Chelsea Flower Show with Times Online

Gardens have been designed as the perfect place for children, the infirm and even the birds. Now landscaping for fish can be added to the Chelsea Flower Show checklist.

Today aquatic gardening will make its debut at the show with the first underwater garden display. It is the first time that the Royal Horticultural Society has allowed an entirely aquatic garden, which includes six tonnes of water and glass, to feature. The organisers were so impressed by the concept, that they agreed to make an exception for the ban on animals at Chelsea to allow fish to be included in the display.

It was designed by David Domoney, the gardener for the ITV This Morning show. “Usually you’ll just see a lily and some messy green stuff when you look down on a pond, but if you get in the water and look from beneath the surface, they’re completely different,” Mr Domoney said. “I wanted to show what a diversity of plants grows under water. I call them the invisible plants — we hardly ever see them.”

His fascination with aquatic plants began when he was a child and won two fish, Fred and Freda, at a funfair. “I used to create these little landscapes for fish in tanks,” he said.

The fish in the aquatic plant display are black tetras from Brazil, pearl danios from Sri Lanka and white cloud mountain minnows from China. Aquatic snails managed to sneak in unseen when the plants were selected.

Among the plants featured in the display inside the pavilion at Chelsea is an underwater moss-like species, driftwood chladoflora, which is threatened in the wild. In Japan it is dried and kept in the home because it is thought to bring good luck. Mr Domoney hoped the display would help to raise awareness of how misuse of water had the potential to devastate plants in their natural environment.

Among the displays this year is a garden designed as the perfect home for endangered water voles. The River and Rowing Museum’s Ratty’s Refuge is designed to show gardeners living close to rivers how they can help the water vole to survive by creating shelter and food with plants such as the yellow flag iris and reed canary grass.

Helen Perkins, of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “Gardeners can help halt the water vole’s decline. Creating wetland habitats in gardens can help to reduce the fragmentation of populations and benefit a range of other species such as dragonflies and amphibians.”

The show will be one of the most animal friendly, with several gardens designed to encourage wildlife.

Enjoying the show

— The RHS Chelsea Flower Show runs from tomorrow until Saturday at the Royal Hospital, London SW3. It is open from 8am until 8pm (5.30pm on Saturday)

— The RHS has more than 370,000 members. Entry tomorrow and Wednesday is for members only and all tickets have been sold

— Non-members can still buy tickets for Thursday and Friday evenings (entry from 5.30pm).

www.rhs.org.uk/chelsea

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