My sponsor for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show is Bupa.  The garden will highlight the importance of green spaces in Bupa care homes especially for residents with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

While I’m hardly the most reliable blogger in town I’m going to do my very best to give you a flavour of what it’s like to build a show garden at the world’s most celebrated flower show.

From next Wednesday, and practically the whole of May, the alarm will be set for 5am and we’ll be unlikely to get to bed until gone midnight - a good enough reason not to even think about blogging I’d say so don’t bank on regular posts. 

The garden will be built in just 19 days and, if my past experiences of building show gardens are anything to go by the emotional roller-coaster on which we are about to embark will be memorable whatever medal we end up with.

So, with less than a week to go I thought I might just introduce you to some of the characters involved because while the designers get a huge amount of credit (or blame as the case may be) for show gardens, there are of course many people working behind the scenes to bring the garden to life.

Before I start getting too sentimental about it please welcome the above motley crew known as Henley Salt Landscapes.    The team is led by Jeremy Salt (below) and the pictures were taken during build-up on the Saga Garden in 2006. They will be building the garden again this year.

The first thing I must do is take a picture of Jeremy on day one and then compare profiles when I take another on Press Day.  Jeremy likes his food and, having known him for some years now, I’m convinced the only reason he likes building show gardens is because he can eat to his heart’s content without the fear of putting any weight on.  Actually that’s unfair, he did make an effort last time to lose some weight by eating salad for lunch for the first week but his absence from the breakfast bar everyday began to affect the team spirit.  Heroically, in the interest of morale, he sacrificed lettuce for bacon.  Whenever I say that lard was a important factor in us being awarded an RHS Gold Medal no one believes me - but it’s true.