Chelsea has come in for a lot of stick this year with some critics/garden lovers claiming that the tickets are too expensive, the grounds are too crowded and the show gardens are too manipulated to be useful to real gardeners. There is some truth in these complaints but I think they are rather missing the point. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is not meant to be practical or realistic, it is meant to be fabulous, aspirational and inspiring — and it really is.

I start getting excited about Chelsea from the moment I buy my ticket in the depths of winter. For just one week in May, the nation joins me in my gardening obsession and I get to gossip about gardening from morning until night.

Gardener or novice, there is no more splendid sight than the Great Pavilion. I’m a sucker for roses but most of all I love the showmanship, the towers of perfect blooms and the oddities. Over the years I have made some great new plant discoveries here that have found their way into my permanent planting vocabulary, such as the wonderful fiery echinacea ‘Art’s Pride’, which adds the perfect zing to grass plantings, the silvery Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’, which lights up shady areas, and the weird-looking Scilla peruviana. There are I’m always keen to see the new clematis introductions from Ray Evison; they are so elegant and reliable. Over the years I have fallen in love with clematis ‘Cassis’, ‘Avant-Garde’ and ‘Chantilly’, to name but a few, and I’m sure this year’s new introductions, ‘Diana’s Delight’ and ‘Fleuri’, will soon be added to that list.

This year, I will also be keen to check out Daphne bholua ‘Penwood’ — an improvement from Junker’s Nursery on my favourite, heavenly-scented Daphne. I will be on the lookout for new echinaceas such as ‘Hot Summer’ and ‘Tomato Soup’ and, as always, will spend half my time at Jekka’s Herb Farm.

Times Archive, 1924: The King and Queen at Chelsea

Their majesties were much interested in the Hon. Vicary Gibbs's wonderful display of forced vegetables

• The Spring Show, 1913

• Dresses at Chelsea, 1937

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I always plump for a later entry ticket because I find that by the time I reach the Show Gardens the weary first wave are heading home, and you get a great view without the need to get your elbows out. Over the years I have had some lively debates over style and appropriated a great number of planting tricks. I loved the restraint of Christopher Bradley-Hole’s 2005 garden, especially the block planting of large and small-leaved hostas. I’ve been inspired to use the more subtle Heuchera cylindrica for its delicate lime bells after spotting them in the planting for the Savills Garden in 2007.

It’s no secret that the gardens at Chelsea have been styled and manipulated; that some plants are held back in cold stores, while others are brought forward with heat lamps (and hairdryers!); but it’s not always to the end you would expect. I got very excited when Tom Stuart-Smith chose to use some irises in bud rather than all flowering. Those spears of burnt orange and purple looked like loaded paintbrushes and reminded me that it is just as important to choose plants for their foliage, bud and autumn colour as it is for their flowers.

In my own gardens, I tend to use these flowering manipulation techniques to the opposite effect. I’m not trying to create the perfect garden for one week in May, I want to extend the season of interest for as long as possible. Try keeping spring bulbs (daffodils, tulips, etc) in your fridge for a couple of months before planting out. You’ll enjoy a staggered flowering time and will be able to enjoy your spring bulbs for longer.

The Chelsea Chop works in a similar way; cut back the plant by half to delay the flowering time of herbaceous plants. Traditionally, you would do this around the time of Chelsea, but I have found that you can get away with this type of haircut right up until the end of July.

Garden designers at Chelsea have been rumoured to order at least four times as many plants as they think they will need, so that they can present a full planting scheme. While you don’t need to go to this extreme in your own garden, it is a principle worth adopting. I always include filler plants that give instant bulk to juvenile plantings and this is a great idea to steal if you are waiting for your own planting scheme to fill out. Umbellifers such as Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’ are a classic choice, but you could choose something more unusual such as a pink hairy chervil (Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’) the shadeloving Pimpinella major ‘Rosea’ or the clean white airy flowers of Orlaya grandiflora. Aquilegias are another great filler plant because they can be cut back after flowering, allowing other plants to grow up around them.

This year I am looking forward to: urban gardens that aim to prove that you can be both green and contemporary; solutions for times of flood and drought; and Adam Frost’s move from Urban Gardens to a large Show Garden. I’m excited about Sarah Eberle’s credit-crunch gardens — she had only three months and £15,000 budget so it should be a real contrast to the other gardens at Chelsea. I can’t wait for the Chelsea madness to start. Love it or hate it, the show gets people talking about gardens — and that’s my favourite topic.

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