THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

It’s going to be a very special show this year: the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, or ‘Chelsea’, as gardeners tend to call it, is celebrating its centenary, with RHS vice president Alan Titchmarsh launching the RHS Chelsea Centenary Appeal to raise £1m for the next generation of horticulturalists, in spectacular style. It’s not the 100th show – the event was cancelled in 1917 and 1918, and again in 1939, returning in 1947 – but the 100th anniversary of the first show held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in 1913.

The show has changed a lot since those early days when nearly all the show gardens were rock gardens, and those that weren’t were known as ‘formal’ gardens. In 1913 there were 244 exhibitors; there are more than 500 today. Many gardeners think it’s the greatest flower show in the world and, to make our point, 161,000 of us flock there each year.

Open from Tuesday 21 to Saturday 25 May (RHS members only on 21 and 22 May), this year’s show offers 15 wonderfully diverse Show Gardens, 11 Fresh Gardens featuring the best of contemporary garden design, and eight Artisan Gardens. There will also be 150 exhibits from nurseries and florists in the Great Pavilion and around 250 trade stands. The Artisan Retreats are returning for a second year – beautiful summerhouses designed for relaxation by top UK artists and designers, Wayne Hemingway, Cath Kidston and Rob Ryan.

Many exhibitors are celebrating the show’s centenary year, not least on the trade stands, in a range of products (more about those later on) aimed at the gardening shopaholic (most of us qualify). Just one show garden, by award-winning Chelsea stalwart Roger Platts, has a centenary theme. Some show gardens are exuberant celebrations of design and plantsmanship; others raise important issues ranging from sustainability and water harvesting to the human condition. Here is my guide to some of the star attractions.

The M&G Centenary Garden

This handsome garden, for show sponsor M&G Investments, is called Windows Through Time: Celebrating 100 Years Of Chelsea Garden Design. It includes both new and traditional garden features, including a striking modern sculpture, 2m high, in the form of two Cs representing Chelsea and Centenary. The sculpture provides a window into the garden, showing at its far end a traditional sandstone and brick wall with, in front of it, a small pool surrounded by damp and shadeloving plants: ferns, foxgloves, acers and irises. The front of the garden has grass, wildflowers and more formal planting to reflect current styles. In the centre, there are beds of roses and perennial flowers, and an oak summerhouse with a thatched roof. This garden cleverly shows how garden design has evolved, while encapsulating timeless themes and traditions.

The Brewin Dolphin Garden

Landscape architect Robert Myers has based his design on a series of interlocking L-shaped forms, including a striking cantilevered shelter, marine plywood walls and a rectangular planting of Acer campestre providing a frame for the back and side walls. The garden is crisp and modernist but with a lively colour palette using British native species. These range from Rosa rubiginosa and Lonicera periclymenum to the striking wild gladioli, Gladiolus illyricus, and the rare green-winged orchid, Anacamptis morio. Water winds its way through the garden from a pebble water wall at the back, flowing into a canal that culminates in a pool planted with flag iris, Iris pseudoacorus, and white water lilies, Nymphaea alba.

The Daily Telegraph Garden

The designer of this cool and contemplative garden, Christopher Bradley-Hole, returns to Chelsea after a break of eight years. He has won five gold medals, two of which were awarded Best Show Garden. This garden is an interpretation of the wooded landscape of England, with vestiges of ancient woods and abstract patterns of hedges infilled with perennials and grasses. A colonnade of blond oak panels against a charred oak back wall frame two sides of the garden. Christopher Bradley-Hole combines a love of the English landscape with an influence from Japanese gardens. This will be one of the most interesting gardens. The Daily Telegraph has a knack of choosing designers who win gold medals – 15 so far, and seven medals for Best Show Garden.

The Laurent-Perrier Garden

This is Swedish designer Ulf Nordfjell’s third Chelsea show garden. He has already won two gold medals and Best Show Garden in 2009. His garden this year is a symmetrical affair, uniting Swedish minimalism with a French style of landscaping, influenced by terroirs of the Champagne region. He uses lavenders and iris in deference to its English setting. A bronze statue of Orpheus lends an enigmatic note, and a pergola on the terrace is the focal point above a rectangular pool.

The SeeAbility Garden

This garden is a first at Chelsea for designer Darren Hawkes, a first for Seeability, which is the operating name for The Royal School for the Blind, a national charity that provides support services for people with sight impairments, and a first for the sponsor, Coutts, the private bank and wealth manager. The aim is to raise awareness of the impact of visual impairment and provide positive messages on how to make gardens stimulating through block planting, the creation of silhouettes and the use of colour and contrast. A 6m-tall Robinia pseudoacacia will be the centrepiece, and there will also be 10 Ginkgo bilobas, Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’, which is new to Chelsea this year, and lots of vibrant herbaceous perennials.

The RBC Blue Water Roof Garden

Designed by Nigel Dunnett and The Landscape Agency, this is an urban rooftop garden designed to support wildlife and biodiversity as well as being a space for privacy and relaxation. The garden explores the potential of ‘skyrise greening’ to bring trees, meadows and wetlands into the heart of the densest of cities, turning the tops of buildings into ‘sponges’ to absorb the heavy rainfall resulting from extreme weather, and converting wasted space for food production or simply to enhance people’s wellbeing. ‘This is the third garden in my partnership with the Royal Bank of Canada,’ said Nigel Dunnett when I spoke to him. ‘It highlights the bigger issues, but in a way that’s really exciting for people.’ The garden is in four zones: a shade/ woodland zone, an aquatic zone, a sunny edges/green roof planting and a wetland marginal zone. The planting is dramatic and should inspire much emulation on our under-utilised city rooftops, particularly those on office buildings, including those that relaxed planning rules make it easier to convert to residential use.

Among other show gardens that entice is the East Village Garden, by Michael Balston and Marie-Louise Agius for Delancey, which celebrates the new housing and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park that will be the legacy of the 2012 Olympics, and the surrounding Lea Valley area. I look forward to the Trailfinders Australian Garden, which will look at ways to combat climate change, and The Homebase Garden by Adam Frost, a family garden that mixes ornamentals with fruit trees, soft fruit, vegetables and herbs.

I shall, of course, be making a beeline for the gardens designed by Jo Thompson and Jinny Blom, whom I interviewed in the 19 April and 10 May issues, and whose Stop The Spread Garden and B&Q Sentebale Forget-me-not Garden will be among the most exciting in the show.

Great Pavilion Highlights

Several exhibitors will be celebrating the centenary, among them Pennard Plants whose 100 Years Of Growing Your Own exhibit, in association with Lambeth charity Roots and Shoots, will present two vegetable gardens, one displaying the traditional order of an Edwardian plot in 1913, contrasted with the exuberance of a 21st-century plot in multicultural Britain. There are three floral exhibitors who exhibited in 1913, McBean’s Orchids, Blackmore & Langdon’s and Kelways, specialists in peonies, tree peonies and irises. This year their stand will include a floral display by fashionable florists, Hackney-based Rebel Rebel, and a homage to plants grown by founder James Kelway: gladioli, delphiniums and cineraria.

Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants is celebrating 25 years as an exhibitor. The nursery’s mantra is ‘right plant right place’ and expert advice is willingly given on the best conditions in which plants will thrive.

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Chelsea Shopping

There’s a great range of products available at the show and online. Several designers have created one-off pieces: Emma Bridgewater’s Centenary Mug, the STEIFF Chelsea Flower Show Bear, ‘Rose’, and Liz Earle’s Botanical Essence No100 Perfume, a fresh floral scent that captures the sublime essence of a British florist’s shop. For the more practical there are Twool Twine made from sustainable Dartmoor wool, commemorative Chelsea Centenary stamps from Royal Mail and bamboo gardening gloves. Go to www.rhsshop.co.uk – 13 of the most innovative products have been shortlisted for the 2013 RHS Chelsea Flower Show Garden Product of the Year, to be awarded at the show on 21 May.

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More dates for your diary

21-23 June The Blenheim Palace Flower Show, Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire: 01993-810530, www.blenheimpalace.com

9-14 July RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, Hampton Court, Surrey: 0845- 260 5000, www.rhs.org.uk

24-28 July RHS Flower Show Tatton Park, Cheshire: 0845-260 5000, www.rhs.org.uk

31 July 132nd Sandringham Flower Show, Sandringham, Norfolk: 01485-545400, www.sandringhamflowershow.org.uk

13-15 September Harrogate Autumn Flower Show, Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate, North Yorkshire: 01423-546157, www.flowershow.org.uk