Chelsea success

I had a wonderful Chelsea this year.

The Long Suffering also enjoys Chelsea too - cos it's the one time of year she can be sure I'll not be under her feet. Like royalty I'm taken to Chelsea with my own driver - not in a flashy Daimler, mind you, but crammed in the back of the firm's Transit balancing packets of flippin' Rootgrow, seeds, cuttings, pots and all the other paraphernalia that we'll need for the show.

Although we don't actually exhibit at the show, our influence is certainly there.

We were particularly pleased for our friends at Hillier Garden Centres, whose team picked up a record 62nd consecutive Gold Medal - an achievement that earned them a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

This year, their Chelsea exhibit highlighted the benefit of micro organisms in the soil to plant health and drew comparisons with the benefits of micro organisms in the human digestive system.

As trees are usually the most important structural plants in any garden their successful establishment and root development is key to their success. It is appropriate therefore to highlight the importance of what goes on below the ground to the more visible part of the plant in the garden landscape. Friendly fungi are available to the amateur gardener in the form of Rootgrow - a granular formulation of mycorrhizal fungi which is added to the planting hole to put them in direct contact with the roots.

The plant roots then develop in association with the fungi to aid establishment of the plant and overcome problems associated with replanting.

What else took my fancy this year? Well like most of you I was glad there was barely a piece of decking in sight - it really is about time we started to focus our energies on reclaiming the humble garden for what it was intended to be - a place to appreciate beuatiful flowers, grow tasty fruit and veg and a place to have a snooze after lunch! Indeed I was pleased to see the BBC reporting the other day about the loss of the front garden - but what can be done?

I was also glad to see a reduction in the number of so-called water features - another blessed curse on the garden. The constant drip and dribble of water through the mouth of a whale or some other inappropriate model is another thing to get me ranting! If you want a water feature in your garden - I suggest you look outside your kitchen window now - enough blessed rain to last us a lifetime!