Talkback: Wilding the Chelsea Flower Show

Oh,dear, Kate. We bloggers seem to be more interested in blogs about bees and wasps than the great show that is Chelsea - really down-to-earth people I think. But just supposing I could have gone to Chelsea I would love to see the B&Q garden which is all edible plants, all the gardens classed as naturalistic and those which use wild flowers a lot and recycled materials. Which says a lot about my financial position I think! And of course I would search out the Alpine Garden Society display and any rare or endangered species just to see whether I could help by growing them. I never cease to be grateful to the people who saved the Gingko biloba tree from extinction by cultivating it every time i look at my beautiful young one and think present day gardeners should do the same for endangered species threatened by climate change like the high alpines. And many of our native wild flowers are threatened too so well done all the designers who featured them in Chelsea this year.

PS Thank goodness the plantings are only temporary since all that valerian would absolutely swamp the streets and buildings and walls of London if it was allowed to seed!

Thank you happymarion, perhaps I should have called the blog: 'Ducks and frogs at the Chelsea Flower Show'. I can't get valerian to grow in my garden (well, I have a small bit which has been munched by vine weevils) - but it's very welcome!

We have lots and lots of Valerian tearing the walls apart in our garden ;-)

I actually planted some valerian in my garden and was taken over. Luckly I removed the lot before I was unable to get up to the top of the steepest part of the garden. I am learning very quickly from this web site. Thanks to everybody I will have to change my screen name, as I am really spending more time in the garden and enjoying getting dirty.

Aha, lazygardner, you have discovered that the more you do, the more you can do. The call of the garden is irresistible if you only give nature a chance. Try looking at some of the things nature provides for free, like lichens and flowers on weeds, through a magnifying glass. You will never run out of interesting things in a garden like yours. Even the Chelsea Flower Show cannot compete with what nature has to offer.

I suppose really the garden that attracts the most wildlife should win, and with the least concrete, so that the rain falls through replenishing the water table instead of flooding the country as there is nowhere for the water to go.

I have noticed a lot of free plants mother nature has planted in my garden,foxgloves,ferns,a nettle patch and of course brambles, which I am using as protection for nesting birds,I had a nest of blue tits using this area to rear their young. Thanks Happymarion for encouraging me to see my garden in a different way and realising that nature is wonderful.

I'm loving the new Artisan category, lots of my kind of gardens there. As an aquatics consultant, I always wonder what the posh water features would look like with a few weeks of algal growth changing things. Some of them are beautiful compositions of rock and landscaping that would look terrible once life started to colonise them. I've not seen much detail of the garden that houses goldfish in a glass table, I think I'd have to make a bee-line for that first to check that it wasn't merely a giant goldfish bowl full of 'expendable' garden ornaments..