A very well planted and structured meadow-style garden called 'These Four Walls' should have been given a silver-gilt at least, but instead it got a mere silver.

Other golds went to Cleve West for his rather good if sparsely planted droughtconscious garden for this year's show sponsors, Saga Insurance; to television presenter Chris Beardshaw for his recreation of a deeply traditional Gertie Jekyll garden, which was very good but completely spoiled by a horrible little cupid statue in the middle of a long and otherwise elegant pool.

Andy Sturgeon . . . who also won a gold last year and was a popular speaker at last February's GLDA seminar in Dublin . . . got gold; yet another went to Marcus Barnett and Philip Nixon (an exBlackrock College boy), for their rather lovely homage to the great architect Mies Van Der Rohe, which had singlestemmed white birches elegantly echoing the plain white columns of a modernist building; and newcomer to Chelsea, Sarah Eberle, was given gold for her 'Walking Barefoot with Bradstone', which made you want to take off your wellies and do just that.

This year's show also featured 27 small gardens tucked away out of the limelight.

Some of these were really excellent and deserving of their golds. The small gardens are selected for inclusion in the show on the strength of their designs as opposed to the reputation of the designers, according to the RHS, which seems a bit unfair, especially as many of the big names can often produce disappointing gardens in reality.