Alongside the plates of beetroots and carrots are handy tips for the aspiring exhibitor. Advice like '..to get good colour in your beetroots, water the row with a solution of 10ml of salt in a gallon of water 2 weeks before harvest' or 'after washing your carrots, wrap them in damp kitchen paper and keep them cool - good colour is worth 3 or 4 points', could make all the difference.

The fruit exhibits impressed me most - it was painful looking at huge, luscious black cherries 'Summer Sun' and not being able to taste them. I've never tried the strange looking 'doughnut' peaches, but was assured they are very sweet, have white flesh and a very small stone, 'Saturn' was the variety on show. One allotment society from Yealmhampton near Plymouth had a fantastic display that included a pineapple!

Very helpful fruit enthusiasts from the Northern Fruit Group (www.northernfruitgroup.com ) are on hand to give advice and answer questions. I found out how to prune a reluctant gooseberry and Clifford from Fruitscape told me there was no excuse for not growing lots of fruit in my small London garden.

At Tatton there are gabions in the show gardens, in the back to backs and on the trade stands - people are taking home DIY versions!

Basically a gabion is a metal - usually steel, cage filled with stones/rocks or various heavy materials. They are usually used to retain soil in banks and terraces or as barriers. I've seen taller, slim ones used as a wall and smaller, cubed ones made into seats - the permutations are endless, as demonstrated by the two young designers of the Visionary garden, Cubed3, at this year's Tatton.

This gold medal winning design is a modular scheme, gabions are linked together like building blocks and used in different ways - some are filled with rocks as foundations, some are filled with soil and planted and some are placed in the pond, allowing you to walk over the water's surface. Larger cages have been left empty and plants are able to grow up through them - it's very effective.

On the Edible Trends garden the Reaseheath College team have filled their gabions with carefully placed layers of stones and wood in decreasing sizes, creating a very pleasing pattern and a haven for wildlife. Apparently it took them ages to do but it looks fantastic.

A very 'green' way to fill your gabions is with odd bits of bricks, slates and tiles left over from building jobs, plus any empty bottles you may have accumulated. This is what they have used on A Place for Waste, another gold medal winning garden.

As you look around the show you will see all sorts of shapes and fillings and gabions used in many ways. I am feeling quite inspired and am planning to try something with sempervivums and I rather like the idea of turf cubes.

Sue tells me that her nursery (www.lodgelane.co.uk) is coming along well, it's hard work and not very lucrative as yet, but she loves it and is building a strong client base. Ideally she would like to concentrate on the nursery work in the spring and summer and write in the winter - sounds perfect.

The show garden she has created with her co-designer Isabelle Brooke is the sort of garden that we all wish offices would provide for their workers - a lovely, plant filled space for eating, meetings and getting away from your desk when you're having a bad day! It's quite a big garden, double the size of the other back to backs and I wondered if Sue and Isabelle would be having a go at a big show garden, at Chelsea perhaps? Given their progress so far, I wouldn't be surprised.

If you fancy following in Sue's footsteps and taking part in BBC Gardener of the Year download an application form today and send it in before next Wednesday.

It's a back to back designed to show how a small space can be productive and child friendly yet still look modern and stylish. As Sharon points out, a fruit garden was the obvious choice - growing veg is hard work if you are a working mother. Her children are three and five and she runs her own gardening business.

For children, having things like strawberries and apples ready to pick and eat in their own garden is wonderful. No boring digging and cooking involved, it's instant food. Sharon has some great ideas for fun ways to grow fruit ( www.theplantswoman.co.uk). I particularly like the idea of making a wigwam of poles and growing thornless raspberries and/or blackberries over it, a few strawberry plants round the outside and the kids have a fruity den.

Fruit growing involves much less day to day management than most vegetables and the rewards are high. You plant the trees or bushes and they will crop year after year, with increasing yields.

It's these increasing yields that bother Sharon, so much goes to waste, particularly apples and pears. She has had the bright idea to initiate Fruitshare the aim being, to make surplus fruit available to others.

She has nominated the 24th/25th October as Fruitshare weekend. People who want to take part can register their address and those who want fruit can come round and get it. You could either put your excess fruit in bags outside your house or have an open day and have a bit of a party. Sounds like a fruity date for the diary!

This year, for the first time, there was a special competition for young designers under 25 from the north-west region. Two finalists were selected and invited to build gardens that were to be judged alongside the other show gardens and awarded RHS medals. Next year the Young Designer of the Year competition goes national and there will be three lucky garden-builders having a go.

Lee Belgrau is a student at Reaseheath College and his design, 'Red Rhythm', was one of the two chosen this year.

I think it's stunning - one of the most accomplished here. Lee says that his inspiration came from the shiny red posts that are the first thing you notice, rising up out of a beautiful raised bed. The five verticals are continued horizontally across a broad path of rough cut blocks of slate - creating a satisfying contrast of textures.

He has carried the red into the planting. It's vibrant and sophisticated; Crocosmia 'Lucifer', Dahlia 'Bishop of Llandaff' and dark Helenium 'Moerheim Beauty' lead the way. On the shadier side of the path, large specimens of Photinia 'Red Robin' and Astilbe 'Burgundy Red' continue the theme. I like the way that Lee has designed the garden with young clients in mind, it's ideal for a smaller, urban space, perfect for socialising.

Lee got a well-deserved Gold medal, a fantastic achievement for his first show garden. He has demonstrated that good design is about scale, function, harmony and, of course, rhythm. I shall be looking out for his name at future shows and I'm also quite tempted to look out for some shiny red posts...

When I was a child I had no interest in gardening - it was an activity that kept my parents away from me for hours on end and so I resented it. I was amazed recently talking to two horticulturist friends of mine when they agreed that, as boys, the highlight of their week was watching Gardeners' World! It also seemed the influence of their grandparents was the important thing. I hear that my fellow blogger, Sam Youd, Head Gardener at Tatton Park has seven grandchildren under the age of six, I wonder how many of them will catch the bug?

If I were a child today, it would be a different story. I'd be counting the days til my day out at this year's Tatton Park show.

Children are admitted free and the RHS have made sure there are plenty of stimulating and fun ways to introduce them to the world of horticulture.

If your children are very young and you don't want to spend the day buying and then mopping up, ice cream, there's lots of hands-on playing activities to amuse them. They can make animals out of vegetables, do floor puzzles and have fun getting dirty messing about with earth, plus a few worms if they're lucky. Arts About Manchester are planning a circus style tent plus a balloon garden and will be showing a screening of Bee Movie, which might be a welcome chance for a sit down (and a snooze) for tired parents.

One of the show gardens, Edible Trends is giving away pumpkin plants to the first 100 children to visit the garden, so that they can grow them for Halloween. If you miss that and you're feeling peckish, try the Waitrose outdoor kitchen, where your budding Jamie Oliver can have a go at creating a salad lunch.

For teenagers, the floristry tent might offer some unexpected inspiration. The floral jewellery workshops might offer something for even the most disaffected youth - and if you remember the spectacular hats at Chelsea, the results could be amazing.

Artistic teenagers might also be inspired by Jack Dunckley, the 16-year-old, medal-winning, garden designer (silver medal at Hampton Court this year). Take them to have a look at the gardens in the Young Designer of the Year category, you never know, they might want to have a go.

Who knows why this easy, sun-loving, herbaceous perennial has suddenly become the plant of the moment? A white variety features in Jane Seymour's garden in the Wives of Henry VIII category and it has been used in several others. It's a plant that looks good in naturalistic planting schemes. It marries well with grasses, having delicate ferny foliage and of course it looks good at the moment.

The plants that are doing it for me this year, apart from succulents of course (I've only bought three so far), are grasses. I know grasses have been fashionable for a while now, but it's not so much the plants, as how they are grown, that caught my eye this time.

Knoll Gardens (www.knollgardens.co.uk ) have a stylish display outside their tent, all the grasses are planted in rusted metal containers. They are various heights but some are quite tall - 1m at least, this really shows off the cascading varieties and brings the shorter ones up to stroking height. That's the trouble with a lot of grasses, you just have to run your hands through them. On Oak Tree Nursery's (www.oaktreenursery.com) stand they have a sign saying 'Please try not to touch the plants' - it's an almost irresistible urge.

I think the most beautiful of the danglers in Knoll's display is Carex testacea. The fine, bronze-tinted leaves are quite springy but the flower heads hang gracefully, way down the sides of the pot. Another, similar carex called 'Dark Horse' has dark brown bobbly flower heads which look great against the rusty surface. For a bit more colour I loved Eragrostis 'Totnes Burgundy', it gradually changes from green to red as it falls. Hakonechloa macra 'Alba aurea' , a bright, gold and green variegated grass that fans out quite horizontally, also looks good in a tall container, whereas Stipa arundinacea or Pheasant grass, needs to be a bit lower because it is taller - approx 60cms.

I could go on but I'll spare you - my point is that it's worth choosing the right shape of container for your grasses to really show them off. Something like a chimney pot would be fun to try.

The first thing that caught my eye was the standard redcurrants, such a good idea. Apart from the fact that they look so gorgeous with the jewel-like fruit hanging down, it makes the picking really easy. Last year I bought my parents a standard gooseberry for the same reason and they were thrilled with it.

Looking colourful and a bit messy is the children's section. There's a sandpit, a few toys and raised beds for jolly flowers and veg. If only I'd thought of that - I used to have to bribe my children to keep them quiet, a penny for every dandelion they dug up!

I'm so jealous of the little greenhouse with the cold frames beside it - I remember how tedious it was going backwards and forwards with trays of seedlings. Having somewhere for early tomatoes and tender veg is a joy, not to mention somewhere to go when it's raining.

A cutting garden - what a luxury. This one is beautiful with dahlias, cosmos, cornflowers and lots of other favourites, there's even a row of ornamental annual grasses. Imagine never having to buy your flowers: you could stroll down the straw-lined path in the evening and pick and choose.

There's everything you could want in this marvellous allotment garden, fruit trees, compost bins, even hens; and I haven't even mentioned the rows and rows of healthy vegetables. I did have to ask one of the designers about the kohl rabi - it's one of those veg that no-one confesses to have eaten. Apparently it tastes like cabbage stalks, oh well, never mind - it looks pretty.

I hope I'll have an allotment again one day, I know it's a lot of work and the pests are waiting to get you, but I can dream...

The Gold medal winning entry by the Ebrington and District Gardening Club chose a day out at Wimbledon as its theme, with an umpire's ladder chair be-decked with strawberries and a panama hat planted with white alyssum as the cream. The rest of the planting was mainly white including some lovely clematis, which sprawled over a lush green lawn, demonstrating that they can be grown as a trailing plant where there is no room for them to climb.

The simple plant combination of graduating box balls, marigolds and spider plants in copper-effect boxes was the dramatic entry from the London Gardens Society. It demonstrated that for smart, urban spaces, a bold, limited palette is often the better choice.

The idea that could probably be incorporated into most people's garden comes from the Capel Gardener's Society. Their inspiring space is called 'We'll keep a welcome in the woodpile' and shows what can be done if you have an old dead tree and a few bits of wood in a corner of your garden. The top of the tree stump is cleverly carved out to form a birdbath and the logs are piled up around it. Plants such as violas and ferns are poked in among them. The whole area becomes a haven for all sorts of wildlife and looks really pretty.

Bourne Valley Garden Centre has gone all out to show that fruit and veg can be grown ' Anyplace, anywhere' and they've got some old wellies with chives sprouting from the top to prove it!

I'll be taking a look at the contents of my attic in a whole new light when I get home...

Heather's been having a bit of a bad time of it lately apparently, no, I'm not talking about EastEnders. The heather I'm referring to is the bonny purple heather of the Scottish highlands and the moorlands of England and Wales.

Since the seventies and eighties sales of heather plants have dropped dramatically as it has fallen rapidly out of fashion, probably because it was associated with rather gloomy conifer gardens. The heather growers were in despair and in danger of going out of business. This year, they and the Heather Society (www.heathersociety.org.uk ) decided to do something to revamp their image.

They approached garden designers Claire Bryant and Jackie Edwards to come up with some fresh ideas. The result was a small garden called 'Back to Front' which was awarded a Silver-Gilt medal and has been wowing the visitors.

They have used heathers in all sorts of clever new ways to show the versatility of this diverse family of plants. There are two trendy vertical panels using lovely fresh green Erica carnea 'Foxhollow', which has lavender flowers and goes slightly bronze in winter. It requires good irrigation and regular trimming to keep it flat. Heather also lends itself surprisingly well to hedging and topiary. Here, Erica erigena is used in containers, clipped into soft pyramids and as a ball in the bed, making a welcome change from the ubiquitous Box.

There's a colourful border of summer flowering Daboecia varieties along the front of the garden and flat growing, greyish leaved Calluna vulgaris 'White Lawn' spreads over the stoney bike parking area. The more you look, the more heathers you see and yet at first glance it's the last plant you would think of. Most of the heathers they've used are lime tolerant and of course, they are evergreen and low maintenance.

The future of heathers could be looking a lot more rosy if gardeners try some of these great planting ideas - you'll have to watch EastEnders to find out about Ms Trott.

Lovely Dave Parkinson, grower of the even lovelier Disa orchids, is a grower that's worried about the issue. The dainty, brightly coloured Disa orchids that Dave breeds and grows at home in Goole, E Yorkshire, originate from South Africa, where they grow on the slopes of Table Mountain. They thrive in very specific conditions, wet, acid, low nutrient, peaty bogs and Dave has worked hard to get his growing medium just right. This is where the problem arises, Dave has found that his ideal mix is a combination of 60% peat and 40% perlite and, try as he might, nothing else works as well, or is as close to the orchids' natural environment.

The RHS policy on the use of peat is clear, it fully supports the government target of a 90% peat reduction in all growing media by 2010. This policy extends to all its gardens and it encourages all exhibitors at RHS shows to follow suit.

Exhibiting at flower shows is crucial to Dave's business. Shows are where he showcases his Disas (he has won 7 RHS gold medals), and where his customers can place orders. He is worried about how the RHS 'no peat' rule will affect him - will the exhibitors be policed and possibly excluded for using peat?

Is there a case for limited, responsible use of peat in horticulture ?

There are vast world reserves of peat and the industry does seem to be taking notice of environmental concerns. Canada has 25% of the world's peat supply, they only harvest a tiny fraction of their reserves and would have you believe they are responsible environmentalists.

You can read more about their policy for peat use here: http://www.peatmoss.com/concern.php

The Canadians also claim to be finding ways to speed up the regeneration process after peat harvesting, but it's very hard to know who to believe when so many 'experts' have vested interests.

In this country it seems that gardeners have taken notice of warnings about the unsustainability of peat harvesting and the government target of a 40% reduction in peat usage by 2005, was met. However Defra have admitted that the next target of 90% replacement of peat by 2010 is too ambitious. Practically, that means that 84% of growing media used should be non-peat. This will not be achieved, but it's moving in the right direction, so gardeners and growers are to be congratulated.

It's a pity that golfers in desert countries can't be persuaded to take up beach volley ball or boules instead - that would save a few million tons of Baltic peat. Apparently peat is also used in feminine hygiene products - not quite sure how, but ladies, do your duty - ask for 'peat free' in future.

Borut Benedejcic dreamed of becoming a wine producer in the Karst, but it wasn't possible for a young man who hadn't been born into an existing wine dynasty. Instead he became a horticulturist.

On a visit to England four years ago he visited The RHS Chelsea Flower Show. There and then he decided that one day he too would build a show garden alongside the best in the world.

This year he applied and as an unknown quantity, was guided by the RHS to have a go at The Hampton Court Palace Flower Show first, with a small garden.

He called his design Pepa's Karst Garden. Pepa is the typical name of a traditional Karst woman and Borut has lovingly recreated her cottage.

With his wife Tanya and a stonemason or two, he brought over all 46 tons of plants and materials from Slovenia in two big trucks. The stone door and window frames are over 200 years old and are from an old cottage. They will be returned after the show. In the front garden is an original old wellhead and vines climbing up wooden posts.

The highlight of the garden without a doubt, is the dry stone wall around the front. It is a work of art made of skilfully knapped stones with small chips filling the gaps. Over the wall sedums and sempervivums grow as if they had been there for years.

The whole garden is built with such love and respect for the Karst heritage that it just looks completely right and comfortable.

The judges obviously thought so to and awarded it a Gold medal and Best Small Garden. A very happy Borut and Tanya are already planning that Chelsea garden!

It must have been ghastly, having to dig and heave things about in the relentless heat, with only a snack bar on site to keep you going. But as far as I can tell at this stage, the results of all that sweat and sunburn look fantastic.

Some of the show gardens are finished and the flowers look perky and fresh. No garish colour combinations here. I saw one with a whole bed of reddish achillea mixed with coppery echinacea - it was simply beautiful and stopped me in my tracks.

At this time of year there are so many lovely blues around, like agapanthus, dark Lavender 'Hidcote', aconitum and fluffy ageratum. I saw some of these combined with purple-leaved cabbages, silvery artichokes and glorious sweet peas - you felt cooler just looking at it.

On her Garden Energy exhibit Sarah Eberle has some of the greenest turf I've ever seen - it's so fine and dense, I had to check it was real. Maybe this is what golfers are used to, but compared to the rather brown fields of the showground it looked extraordinary.

I came across one designer who was painting his grass black! He wanted the effect of the new shoots coming through it, like emeralds, it was strangely moving. Green is just a colour, but so emotionally charged.

Soon all the high-viz will be gone, the painful pink will have turned to desirable brown and the show will be open. I can't wait - it's huge and exciting. Henry VIII would have loved it!

My research was confusing - it seems to have been a name that was applied to a whole group of fragrant flowers in the 14th-16th centuries. One definition says that the name means 'July flowers', derived from the French, juillet , (so maybe it should be pronounced jillyflowers ?) This would make sense as French was the language of the court and was widely spoken. Lots of flowers that bloom in July, like stocks, pinks, carnations, sweet Williams and sweet rocket were called gillyflowers. Wall flowers are also mentioned, but I think that must be a reference to wall Germander (Teucrium chamaedrys) or wall Valerian (Centranthus ruber), because the plants we know as wallflowers, Cheiranthus, are over by July.

The plants that are most usually called gillyflowers seem to be carnations and pinks, they were very significant flowers in Tudor times and were used symbolically in art. The 'clove gillyflower' was Dianthus caryophyllus, which was introduced from the Turkish court and had a lovely clovey-nutmeg scent, very popular in nosegays. These were the ancestors of our modern carnations and legends tell how they first appeared on earth when Christ carried the cross. As she walked behind Him, the Virgin's tears dropped on the ground and carnations sprang up where they fell - because of this they came to symbolise undying love.

There is a famous painting by Raphael in the National Gallery, called Madonna of the Pinks It shows Mary and the infant Jesus both holding pinks - it's beautiful and symbolises her love and betrothal, as a bride of Christ, and his imminent death. On a lighter note there is another gorgeous painting by Holbein, that shows a young man seated beside a vase of pinks, signifying the fact that he is already betrothed. Must have been a very useful device in the Tudor dating world.

Pinks were called pinks simply because of their colour and it delighted me to discover that pinking shears were so called because they created the frilly effect seen on the petals of pinks.
In spite of all my research I'm still not quite sure about the identity of gillyflowers. I like the romantic symbolism of the Dianthus family - the July /jilly flowers explanation is neat, but having been mistakenly called Jilly all my life, I'm not so keen on that one. For clarification I'm looking forward to the show, where I'll see some Tudor gardens and hopefully talk to some real experts.

There is going to be a strong Tudor theme throughout to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the accession of Henry VIII. Wishing I'd paid more attention at school, I have started reading a big fat book (Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel - brilliant) so that I'll be a bit more informed before I go.

Included among the show highlights are six small gardens, each one dedicated to one of Henry's wives and by the sound of it, the designers have really done their homework.

The gardens are all very different and full of floral symbolism and historical clues. I'm fascinated by the idea of a witch's garden for Anne Boleyn - with rows of fiery red flowers to ward off the witch hunters and am looking forward to seeing the contemplative Mary garden for devout Catherine Parr, planted with flowers associated with the Virgin Mary.

In my reading I'm only up to the last days of Katherine of Aragon - the first wife, who was married to Henry for 20 years. I've learnt that she was as wide as she was high, partly due to the fact that she always wore a Franciscan nun's habit under her clothes, but
also because her dresses were heavily encrusted with jewels and crystal - a sort of queenly stab vest I suppose, very necessary given Henry's temper.

Katherine was a much loved queen and the thing that really catches my eye in the description of her garden is that there are lots of yellow flowers - ".... the colour people wore when she died". What a lovely idea - a really personal statement of mourning rather than the ubiquitous black armband. Before we die we should all designate in our wills the colour we would like our mourners to wear - could be fun. I wonder why the tradition died out ?

The third wife, ice maiden Jane Seymour is to be represented by a cool, white planted garden, as neat and controlled as she apparently was, while poor little Katherine Howard, who was beheaded when still in her teens, has flirty pink and white flowers, a bubbly fountain and a dance floor. Look out for clues indicating that it's all going to go horribly wrong.

When I think Tudor, I think knot gardens and Anne of Cleves is the inspiration for one here. Apparently they were made for the ladies to look down on from their windows or from specially built viewing platforms. Anne seemed to be the most fortunate of the wives - after her divorce she lived a comfortable, independent life in the country. Apparently she enjoyed a drop of English ale, maybe that had something to do with it.

I must get back to my book now, I'm itching to know more about Henry and these turbulent times and I want to find out, what exactly were gillyflowers......?

Just for the record I'd like my mourners to wear hi-viz jackets - then I'll really be able see who my friends were.