AS usual, there are some excellent new hybrids to further improve the palette of plants available to gardeners. Dominating one of the entrances to the big pavilion was a vast pyramid of scented stocks.

The new Bromptonstyle series of Nine-Week Stock (yes, nine, not the usual 10) is called 'Hot Cakes' and was sponsored by the Sun newspaper for the students of Writtle College. They are well scented and coloured and one of their great virtues is that, at the early seedling stage, they are "selectable" in that you can distinguish which are singles and which doubles by the depth of colour of their leaves alone. (Singles are paler green, doubles darker. ) A useful attribute.

Another 'new' plant to hit Chelsea this year is in fact at least two million years old but was only recently discovered deep in a rainforest in Australia.

The Wollemi Pine, related to the 200 million-year-old Monkey Puzzle tree, was known as a fossil but was thought to be extinct. Its discovery has been likened to finding a dinosaur still alive. In collaboration with Kew Gardens, it has been propagated and is now for sale in various sizes from Kernock Plants in Cornwall (tel: 0044-1579 350561).

THE GREAT PAVILION

THE long cold spring did not make things easy for the growers of flowers, fruit and vegetables who exhibited in the Great Pavilion, yet between them they netted a grand total of 44 gold medals, including the one for Gorey's Kilmurry Nurseries.

Despite everything the weather could throw at them, the pavilion looked stunning, as usual, though sometimes it was so dark you couldn't see properly.

Kirstenbosch from South Africa managed to stage a brilliant display in spite of the bush fires which swept its stock. At a time when there is a critical green skills shortage in Britain's parks, one local authority's display so wowed the judges that they gave it a gold and the President's Award. I would love to see our city councils proudly take a stand at Bloom, Bord Bia's new garden show planned in perpetuity for the Phoenix Park in Britain.

GRIPES

DESPITE the banning of peat in its gardens and its frequent preachings on the need for ecologically sound gardening, as far as I could see the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), which runs the Chelsea Flower Show, does absolutely nothing about recycling the mountains of waste that the event generates.

One RHS worker said that everything is dumped on skips and nothing at all . . . neither organic or inorganic . . . is separated for recycling over the weeks that the show occupies its Royal Hospital site on the River Thames.

There was also something rather disgusting about the selling of charred, broken and left-over bits of the world's disappearing rainforests, billed as Relics of the Rainforest. Making money from the destruction of one of the world's greatest assets is simply immoral and should not be encouraged.