CHELSEA - BITS AND BOBS

Chelsea isn't just about the flowers and serious competition for gold medals - there are quirky designs, odd plants, nice design touches, and interesting bits of garden sculpture too. Here are some we spotted.

A Yorkshire dish of rhubarb crumble and 'custard' from designers Simon Hall, Kate Dundas, John MacCleary and Tom Walker.

A tree made out of wood (woven willow wands) by Tom Hare.

Willow is a great material for sculptures - it is used for the bird above as well as the horse and rider below.

Rows of glass bell cloche.

A lichen covered rabbit.

A mirror set into the side of a pond doubles the value of a Water Lily.

Lamp Head: A Snakes Head Fritillary lit up in a dark corner of the Great Marquee.

A modern take on the cloister.

A home for bees : A place for solitary bees and other insects to live in Amber Goudy's Sustainable

Highland Garden (above and below).

A stumpery of Silver Birch logs, through which a stream flows, in the Naturally Fashionable Garden, designed by Nicholas Dexter.

 There weren't many green roofs on show, and most of those were small or impractical. Would this one on the massive Eden Project, Places of Change garden, designed by Paul Stone, last through heavy rain? There was no sign of pond liner, or even plastic sheeting.

There were also fewer green walls than there had been over the last couple of years. This one was in the Tourism Malaysia Garden designed by James Wong and David Cubero (above and below).

Several stands made use of glass baubles or globes, coloured and plain, to compliment their planting, as in this view of silver birch trees in the Great Marquee. You could also buy more corporate-looking globes such as this below...

This use of glass as the inside of a waterfall, produced lovely water colour images on our favourite garden, Kazuyuki Ishihara's Kazahana.

Arisaema sikokianum (Japanese Jack-in-the-Pulpit)