The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, The Princess Royal and The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester separately toured the show on Monday evening.
This is gardening on an epic scale, with vast stalls showing every type of flowers, interspersed with gardening equipment and pit-stops of champagne every few yards.
In a back to the fuschia moment, there was a tower of more than 20 different types of red, pink, white and purple fuschia, tumbling down.
The show, smelling of flowers and money, also tried to show it has a sense of humour.
For the first time this year there was a display from the “erotic gifts company”, Lovehoney, called “Aphrodite’s hothouse”.
In this sneak preview, I was able to go through a “Gods only” entrance to see this scarlet-coloured display of vaguely suggestive-shaped flowers.
It was designed by James Whiting who said that it was intended as a “tongue in cheek” and humourous presentation.
He said there was something inherently romantic, and sometimes erotic, about flowers that wasn’t always acknowledged.
Thousands more flower lovers will be arriving in Chelsea in the days ahead. There will be a sense of togetherness for all the gardeners gathered, after all, gnome man is an island.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.bbc.co.uk ’
