Jolly good show, what, despite that cheeky Irish chap

Occasional Gardener: This year's Chelsea Flower Show almost overloaded the gardening senses, writes Sarah Marriott.

Well, the dust, soil and hot air have settled after the RHS Chelsea Flower Show - and we can finally stop thinking about Diarmuid Gavin's balls.

As the world's largest garden show, Chelsea attracts controversy, eccentrics and outstanding plantspeople, as well as 157,000 punters keen to think, talk and breathe gardens for a whole day.

This was my second visit to Chelsea but it seemed just as overwhelming as last year. It's huge - in nine hours' walking and gawping, I still didn't manage to see everything. Even getting into the showground takes ages - think of the crowds shuffling along Grafton Street at Christmas and double it. It was worse this year because Chelsea had been identified as a terrorist target, so the predominantly middle-aged RHS members who attend on the first day had to open their bags of sandwiches, thermos flasks and spare shoes for a bomb check.

Once you're inside, the big draws - the show gardens - are easily identified because they're surrounded on all sides by crowds passing comment on the planting, the design and whether they won the right medal. Cutting-edge designs are not always popular, though. The soundbite from Chelsea was that green was the new green, but the spectators I met preferred gardens with lots of colour. The queues at Diarmuid Gavin's showpiece admired the space pod and coloured steel balls on sticks but felt the planting - mainly green - was dull, especially when the sun went in.

One of the most popular on the day I was there was the Salvation Army's creation, which represented a journey from darkness (black plants and grasses) through to light (white and peach roses with bamboos). It was later voted the BBC People's Choice as best garden. My favourite was 4Head's From Merlin to Medicine garden - with winding paths, a waterfall, a cave, more than 250 species of plants and medicinal herbs, a dragon and a tower, it created a mysterious universe in the middle of London.

To celebrate the RHS's 200th anniversary, the indoor area was bigger than ever. The Great Pavilion, packed with millions of perfect blooms, was the place for serious gardeners: white-haired ladies bustled around with notebooks and cameras, recording the new varieties being launched and unusual plants they fancied for their own gardens. Although I prefer to see plants and flowers in a more natural garden setting, some of the displays by nurseries and garden centres - such as lollipops eight feet tall and four feet wide made of velvety roses - were breathtaking. Also here was the Lifelong Learning section, with displays to make us think about our relationship with nature. The Chelsea Physic Garden's Shelf Life display showed how dependent we are on plants, by filling packaging with their natural ingredients: sugarbeet was growing in a bag of sugar, linseed and soya beans in the leaflet display (they're used in inks) and foxglove digitalis in a medicine tub.

What makes Chelsea special is the sheer variety of gardens and exhibits - plus hundreds of stalls selling everything from unusual seeds and gardeners' hand-cream to outdoor sculpture and furniture. I came home with my arms sore from the weight of leaflets and a drip-hose watering system; my senses reeling from sights, sounds and scents - and my head buzzing with ideas for my humble patch.

The other big RHS shows are Hampton Court (July 6th-11th) and Tatton Park (July 21st-25th). Details from www.rhs.org.uk.