It's Showtime!

With the gardening season now in full swing and plants showing off just how brilliant they can perform; luscious green leaves and gorgeous blooms opening all around the garden, I decided to go and get some inspiration from other gardeners at The Gardeners World Live Show at The N.E.C. Arena in Birmingham.

The rain clouds loomed overhead and occasionally they would help the exhibitors by dowsing the gardens with their contents. On the whole though, the weather was well behaved and remained sunny although not too hot to make the plants wilt in their temporary homes.

My first port of call was the impressive floral marquee, complete with over 150 exhibitors all eager to show of their favourite plants (and hopefully sell some too). With so many stands and displays to look at I decided that the only way to tackle the crowded marquee was to take a systematic approach; walking the perimeter first and then completing the central aisles methodically so as not to miss anything.

There were lots of collisions with other visitors due to the fact that everyone was looking at the plants and not paying any attention to where they were walking. Combine that with the brightly coloured, plastic plant trolleys that were being dragged behind the majority of visitors and you had yourself a very dangerous decision to make: either look at the exhibits as you got swept along with the crowd and risk bumping into lots of people and getting run over by trolleys or, look where you're going an not get hurt. I opted for the first choice - as did everyone else- and am glad to report I only got hit by one trolley.

By the fifth stand, I'd already been suckered into buying a plant - Heuchera 'Marmalade' - and after carefully carrying it around with me for the rest of the day it now resides outside my backdoor until such time as I work out where it's going.

The culprit for convincing me to purchase one - and I struggled to resist buying more - was the 'Solva Plants Nursery' display with their stunning collection of outstanding heuchera plants. As I continued around the marquee, other heuchera specialists had equally stunning displays to try tempt me.

After smelling, touching and looking at the large array of unusual plant varieties I took myself outside to examine the show gardens. There was a mixture of amateur and professional designers here and some were better than others. The key thing that I noticed with all of the gardens was how the style seemed to be based on an informal, natural look with the emphasis being given to the plants rather than the hard landscape materials.

My favourite gardens were 'An Urban Retreat' designed by Paul Titcombe, which won Best Small garden in Show and a Gold medal; and 'Your England: From Information to Destination' designed by Marney hall on behalf of the Highways Agency. It won Best in Show and, of course, a gold medal.

The Urban Retreat Garden was very simple and achieved a great deal in a small space. A beautiful coloured glass panel built into the white wall reflected the colours of the planting which was also very sympathetically done. The plants chosen worked exquisitely together, all shades of blues, mauve's, browns and reds. In fact, this colour theme seemed to run throughout all of the show gardens this year - obviously the 'in' colour of choice!

The 'Your England' garden was very restful. The only garden that was designed so that visitors could actually walk around the garden, it represented a walk through England; starting in the highlands with rugged mountains and cascading waterfalls, through to woodlands with their trickling streams and onto grasslands and boggy marshes, eventually ending along the estuaries in the South. The garden had been constructed expertly with the plants looking like they'd been growing there for years.

Amazing what you can do if you embrace nature and allow yourself to imagine.