Inside Yorkshire designer Mark Gregory's first 'plot to plate' garden at Chelsea Flower Show

He normally forages in his allotment perched on a roof top car park above an Ann Summers shop in Stockport. "I would stay here for the rest of my life,” he says. “It’s an absolute dream.”

The garden’s designer is Yorkshireman Mark Gregory, a fixture at Chelsea for 34 years, who has delivered more than 100 show gardens and designed gold medal winners in 2008, 2009, 2018 and 2019.

He’s probably best known for his 2018 Welcome to Yorkshire Garden, voted BBC Choice Garden of the Decade in 2020. Mark, 63, who grew up in West Cowick, East Yorkshire, can’t hide his disappointment at receiving a silver gilt medal from the judges yesterday. “This I would say is my best work, the ambition, the scale of the endeavour – the public are just so behind it, the BBC love it, the RHS love it, what it delivers has never been done before.”

Chelsea’s first “plot to plate” garden, in partnership with Savills estate agency, features dozens of “edimentals” (edible ornamentals), plants which blur the line between veg and flowers.

There’s showy fennel, Japanese spinach, Swiss chard and rhubarb – about to go into a delicious-sounding rhubarb clafoutis, pink and tender from being grown under Victorian cloches.

Mark’s approach cuts a swathe through the notion of a Chelsea garden that’s manicured to perfection: “These gardens are just wonderful spaces, serene paintings that no one touches. They are manicured to a millionth, but I have chefs taking things out and talking to the public.

"Over 34 years things have changed – you have succession: plants coming up, going over, you have seedheads.

"Alan Titchmarsh just came over – he literally just jumped over the fence and gave me a hug – he said: ‘This is stunning’. He’s been quite critical about buzzwords rewilding and everything going back to nature.”

Sam will be happily cooking until Saturday when the show ends.

When that’s over the rented trees will go back to the suppliers, as will the outdoor kitchen’s glass verandah. Some elements will be going into a smaller garden for a home in the Midlands, run by the Shaw Trust, a charity supported by Savills. A lot of the ”edimentals” will be going to the Chelsea Pensioners. Around half the bricks will be salvaged in the four days the garden is dismantled. "Everything gets a new home – but not as one project. The waste will be kept to a bare minimum,” says Mark.