So how does your garden grow? Be honest now, is yours the regimented, well ordered, impeccably mannered "I could open it to the public" kind? Or, like mine perhaps, the blowsy, rather rude "I'll do as I please" sort.

My colleague and I both have very different tastes in gardens and yet we both find it a joy to visit each other's "patch" and enthuse or commiserate over the inmates.

For years now we have both been going to Chelsea to see how it really should be done and there's certainly no shortage of professionalism there and this year is no exception.

You don't have to be a gardener or even have any botanical knowledge to enjoy the massively successful, world renowned flower carnival that settles on the Chelsea Embankment each year in the grounds of the London Hospital to show the world the finest in gardens and all things gardening.

You can find anything and everything there but by far the best thing is the one experience that money can't buy and that is the camaraderie that envelopes and settles upon the crowds like a happy fever.

Hot, cold, rainy, who cares, no-one moans - well, only about your aching feet – and it's wall to wall smiles throughout the day.

This year you can have your very own Chelsea-designed garden for free! Visit their website and download a garden design to suit your patch, along with all the planting details. If, like me design isn't your forte then it's the perfect solution to have a designer garden plus flower planting patterns, complete with all the names of the flowers to plant and where. That's the thing about gardening, it's a sharing thing and the world could do with more of that.

This year's theme is definitely green – not the gardening kind of green but the recycling kind. Nearly everywhere there are gardens made from recycled materials of some kind and an absolute carnival of garden ornaments made from old oil drums, tin cans, tyres, you name it and there it is.

By far the best ornament I have ever seen was a life-sized giraffe, made from recycled oil drums and finished with a lacquer built to withstand the British weather. Not just one giraffe but a whole family, they were an astonishing, life sized but sadly my finances don't run to about £3,000.

Chelsea wouldn't be the same for me if I didn't visit the courtyard gardens. I am always amazed at the amount of planting and objects one can get in a hankie-sized piece of ground. My personal favourite this year was the seaside 1950's themed The Good Gifts Garden, complete with authentic memorabilia.

Enclosed with wood taken from old groynes and made into a picket fence it was a real rush back in time to my childhood seaside holidays – complete with my mother's knitting! There was a sea wash of water through a channel that represented the waves and all I needed was my bucket and spade – lovely!

The Great Pavilion is something that seems to encapsulate Chelsea. Studded with colour, infused with the scents of dianthus, hyacinths, roses and a myriad other sensory diversions it is the finest showplace of the world's most talented and enthusiastic gardeners you could ever wish to see.

To a lover of flowers and all things horticultural it is the equivalent of being let loose in a sweet shop for a young child. It really is hard to know where to look first, what perfumes to drink in, which rose arbour to walk into or even what seeds to buy – fantastic.

The amount of work and sheer talent that goes into the exhibits is breathtaking. Of course The Great Pavilion offers more than just a vast array of flowers, plants and bulbs.

Nestling amongst the Gold Medals, one of which was awarded to Bedford's very own Bloms Bulbs, you are just as likely to find Joe Swift tip-toeing through the tulips or Rachel de Thame enthusing over the roses, all conspicuously surrounding by full camera crew.

It's all very interesting to watch and when we spotted a full crew surrounding one of the exhibits we thought it must be at least Alan Titchmarsh who was expected. A very large crowd had gathered in anticipation and like bees to the blooms we homed in.

It turned out to be the high spot of the day as we watched a full camera crew totally concentrating on the job in hand of filming...a blackbird!

Actually, it was no ordinary bird this, it had been singing its heart out in the pavilion all morning and flown here and there, swooping low amongst the crowds and performing bird aerobics just above our heads.

It was clearly in its element and having found a waiting crew put on an Oscar-winning performance amongst the obelisks. Obliging and looking every inch the prize bird it posed, flew and fluttered and entranced the whole gathering until, having had it full 15 minutes of fame, it took off for greater things.

The crew may have been waiting for Mr Titchmarsh, I don't know, but the crowd dissipated, laughing and murmuring and by the time the expected celebrity arrived the show had well and truly been stolen!

Of course The Show gardens are huge crowd pullers - everyone wants to see who won what and how. They ranged from the simple and chic to the simply outrageous.

My favourite, purely for its difference and daring with colour was From Life to Life – A Garden for George. All of us over a certain age will remember the joy that George Harrison brought to the music world but not many will know that he was a passionate gardener.

The garden follows his life from when he burst onto the music scene in the '60s with the coloured pathway to fame, along to those calmer more contemplative days of his later life and finally to a quiet resting place.

Planted with colourful shrubs, perennials and grasses following through to the quieter area of moss lawn, woodland ferns, white stemmed birches and waterfalls over which floated a misty rill. I could almost hear George singing in celebration.

I wasn't too keen on the marbled and waterfall creations in some other gardens, being much more of a roots in the ground plant person but that didn't stop the appreciation of design and talent that went into Ocean to a Garden with Italian marble sky to ground and waterfalls throwing their contents across the entire floor space, complete with statues. Interesting but too hard for my liking.

There was also The Daily Telegraph Garden, very eye catching, although for my taste a little too much flat water and "arranged" lilies. aAthough to be fair, at the other end of the garden there was some interesting planting with bamboo and a theme of white flowering shrubs and plants.

Whatever your likes or preferences in design or planting, colour or arranging there will be something at Chelsea that you wish you could take home with you or feel you cannot live without.

Whatever the day brings it certainly won't be disappointment and you cannot fail to leave the grounds without feeling that, for one day at least, you have been in another world.

It really doesn't matter if you don't know your perennials from you bi-annuals or your aquilegia from your hyacinth. No-one really cares - it's not a test of knowledge or one-upmanship, it's a celebration of joy, nature, talent, colour and the one thing it does succeed in doing is uniting people from every walk of life, from the shop assistant to the celebrity and The Cayman Islands to Southend. Chelsea brings people together.

Maybe nature knows a lot more than we do about peace, joy, love and communication. You don't have to be an expert to go and you probably won't know a lot more when you return but the experience is one that you shouldn't miss. Only one word of warning, though – do remember that whatever you decide to buy you will have to carry home, in my case, on the tube and train and some of those recycled ornaments have terrible spiky bits on them!!

As we returned to home and alighted from the train carrying goods that were never meant to be carried on a train a fellow (and unknown) passenger simply asked: "Was it good?"

I mentally patted the packets of seeds in my pocket - the Sea Holly, Alf Alfa, Night Stock and Venus Fly trap (my gardening's always been a bit quirky!) - and I wanted to throw up my tired arms in a completely overblown gesture and shout: "It wasn't just good it was FANTASTIC!"

A blooming marvellous team effort has won a Bedfordshire nursery its 58th gold medal at the famous Chelsea Flower Show.

Bloms Bulbs, based at Primrose Nurseries in Melchbourne, earned the top prize in the floral marquee category, displaying some 12,000 tulips of 160 different varieties.

The Blom family have entered the competition every year since 1948 and only one other grower has won more awards at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Ronald Blom, co-owner of Bloms Bulbs, said: "Winning gold this year is just as special as winning the first.

"It is so difficult to get a gold medal, all the flowers are fabulous quality and a lot of fine detail and work goes into the competition, so to win is priceless.

"We are now looking to win gold again next year, of course."

Bloms Bulbs' team of 25 staff start preparing for the Chelsea Flower Show in Autumn when the tulip bulbs are planted. The blooms are then harvested in the spring and kept in cold storage until the big day.

More than 600 exhibitors brought blooms to this year's Chelsea Flower Show, which is widely regarded as the most prestigious show of its kind and is on at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea until Saturday (May 24).

The Historic Roses Group, based in Bolnhurst, also had cause to celebrate after being awarded bronze in the show's continuous learning category.

Following the flower show's theme of climate change gardening, the group, part of The Royal National Rose Society, created a display of four parts designed to educate people about roses that can grow in hot, dry and wet conditions as well as cold, dry and wet conditions.

Peter Scott, who organised the group's entry, said: "We come here every year and although bronze is not quite as good as we have done in previous years, at Chelsea any award is an honour.

"We have around 60 roses of stunning quality and the stand has been absolutely packed with people, you can hardly move."

For more information about this year's show, click here