BRIAN MEE ASSOCIATES LTD

Although there's not been a post here for a while,  We wanted to take this opportunity to let those of you who are interested in gardening more generally know that you can now follow the BBC's Gardening Blog, where Alys Fowler, Bob Flowerdew and Jim McColl share their expertise regularly.

This blog will now be closing fully. We'd like to thank you all for your comments and wish you a happy impending flower show season.

Looking back over the week I think the show has been another great success.

During my more 'sane' moments this week, these are some of the things which gave me most pleasure, in addition to the floral marquee. I particularly admired the flower beds - especially Noah's Ark and the Stoke on Trent to Patagonia bed.

The Visionary Gardens, although not my personal favourites were very much a talking point. I think the category could potentially be extended - even if it is a bit 'Emperor's New Clothes'.

A real highlight for me has been the introduction of the Fruit and Vegetable section, which inspired a great deal of interest among adults and children alike. I hope this section returns and extends next year!

By the way, this is where you could often find me this week, writing my blog in the shelter for rain or sunshine in the Tatton Tent!'

So as 4pm and the great sell off approaches, it's 'hold on to your plants', watch out for walking hanging baskets and here we go for next year!

Entering the RHS summer fruit and vegetable competition marquee is like walking into a village show. It's modest in size and the exhibits are displayed on white plates arranged on wooden tables. As in most village shows, the same names dominate the winners cards. I was surprised to see that a lot of them were from as far away as Plymouth and Essex, but this is a national competition and rather early in the season for northern growers.

Alongside the plates of beetroots and carrots are handy tips for the aspiring exhibitor. Advice like '..to get good colour in your beetroots, water the row with a solution of 10ml of salt in a gallon of water 2 weeks before harvest' or 'after washing your carrots, wrap them in damp kitchen paper and keep them cool - good colour is worth 3 or 4 points', could make all the difference.

The fruit exhibits impressed me most - it was painful looking at huge, luscious black cherries 'Summer Sun' and not being able to taste them. I've never tried the strange looking 'doughnut' peaches, but was assured they are very sweet, have white flesh and a very small stone, 'Saturn' was the variety on show. One allotment society from Yealmhampton near Plymouth had a fantastic display that included a pineapple!

Very helpful fruit enthusiasts from the Northern Fruit Group (www.northernfruitgroup.com ) are on hand to give advice and answer questions. I found out how to prune a reluctant gooseberry and Clifford from Fruitscape told me there was no excuse for not growing lots of fruit in my small London garden.

I enjoy a quick foray into the National Plant Societies Marquee as there are always a wealth of unusual things on offer that aren't available from the large nurseries. This year the displays put on by all the plant societies of the North West are especially good, with a wide range of plants available, everything from Brugmansia, Agapanthus and succulents to carnivorous Sarracenia.

Where some shows have a small table devoted to each one, at Tatton they do things differently, grouping all the plants together to make displays of mixed plant types from all the different exhibitors. The effect is a great display which really relates to everyday gardens, and shows that anyone can be a national collection holder and still have an interesting and varied garden.

For me the best part of the marquee was the stall, manned by groups from across the north of England and featured a wonderful mixture of different perennials, vegetables and houseplants all grown by the members themselves. Each plant was lovingly grown and labelled, and sold with the helpful advice of the person that propagated it. The effect was like a giant garden fete and certainly offered something for everyone. I was in my element buying far too many plants. Oh well at least I'll be able to take some cuttings and bring some plants back for them to sell next year.

A few years ago if someone had mentioned gabions I wouldn't have known what they were talking about. They were something that was used in civil engineering, large scale industrial landscaping - a million miles away from domestic gardens. Now it seems they are becoming the cool thing to have.

At Tatton there are gabions in the show gardens, in the back to backs and on the trade stands - people are taking home DIY versions!

Basically a gabion is a metal - usually steel, cage filled with stones/rocks or various heavy materials. They are usually used to retain soil in banks and terraces or as barriers. I've seen taller, slim ones used as a wall and smaller, cubed ones made into seats - the permutations are endless, as demonstrated by the two young designers of the Visionary garden, Cubed3, at this year's Tatton.

This gold medal winning design is a modular scheme, gabions are linked together like building blocks and used in different ways - some are filled with rocks as foundations, some are filled with soil and planted and some are placed in the pond, allowing you to walk over the water's surface. Larger cages have been left empty and plants are able to grow up through them - it's very effective.

On the Edible Trends garden the Reaseheath College team have filled their gabions with carefully placed layers of stones and wood in decreasing sizes, creating a very pleasing pattern and a haven for wildlife. Apparently it took them ages to do but it looks fantastic.

A very 'green' way to fill your gabions is with odd bits of bricks, slates and tiles left over from building jobs, plus any empty bottles you may have accumulated. This is what they have used on A Place for Waste, another gold medal winning garden.

As you look around the show you will see all sorts of shapes and fillings and gabions used in many ways. I am feeling quite inspired and am planning to try something with sempervivums and I rather like the idea of turf cubes.

On second thoughts - almost forgot we had the rest of the week to go! (by the way I am writing this from the Tatton tent which is at present being deluged by the tail end of a passing storm - however, we are close to a flower bed containing Noah's Ark so there is an escape route!).

The garden has been a great success with the public. It's also been enhanced this week by the presence of the Cheshire Poet Laureate, W. Terry Fox, reading landscape inspired poetry: his own, some from local school Manor Park Primary in Knutsford and even poems from would-be bards among Tatton staff!

Mingling in and out of the crowds all week have been many gardening celebrities, including two 'bits of lads' I knew when they were students: namely Joe Swift and Toby Buckland. It was good to catch up on old times - though they reckon they are not so old.

Finally we met up with Gilly, chief blogger for this event!

So all it remains is to dismantle everything early next week, put everything in store and continue to plan for next year. See you then!

Today I went along to the back to back garden called The Lunch Hour Garden to catch up with Sue Beesley, one of our previous Gardener of the Year winners. Since winning the competition Sue has gone from being an IT consultant to nurserywoman and gardening guru. She gives talks, writes for two magazines and does radio and television for her local region; in fact she's so much in demand that she has had to employ a PR agency this year!

Sue tells me that her nursery (www.lodgelane.co.uk) is coming along well, it's hard work and not very lucrative as yet, but she loves it and is building a strong client base. Ideally she would like to concentrate on the nursery work in the spring and summer and write in the winter - sounds perfect.

The show garden she has created with her co-designer Isabelle Brooke is the sort of garden that we all wish offices would provide for their workers - a lovely, plant filled space for eating, meetings and getting away from your desk when you're having a bad day! It's quite a big garden, double the size of the other back to backs and I wondered if Sue and Isabelle would be having a go at a big show garden, at Chelsea perhaps? Given their progress so far, I wouldn't be surprised.

If you fancy following in Sue's footsteps and taking part in BBC Gardener of the Year download an application form today and send it in before next Wednesday.

I'm never quite sure what to make of the floristry tents at shows, the displays are always fantastic but I'm not sure quite what the average person can take away from them. Tatton is no exception, this year the tent is dominated by an enormous display of giant bamboo canes each supporting a tropical arrangement. This 'Bamboo Forest' is all the work of the Welsh College of Horticulture, (the team that brought us the giant ball of flowers at last year's show).

Once again their display was awarded gold, and I have to admit that it was very striking so I could see why. While nobody is going to create an arrangement on anything like this scale at home, there were some nice plant combinations of orchids and exotic foliage that would look great on anyone's dining table.

While wandering through the display my eyes were also drawn to a large exhibit created by North Warwickshire and Hinckley College that has been inspired by the planets of the solar system. Very apt considering it was only a few days ago, that we were all celebrating the anniversary of the first moon landings. Each of the planets were created in different colours, with red anthuriums for Mars and equisetum strands for the rings of Saturn. At the centre of the display the Sun was created with a stream of exotic orange and yellow arum and some kangaroo paw cascading down like flares radiating out from the centre.

Fruit is always a big thing at Tatton, more so than at other shows because, of course, now is the time when the berries are ripening and looking luscious and tempting. So I was looking forward to meeting Sharon Hockenhull on her garden, 'Be Fruitful'.

It's a back to back designed to show how a small space can be productive and child friendly yet still look modern and stylish. As Sharon points out, a fruit garden was the obvious choice - growing veg is hard work if you are a working mother. Her children are three and five and she runs her own gardening business.

For children, having things like strawberries and apples ready to pick and eat in their own garden is wonderful. No boring digging and cooking involved, it's instant food. Sharon has some great ideas for fun ways to grow fruit ( www.theplantswoman.co.uk). I particularly like the idea of making a wigwam of poles and growing thornless raspberries and/or blackberries over it, a few strawberry plants round the outside and the kids have a fruity den.

Fruit growing involves much less day to day management than most vegetables and the rewards are high. You plant the trees or bushes and they will crop year after year, with increasing yields.

It's these increasing yields that bother Sharon, so much goes to waste, particularly apples and pears. She has had the bright idea to initiate Fruitshare the aim being, to make surplus fruit available to others.

She has nominated the 24th/25th October as Fruitshare weekend. People who want to take part can register their address and those who want fruit can come round and get it. You could either put your excess fruit in bags outside your house or have an open day and have a bit of a party. Sounds like a fruity date for the diary!

I don't generally approve of plants in houses - they never look quite comfortable, not in my home, at least. I've been lucky enough to travel to places where Ficus benjamina are the size of oak trees and Monstera deliciosa are climbing towards a forest canopy. For me it just doesn't feel right to grow them next to the TV.

But it's a plantaholic's prerogative to change their mind. So I must confess I was secretly delighted to discover at Tatton what could become my ideal houseplant.
The Hawaiian palm (brighamia) is not so much a jungle escapee desperately pining for the rainforest - it's more of an endangered species in need of fostering. Raised from seed by Dutch nursery Plant Planet, these beautiful plants can be grown happily in your living room. And as there are only seven specimens left in the wild, the IUCN is desperate to bring attention to them.

That's a pretty good reason to grow one. They need little watering and have the added bonus of flowering in deepest, darkest winter. I think I have the perfect spot in mind.

Camilla Phelps, Gardening Editor