Chelsea vows display will be spectacular

About 600 exhibitors unveil their creations at the Chelsea Flower Show this week, with more than 150,000 garden-lovers expected at the sold-out event.

Designers had to contend with unseasonal frosts up to a week before the show opened, leading to concerns that this year's event would be less colourful than years past.

But organisers at the Royal Horticultural Society have promised a spectacular display, with a pair of giant seeping lock gates, a section of wrought-iron bridge and the swimming pool with submerged bar seats all vying for the judges' attention.

Some of the gardening world's best-known designers have created gardens for the show, including Tom Stuart-Smith for Laurent Perrier and Robert Myers for Cancer Research UK. A community theme replaced last year's one of recession-busting.

Chelsea's largest-ever show garden, the Eden Project's Places of Change, was created with homelessness projects and prisons, and the Hesco Leeds City Council garden, based on a section of the Leeds and Liverpool canal complete with lock, is intended to encourage an appreciation of public green space.