Although I went to Chelsea last year I didn’t blog about it – for lots of reasons, but mainly because I didn’t get there until later in the week by which time a plethora of excellently written blogs had pretty much said all there was to say.

This year there are probably even more excellently written blogs, because you see this year in particular Chelsea 2015 seems to be, to quote Bill and Ted, most excellent.

I’m not going to wax lyrical about the various stylistic merits of any gardens or make a critique of every garden, instead I thought I would make a note of those little details that caught either my eye, my heart or stirred my imagination.

To start with you can’t beat the Artisan Gardens for their attention to the minutiae, well I suppose you have to given their size. I loved the forge on The Motor Neurone Disease Association Garden, it seems hard to imagine a few weeks ago it was a pile of bricks on a pallet until Twigs Gardens got their hands on them.

However my absolute favorite garden in this category was The Evaders Garden by Chorley Council, designed by the uber talented John Everiss.

I loved the transition in the planting either on side of the parachute path and the way the sun lit the stained glass. However it was the sculpture along side the beautifully built wall that gave this garden such emotion.

The Sentebale – Hope in Vulnerability garden designed by Matt Keightley, was another garden to stir the soul. It’s hard to imagine that a garden so full of orange could be so restful but in the early morning light the garden glowed softly.

This was another garden that stirred the emotions with the children’s footprints on the path, simple, effective and quietly beautiful.

Moving on from gardens with amazing paths to gardens with gorgeous water. Water is a difficult one at Chelsea, the Plane tree mast not only chokes the visitor but also settles on any surface seemingly especially drawn to water features. This is not such an issue for a naturalistic swimming pond but an absolute nightmare for the sleek reflective water features in both The World Vision Garden and Breakthrough Breast Cancer Garden.

However due to amazing diligence with shrimping nets and filters neither of these gardens had dusty water to detract from the mirror like qualities of their garden pools. They also relied on perfect levels so hats off to their contractors

A couple of the walls caught me eye for separate reasons I loved the Mondrian like wall in The Telegraph garden, I couldn’t capture the details well but each piece had been beautifully crafted with shading and motif.

In stark contrast to the precision of The Telegraph Garden the sinuous curves of the Pure Land Foundation garden were so sculptural they added much to this small space. Again hats off to the contractors for making the designs such a fabulous reality.

Its hard to say which garden was my favorite because they all had something different to offer but my absolute favorite thing about Chelsea is, and probably always will be……….the plants………. both inside and out.