There is still time to book tickets for the flower show, says Val Bourne, who enjoys visiting in the evening

There are still some tickets remaining for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show (0844 338 0338/www.rhs.org.uk) held between May 19 and May 23.

There are day tickets, which allow access from 8am, and evening tickets that begin at 3.30pm. Evening tickets are highly popular with those who live outside London because travel is cheaper. It is often much quieter between 6pm and 8pm and the gardens do look their best in evening light. My advice is to arrive at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, grab some tea near the Bandstand, and then enter the throng. I do admire the gardens, I really do, but I love the Great Pavilion much, much more because it’s stuffed with plants, some of them new introductions.

Irises always feature heavily here, because Tall Bearded Irises flower at just the right moment for the Chelsea Flower Show.

Kelways, the Somerset-based nursery, stage their irises at night because the crowded pavilion is too risky for their brittle iris stems. They arrive staked with their buds wrapped in tissue paper held in place by elastic bands, rather like a woman in rollers. If they seem reluctant to open, a warm hairdryer encourages them, so the Kelways stand is like a hairdressing salon for plants.

Kelways also stage recently-bred Intersectional peonies, hybrids between tree peonies and herbaceous peonies. These first arose when a tenacious Japanese peony breeder, Toichi Itoh, succeeded in getting seeds after making 1,200 fruitless crosses. He finally succeeded with Lemoine’s yellow tree peony, ‘Alice Harding’ (1935) and the double white P. lactiflora ‘Kakoden’ in the mid-Sixties.

Sadly, Itoh died before any of his seedlings flowered, but Louis Smirnow saw them and realised their potential. He introduced them into America and their arrival encouraged other breeders to have a go. ‘Bartzella’ is the most well known and it’s one of the showiest too, with yellow flowers that appear from darker buds.

The Itoh hybrids are very easy, have more vigour and flower for five or six weeks, longer than most peonies. They bulk up well too and trying to divide a five-year old ‘Bartzella’ is a hammer and chisel job because the roots have a strong woody core.

The relatively new ‘Lollipop’, introduced by Roger Anderson in 1999, has peachy flowers striped irregularly in pink. You’ll either love it or hate it. I have planted one this winter, as a bare-root plant, so the jury’s still out!

Kelways will also display at least 15 species of tree fern under a grove of slender eucalyptus trees, a new innovation for them. Tree ferns include the rare Cyathea robusta, from Lord Howe Island, and the slender Cyathea cunninghamii, or Gully Fern, found in Australia and New Zealand.

The exhibit will also feature the Silver Tree Fern, Cyathea dealbata, the National Emblem of New Zealand. It remains to be seen how this mélange fares with the judges, who tend to prefer simpler displays involving one or two genera.

Dave Root is the mastermind behind Kelways and has been for 25 years. However, the tree ferns have been grown by 22-year-old Rob Parsons and he will probably be the youngest exhibitor at the 2015 show.

Also on the stand is Gary House, aged 23, and he produces lots of plants for the Show Gardens. It goes to prove that horticulture has some young guns as well as some old stagers. I know which group I’m in though!

I am willing the French family-run Cayeux Iris to win their first Gold Medal because their frilly, flouncy irises are a winner. Last year they got a Silver Gilt, just below a Gold.

They have a challenge, though, because their irises (sold on their website www.iris-cayeux.com ) are lifted from the field and not pot-grown. Their Chelsea irises have to be pot-grown in Kent by Sue Marshall of Iris of Sissinghurst. One of last year’s new varieties, ‘Domino Noir’, was actually named after Sue’s black-and-white cat.

Claire Austin’s exhibit will feature some new American irises including a new sultry-purple Tall Bearded iris called ‘Coal Seams’.

Elsewhere, Claire’s father, David Austin, stages his roses.

He has three new ones, but the best of the bunch has Oxfordshire connections because it is named Kelmscott, once the home of Pre-Raphealite William Morris (1834-1896). Pink buds open to form large pale-pink cup-shaped flowers which mature to show a boss of bee-friendly stamens. This healthy and vigorous shrub rose (5ft x 3ft) would make a fine specimen rose and I am aching to grow it.