I wrote about the Philadelphia Flower Show here last year, and ran a guest blog earlier this year about the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. Now, I’m just back from the granddaddy of them all, the Chelsea Flower Show.

Well, I remarked on the poor light in the exhibition center at Philadelphia, the shortage of actual flowers was a feature at San Francisco and the surfeit of irrelevant trade stands was noted at both – no such problems at Chelsea.

Chelsea is about plants and gardens and the trade stands reflect that pre-occupation. There were seventeen outdoor show gardens (and the minimum size is 10m x 10m), thirteen smaller outdoor show gardens, and a generous helping of outdoor trade stands designed as gardens as well as garden-related sales booths. No booths promoting river cruises or kitchen gadgets or miracle cures.

In the three acre Great Pavilion, a bright, modern structure that replaced the vast canvas tent a few years ago, were one hundred and three floral exhibits staged by nurseries, growers, florists, specialist societies, horticultural colleges and scientific institutions.

Vast billows of roses, walls of phalaenopsis, cottage style perennial plantings, cacti, a whole stand of perhaps a hundred different miniature hostas (I lost count, I’m afraid), fragrant hyacinths, luscious strawberries ready to pick, strings of tempting cherry tomatoes and so much more. Daffodils were at their peak, dahlias were in full flower - a surprising duo and neither looked forced.

The Diamond Jubilee Award for the best exhibit in the Great Pavilion was awarded to Ashwood Nurseries for their stunning exhibit of hepaticas (above), they showed all twelve species together with a range of hybrids including some developed at Ashwood.

It’s a lot to take in but you can see the plants and gardens at the Show (and see how the show comes together in the three weeks running up to the opening) from home, check out this page of videos on the Royal Horticultural Society website.

I wrote about the Chelsea Plant of The Year competition in The Telegraph and blogged every day for my Plant Talk blog for Mr. Fothergill’s.

I’ll also again be writing up the Chelsea Plant of The Year competition for the RHS magazine The Plantsman.

And I'll be discussing the Chelsea Plant of The Year winners here soon.