I always come back from Chelsea with a phone full of photographs and a notebook full of new plant ideas. I arrive at the show the weekend before it opens, buzzing with excitement to see what’s in store. I have to come up with several quick-turnaround articles for the House & Garden website so I’m under pressure firstly to assess what I think stands out, and secondly to sift through everything to find exciting plants, products and innovations.

To deal with this as best I can, I organise the show into manageable chunks, looking at the main show gardens first, then the smaller gardens, followed by the plants in the Great Pavilion, and then the trade stands. I try to be methodical, looking initially at the overall garden design and then slowing myself down to look at the detail and the planting. I haven’t missed a Chelsea in 28 years, so every year I think I have it down to a fine art - yet every year I come away feeling that I have missed things. It’s such a vast show that I think you just have to accept you can’t see everything, and I think it’s better to see less in a more focused, meaningful way, than rushing round like a headless chicken and not taking anything in.

To me, the show felt excitingly plant-led this year, rather than sensationalist, which felt right for the current climate. There was less hard landscaping, less bling, less distraction. The focus was on the plants and especially those that will thrive in our undeniably changing climate. I’ve already written about the plants that particularly caught my eye for H&G here, but inevitably there were many more plants to lust after, and too little space to wax lyrical about them, so in this post I add some more detailed notes on how to grow them, where to get them from, and also squeeze in a few more plants for good measure. Plus I reveal which of the show gardens were my real hand-on-heart favourites.

Planting ideas from my top two gardens