As RHS Chelsea 2016 comes to an end, here’s my take on the best flower show in the world; the fancy gardens, the flowers, the food, the folk I met and the funky stuff!!!

A sea of poppies

Here I am, up at the crack of dawn, excited beyond words, to make the best of a very special day. We arrived under an arch of flowers, to be greeted by a sea of poppies  and an army of RHS meeters and greeters!

Fancy Gardens

Chelsea wouldn’t be Chelsea without some fancy gardens and they didn’t disappoint. I absolutely love the show gardens they are amazing. I was lucky to be invited on to 2 Main Avenue Gardens and 1 of the Artisan Gardens:

The Telegraph Garden by Andy Sturgeon – I loved the dramatic bronze fins that represented an ancient mountain range with a stream of water running in the gorge below. Andy told me all about the problems he’d had with the water supplies and pumps – I thought it was worth every bit of effort!

The Brewin Dolphin – Forever Freefolk Garden by Rosy Hardy. The garden is about protecting chalk streams. I loved the metal sphere and Rosy kindly let me play on the stepping stones. The path was made out of glass and wound round the beautiful planting.

Senri-Sentei – Garage Garden by Kazuyuki Ishihara. I absolutely LOVED this garden! There was a retro Mini in a garage with the planting over 2 tiers. There were loads of Acers on this garden and I LOVE Acers! The designer was so funny and made me laugh

Other gardens I liked:

The Winton Beauty of Mathematics Garden was great and even had mini Einstein’s working on it! It had a beautiful flowing copper bandhed with plants and a swirling whirling seed head too.

The Harrods British Eccentrics Garden was bonkers. There were these working wooden sculptures similar to Tinderkits that I have at home. Every so often the scene became active, entertaining and playful with twirling bay trees and window boxes dancing up and down.

The M&G Garden which my mate Jamie helped to plant was inspired by Exmoor National Park. There was a stone and gravel path through woodland with stunted oaks and rocks and a sunken terrace and pool. Very clever

RHS Greening Grey Britain for Health, Happiness and Horticulture  I really like this garden because it represented community gardening – something that is really important to me and it’s how I started to get into gardening. Visitors were encouraged to make a pledge; please get involved: promise to plant on the RHS website and make a difference one plant at a time. I made a pledge to grow more veg!

Rosie Hardy’s garden

Andy Sturgeon’s garden

Eccentric garden

My favourite Artisan garden

I Love Water Gardens

Flowers

The flowers at Chelsea blow your mind, from those in the Show Gardens to dramatic displays in the Great Pavilion. It always amazes me how there can be huge displays of hundreds of varieties of say daffodils and they are all perfectly in bloom.

I think most young gardeners like me love Bonsai, pitcher plants, cactus and I just loved the bearded iris.

Food

As an RHS Ambassador I was invited by Sir Nicholas Bacon to a special lunch and what a treat it was. We didn’t know what to expect; would we be sat with the other Ambassadors, would it be lunch for about 40 people, what do you wear, will I like the food????

Wow, there was over 400 people for lunch in a room set out like a wedding. I was well chuffed cos one of the waiters was out of my favourite drama, Wolfblood and my mum was well chuffed cos Mary Berry was sat on our table!

We got talking to a man called James and he invited us to Abbotsbury Garden and Swannery in Dorset, in Summer; can’t wait for that.

There were speeches by Monty Don and Sir Nicholas Bacon and I remember them saying about the ‘joy of gardening’ – I agree with that. Check out my selfie with Monty!

The food was very posh, like Masterchef; I really enjoyed the piece of sea trout, although it would have been nice with chips!

Mary Berry the Queen of baking

Me and The Don

Folk

Chelsea is great for a bit of celeb spotting; so, who did I see…….obviously the garden designers and presenters, including Dan Pearson. One of my favourite authors, David Walliams, the legend that is David Bellamy (I’m mad about conservation), my Dad’s favourite comedian Rich Hall, Dragon’s Den Deborah (which was great cos of School’s Enterprise Project), everyone’s favourite weather girl, Carol and catching up with my gardening mates Jamie Butterworth and Sean Murray and florist, Simon Lycett .

Sean Murray

Funky stuff

There’s all sorts of funky stuff going on at Chelsea including Willard Wigan’s micro sculptures, which had these giant sewing needles throughout the floral display and microscopes to look at these miniscule sculptures – amazing!

There was a Pullman carriage in the Great Pavilion too, which we were allowed to go on. There was all sorts of antiques on board and then this view of all these beautiful plants. When we got off the train Carol from BBC Breakfast was there and she said she was jealous of my Green Blue Peter Badge!

I checked out the tools at the Bulldog Tools stand as I was given some of their junior tools when I won the Young School Gardener Award. I was really lucky to be given a pair of secateurs and I know my Dad will be jealous of them!

I did some more shopping at the Chi Africa Metals stall, where I bought a goldcrest and an owl; they are both made out of recycled metal – the owl is made out of a fridge – COOL !

Fancy flowers and show gardens, celebs and posh food, my highlight will always be the ring necked parakeets!!

It was wonderful to catch up with Sue Biggs, RHS Director General; she told me that they had signed the official documents for RHS Bridgewater that very morning. The next few years are going to be so exciting for Manchester

I had the most amazing day; it’s great that a 10 year old boy from Manchester gets invited to such a world famous gardening event.

There’s 2 people to thank, the RHS President Sir Nicholas Bacon  and Sue Biggs – cheers I had a ball and so did my Mum!!!!