region of 50 to 60,000 plants here at any one time. We're the

biggest growers of Streptocarpus in this country and we supply the big

garden centres throughout the UK. We do mail order into Europe. We sell

the plug plants, the starter plants. And we supply throughout the EU.

Scandinavia is a big market for us because they have a short summer

season so house plants are very popular over there.

Well, actually Streptocarpus do come from South Africa originally and the

wild varieties are quite different from the hybrid varieties we sell

here. I've been to South Africa five times and seen Streptocarpus growing

in the wild. They grow in woodlands so they're not outside in the

pairries where it is really hot, but they are growing underneath trees,

over rocks on trees even. The foliage looks like a primrose, but

they are not related at all. Well, I suppose, starting with the constant

nymth, my father started growing that over 40 years ago. That was the

first one we started with. It just gradually evolvedful it was a hobby

and just growing a few and showing a few and then we started selling a

few. No one knew what they were and when you showed them, people thought

they were very hard to grow because they looked so exotic, but they

weren't, they were easy to grow and easy to propagate. You've got your

potting compost. Yeah, I've got some here. We propagate from leave

cuttings to increase our stock so from one plant and one leaf you can

get several hundred plants which are identical to the parent plant. From

these secondary veins, you will get a young plantlet growing from one of

these. We will take the leafs and sow them into the seed tray. But the

leaf a third deep into that and back fill it. So from the cuttings I'm

taking now, this is a seed tray that was done probably about 12 weeks ago

and then what you just do is take sections with the compost and the

roots all intact and that can be planted in a small pot and it will

create a new plant. So that is how you create a perfect clone to the

parent, but if you want to create something new and different, you

need to take the pollen from one flower, by taking it from this one

and put that on to the stigma of the other plant. Gently dust it on to

the stigma and that will grow into a seed pod which in about three months

time, you can sow the seed and each seedling will be different hopefully

to the parent plant. We've bred over 70 different new

hybrids over the years and we keep producing more as well.

Lynn scooped gold and we will be discovering how later this week.

The abundance of perfume plants and flowers create a blanket of scent

across the showground. These beautiful flowers, lilies smell

design, but which plants and flowers on show here can we use at home to

make sure our gardens look a million dollars and smell fantastic too?

Rachel de Thame has the answers. Sadly, smellivision Hasn't been

invented yet, but there are great examples of scent here at Chelsea

and good ideas to take home and where better than to start than

here. This is the Queen of herbs and this beautiful garden has been

awarded a silver gilt medal. She uses one of the best tricks in the

book by planting a scented plant along the side of a path. In this

case, it is lavender and that means as you walk past, you brush past it,

you release the essential oils and that aroma just comes wafting up.

Visitors to James' garden are commenting on unusual, warm

fragrance and it is coming from the this beautiful acidic yellow plant.

Of course, it was used to make a blue dye and it ferments and makes

an almighty stink, it isn't pleasant. With the heat, it releases

the flowers beautifully. They say that good things come in small

packages and here, you've spotted some lily. The fragrance that's

released from it is really delicious. It is also a shade lover.

So if you've got a shady garden, that would be the perfect choice. Jo

Thompson's garden features masses of beautifully fray grant roses

including one of my favourite old roses. Lovely soft petals. It is

bred in the 1850s. And a real classic in terms of fragrance. Of

course, many new introductions also have really good fragrance. This is

an English rose from David Austin. Although it only flowers once in the

season, the fragrance on this, oh, that really is good. Often the first

thing to catch your eye about a plant at Chelsea is its colour or

its form. But its most captivating feature is the power of its scent.

From the power of scent to power plants. As all week Carol Klein is

revealing the increditble impact some had on the way we live our

lives. In today's plants that make the world go round, Carol is finding

out how the humble tulip help create one of the world's best loved

cities. It is May and the grand finale of

one of the most colourful and elegant of all flowers, but it is a

plant that changed the course of history.

It caused one of the great financial crashes of the it is a story that

has its beginnings in the Netherlands. The plant, of course,

is the tulip! We love tulips for their grace and

the huge variety of their form and colour and they are the basis of a

multi-million euro industry and who could possibly be surprised by that?

Think of tulip and you usually think of the Netherlands, but in actual

fact they come from this huge area which runs from Turkey through to

China. Tulips arrived in the Netherlands in

the late 16th century and nobody had ever seen their like before. Such

colours. Such forms. It started a craze and that was the beginning of

tulip mania! The tulip that was the most sought

after was the broken tulip. It looked a lot like this, a white

background and these red lines. But that amazing colouration was caused

by a virus. By 1637, a bulb of one of these broken tulips could cost

you as much as an Amsterdam canal house - more than ?2 million in

today's money. But you weren't buying a bulb, but the promise of a

bulb. It was the start of the first futures market. But they were

trading in diseased bulbs. The bulbs didn't increase and promises could

not be fulfilled. The bubble burst. Almost overnight the economy

collapsed. The Netherlands could no longer afford to maintain their Army

and Navy. They lost lots of their overseas colonies. And in one of

them the English moved in without a single shot being fired. And New

Amsterdam became... New York. Start spreading the news, I'm leaving

today, Iwana be a part of it, New York, New York.

It's not often you see high kicks in the Great Pavilion. Well done,

Carol! This year a new trend has emerged at Chelsea which has seen

big name garden designers collaborating with organisations and

nurseries to create ambitious Zimbabwe its inside the Great

Pavilion. Tom Hoblyn is one of them and he is here championing

sustainability projects in the developing world. This is a kitchen

garden I believe. I've never seen anything like it before. This is the

Tamil in additionue kitchen garden -- this is the Tamil Nadu companien

garden. They focus on bitter gourds, and we've grown tomatoes,

aubergines, even ginger and cardamom. And this is all in India,

where you've travelled extensively. We've been working out there, so

when the charity asked me to help them, I was only too pleased to do

it. The charity gives free seeds to the villagers. It is such a neat

idea, I couldn't resist joining in. This huge plant, is this for shade,

decoration, or is it a food source? It is a food source. Remember we

used to make tap yolk ka alschool... Yes. They make food from it.

Everything is edible. Lovely to see you here. All the best with the

project. Thank you. Tom isn't the only designer in here this year.

Sarah has teamed up with hilliers to create this enormous garden, with a

lake containing 25,000 litres of water. Monty and Joe will have the

full story tonight. The number of exhibitors in the

Great Pavilion growing fruit and veg has dwindled in recent years, but

Tom Smith plants are proving you don't need a big operation to

compete in the big time. I find it unbelievable that it has only taken

us seven years to go from entering a small village show to entering the

largest tering a small village show to entering the largest show in the

world - Chelsea. Veg to me is a I veg to me is something we grew as a

child. If if you didn't grow it, you wouldn't be eating. When we grew

then competitively the passion gets to you and you start growing them in

the house as well. Here we. How about that? What do you think?

That's what you call a leek isn't it! I will tell you straight,

without the two of us working together, Alison and myself, I

wouldn't happen. Can you open the door to make sure there's

ventilation when the sun comes out? Will do. OK. It takes total

commitment, a total love of what we're doing, to produce the results.

I'm the gopher really. I jump every time he says, quick march, do this,

do that. Do you want to open the other one as well while you're at

it? It open. Oh, right. Excellent. We get on well. We are a team. You

can't have two bosses. And I though that sounds totally chauvinist, but

you can't have two bosses. I suppose that makes me the boss... Not. If

you have two leaders, you will end up falling out. True. We were not

professional. We're amateurs. We're new to this really. Oh... (BLEEP).

Things happen. (BLEEP). My dad was the local butcher in Ruth in. He was

a keen gardener. He would come hope from work and go straight out in the

garden. I lost my dad on my 4th birthday. He passed away of a heart

attack. He left a big hole in my life. At that point I had to look

after the garden myself, so I had to get my sleeves rolled up and see how

to work the ground to get the garden sorted. Ta-da! Come in to our world.

We named the business after my dad, in tribute to my dad, as a thank you

for showing me what it's all about. Chelsea is a challenge, because we

are totally out of season. Broad beans are not bad. They are quite an

easy vegetable to grow out of all of them. Go on to peas, they're a

little more tricky, but we get there. Fruit is as important as veg.

Veg is one thing, but I think growing fruit is something else. We

grow oranges and lemons and mandarins, limes, tangerines. And

we've also got an apricot tree at the back. Our little apricots are

growing and they are swelling it beautifully. We were asked if we

would like to put an application in for Chelsea, which we did last year.

An envelope came in the post with RHS on it. I opened the envelope and

thought, oh my God, we are going to Chelsea! What have you let me in

for?! It is a dream of Mike's really. It was more than a dream. It

is something I never thought I would achieve. Just from two little

polytunnels in a field. That's basically what it is And just the

two of us. Just the two of us. What a colourful couple