Of the main show gardens our personal highlights were the "Quiet Time: DMZ Forbidden Garden", Joe Swifts first entry to Chelsea "The Homebase Teenage Cancer Trust Garden", Flemings "Trailfinders Australian Garden". The overall winner was Cleve West's Garden.
The M&G Garden
Fantastic Garden by Chris Beardshaw, best hobbit house in the show!
Flemings Australian Garden
Cleve West's prize winning garden.
The Homebase Teenage Cancer Trust Garden
Diarmuid Gavin's Pyramid in the background and DMZ forbidden garden in the foreground.
The Artisan gardens were also interesting, our favorite (and the Judges Favourite too), was the "Satoyama Life" Japanese styled garden. We also particularly liked the Scottish Agricultural College Garden which had a theme relating to an imaginary plant hunter.
Scottish Agricultural College Garden
Satoyama Life
The Fresh gardens is a new concept this year, and we didn't really think it worked too well, the basic idea was to do something different, modern or unusual, but it just didn't seem to gel very well. The Fresh gardens were placed with various retail displays, and some of them (for example the Sculpture Park display) were far more interesting than the actual gardens in this category. It seems the Chelsea judges were also disappointed with only one garden attaining the much coveted Gold Medal.
Spot the spray-painted Agave...
The Renault Garden
This was the winner in the Fresh Gardens category
After a busy day its been fun to watch the more relaxed TV coverage and compare the gardens (they look bigger on TV!)Gaz