Many of this year’s top designers confidently turned to green, and the result is an outstanding collection of gardens — which the judges have acknowledged with eight gold medals.

The green theme was not a group decision — though many designers are supplied by the same nurseries, they plough their own furrows. Tom Hoblyn, who created a fern-based design for a shady Urban Garden (Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust), put it like this: “I thought I would be nice and original and do a garden that’s just green. You can imagine my dismay when I walked into the showground on the first day and saw trolleys full of ferns.”

Tom Stuart-Smith’s Best in Show design for Laurent Perrier is perhaps the purest, using swirling layers of foliage, including the palmate Rodgersia podophylla ‘Rotlaub’, glossy wild ginger Asarum europaeum and hummocks of lime-green Hakonechloa macra, interspersed with only white flowers.

These winning gardens, and several of the small ones too, provide inspiration for how to create texture and form with a mixture of large-leaved plants such as Gunnera manicata, rheum, rodgersia, and feathery foliage from plants such as fennel and ferns. Phormiums are used widely for impact, and Fleming’s and Trailfinders Australian garden introduces some interesting natives, including Dianella tasmanica, which has strappy leaves like a phormium but a softer habit, and Adenanthos sericeus with silvery-green feathery foliage, both of which were grown in Europe and, Fleming’s say, should do well in our gardens.

Philip Nash explores architectural plants in the Gavin Jones Garden of Corian that would suit hot, dry gardens, including the striking glaucous palm Bismarckia nobilis. Ian Dexter, for The Marshalls Garden, has included a number of what he describes as “edgy” plants, such as the spiky New Zealand native Pseudopanax crassifolius and contorted hazel trees, to create a dynamic garden for children.

White flowers are used widely to offset foliage, especially Geranium phaeum ‘Album’, Libertia grandiflora, white irises, tall white foxgloves (there is also an unusual dwarf silver-leaved white foxglove on display at the Botanic Nursery stand in the Great Pavilion) and the dainty white rush Luzula nivea. Burgundy and purple are the favoured colours in many of the small gardens, from acers, heucheras, aquilegias, salvias and astrantias.

Alliums in white and purple are still popular accent plants, but Sarah Price has incorporated the unusual acid yellow Allium obliquum in her painterly design of a stylised meadow for QVC, which also includes the exquisite soft yellow Trollius alabaster and the Scottish thistle Cirsium heterophyllum, with lilac-pink flowers, which can be seen on Hardy’s exhibit in the Pavilion.

It is a surprise to see lupins once again in show gardens, but Cleve West combines the wine-coloured ‘Masterpiece’ in an exuberant planting of oranges and purples in the BUPA garden. Philip Nixon uses the smaller and more lax blue form of the wild lupin as a leitmotiv in his elegant beds for the Savills garden.

Trees have a strong presence both as focal points in the designs and to create shade. Unusual varieties include cloud-pruned hornbeams (Stuart-Smith), southern beech (Andy Sturgeon), pepper tree (Robert Myers) and Caucasian wingnut (Arabella Lennox Boyd). Many of the small gardens feature multistemmed trees such as the Chinese scholars’ tree (Sophora japonica) and Tibetan cherry (Prunus serrula).

In contrast to the gardens, the Great Pavilion is awash with colour from exotics and garden favourites. One of the eyecatching new plants is Clematis ‘Rebecca’, a large-flowered deep red on offer on from Raymond Evison and Thorncroft which is also introducing two early large-flowered varieties — the lilac-flowered ‘Stillwaters’ and blush-pink ‘Morning Star’ — both of which can be grown in containers. Whetman Pinks is introducing five new varieties in the Early Bird series, including the salmon pink ‘Stardust’ which will flower for six months if regularly deadheaded.

It has taken Robert and Philip Harkness, of Harkness Roses, 40 years to breed a pure white climbing rose, and the result, White Star ‘Harquil’, is launched at the show. The large open paper-white blooms, which are scented, will repeat bloom, and the plant will grow to a mannerly two metres.

In contrast, the City of Durban display offers plenty of drama in the shape of spiky Encephalaros cycads, one with steely blue foliage, the other dark green, and both armed with lethal spines. They are not just good for drought conditions, they are the ultimate burglar deterrents too.

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show continues until May 24. Tickets are now sold out.

Explore Gardens

• Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

• Chelsea Flower Show

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