I'm at the Chelsea Flower Show - and these are the stunning gardens you'll see this year

It's that time of year again when every celebrity suddenly discovers a deep passion for gardening. Yes, it’s the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where the flowers are immaculate, the camera set-ups are abundant, and famous faces pop up more readily than Japanese knotweed.

I’ve only just gone through security before spotting the first star of the day, and it's an absolute corker. Gardeners’ World host Monty Don, filming a piece to camera before the crowds descend on Main Avenue. I’m not going to top that, but I’m here for garden inspiration, not star-spotting anyway. The show gardens are as stunning as ever, and while I am terrible at picking winners, that has never stopped me trying.

Last year’s champion, Kazuyuki Ishihara, is back with another exquisite Japanese garden Tokonoma Garden – Sanumaya no Niwa. Gravel is raked into concentric circles as though a pebble had just rippled through water. Burgundy and lime-green acers, feathery ferns, undulating mounds of moss blanketing the banks of the pond and an ornate shed that is definitely not stuffed with half-used paint tins and mouldy garden furniture. Dreamy. Although, to my eye, it looks exactly like last year’s entry.

In complete contrast, the Lady Garden Foundation garden is extravagantly romantic, almost sickenly so, like a bouquet from an Eighties wedding. Everything is pastel pink, peach and lilac, with grey and beige hard landscaping. Roses, salvia, clouds of erysimum and spires of white verbascum poking through the borders. It is everything I wish my garden was. It's outrageous and I love it.

Another one that caught my eye was the Parkinson’s UK garden. Lushly planted with beds of jewel-toned tulips and deep herbaceous borders filled with alliums, euphorbia, red poppies and white foxgloves. But the biggest buzz was around the King's Foundation Curious Garden, a picture-perfect potager. It isn’t competing for a medal, which meant designer Frances Tophill was spared the stress of impressing judges and it shows.

The garden is joyful, colourful, and useful. Pink-stemmed chard, cabbages and broad beans in the veg patch, while the beds pop with high-vis orange chrysanthemums, papery butter-yellow poppies, nasturtiums, strawberry plants and the King’s beloved delphiniums. It's everything, everywhere all at once, and as I pass Charles’ pal Sir Alan Titichmarsh is inspecting it. Later, Bruno Tonioli and Gaby Roslin are enjoying a glass of fizz while taking it all in.

Over in the Great Pavilion, hundreds of growers proudly display their prize blooms and this year there is a full-blown ‘War of the Roses’ as three growers have unveiled celebrity-inspired varieties. The Sir David Beckham rose is the palest pink with an elegant cupped shape. Very refined, but only a faint scent. Then there is Watford Forever, named after Elton John’s football club. Riotous stripes of orange and red are not my cup of tea, but then again neither is Watford FC. And finally, the Kate Moss rose. Huge, blousy blooms in creamy yellow with an intense musky fragrance. An absolute stunner, much like its namesake.

I may not be able to pick a winner, but I know what I like. Pretty planting, heady perfume and pastels. Mark my words, ‘Rivals-core’ will be the garden trend of the summer. You heard it here first.