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News stories from the show

Emerging trends and themes

The highlight of the gardening year, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is renowned for setting the trends for the gardening world. Examples at this year’s show include:

Space - taking gardening to another dimension!

The planetary system, space, time travel and star gazing are set to take Chelsea to another dimension! This year Bradstone is creating a ‘terrestrial space garden’ on planet Mars. Within the Great Pavilion Cardiff is transporting a Doctor Who exhibit to Chelsea and two roof gardens, Star Gazing and The Sky at Night, are intended for astronomers. Another small garden, The Transit of Venus, will explore Venus’ rare transits across the sun, which enables the first measurements of our planetary system to be calculated.

Good enough to eat

Growing your own fruit and vegetables is a big theme across all of the 2007 RHS flower shows. With Horticultural Trade Association (HTA) Garden Industry Monitor statistics suggesting that fruit and vegetable plants or seeds sales is worth £76.8m, growing your own is a popular British pastime.

Herbs were the flavour of the 2006 Chelsea Flower Show, but this year there is a huge appetite for fruit and vegetables in the garden. The Thomas Telford Tollhouse Garden is divided into a fruit and herb garden, with cabbages, carrots, beetroot, strawberries, gooseberries and rosemary.

Fetzer’s garden is a winery and vineyard, and in the Leeds City Council’s garden planting has been influenced by scent and culinary and medicinal uses. With fruit and vegetables, a wildlife habitat and recycled materials, The Marshalls Sustainability Garden will demonstrate that you can be green, grow your own and still have a great looking garden.

In the Great Pavilion, Jekka McVicar will promote the virtues of growing and eating your own produce as a source of nourishment and physical exercise and W Robinson will also be returning to Chelsea to exhibit a range of vegetables.

Green gardening

Sustainability, climate change and environmentally-responsible gardening will be one of the biggest themes at the show.

Chelsea is an excellent platform for exhibitors to highlight environmentally-responsible gardening and The Marshalls Sustainability Garden includes exciting green initiatives, such as solar-panelled sculptures, which produce electricity, and recycling grey water from the house through reed bed filters.

The Hasmead Sand and Ice Garden will address concerns about global warming, melting glaciers and expanding deserts, and in The Daily Telegraph Garden all hard surfaces will be permeable to allow rainwater to penetrate the soil. The Fetzer Sustainable Winery Garden will use green power, waste water recycling and highlight local and sustainable materials.