Flower show returns with a focus on climate and dogs

THE King and Queen and celebrities will get a first glimpse of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show today, after a dry spring has put pressure on the build-up to the event.

- By EMILY BEAMENT, PA Environment Correspondent

England has had the driest start to spring for decades, and with extremes of drought, heatwaves and floods set to become the norm with climate change, some gardens at RHS's annual festival of gardening at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, in London are exploring what that future might look like.

But there are also gardens which are deliberately designed not to have a “message”, as Monty Don focuses his first - and he says “I hope my last” - garden at the show on all things dogs.

Mr Don has teamed up with the show organisers to create the RHS and Radio 2 dog garden, filled with features for dogs including a lawn, water to wallow in and trees to cast shade, as well as plants such as foxgloves and alliums.

The TV gardener defended their inclusion, saying they were blooms he had alongside his pets without problem in his own garden, and urged owners to exercise common sense about plants around their dogs.