Gardening: Cuttings: It's show time

THE CHELSEA Flower Show opens next week in the grounds of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London SW3, and continues until the end of the week. It includes a celebration of rectory gardens designed by Julian and Isabel Bannerman for the Daily Telegraph. Old varieties of delphiniums, lilies, paeonies and pinks spill over the borders. Barchester, here we come.

Dan Pearson has designed a profusely planted London garden for the Evening Standard. Skip chic is the keynote here with 'found objects' such as bottles inset into boundary walls.

An Australian garden by Lawrie Smith of Brisbane emphasises the huge variety of plants and flowers on that continent: eucalyptus, tree ferns, cycads, corkwoods are set round the veranda of an old Queensland house.

Gardens Illustrated is sponsoring an explorer's roof garden, half roof, half ship, designed by Christopher Bradley Hole. Open to the elements, the garden displays many of the plants brought back by plant hunters to enrich English gardens.

Book in advance, as tickets are not available at the gate. Use the credit card hotline (071-396 4700), which is open until 25 May.