I think it’s about time the Mammoth Onion (or W Robinson and Sons, as they are officially known) were given the credit they deserve. For many years the vegetable displays at Chelsea were dominated by Medwyn Williams who got gold after gold for his flamboyant displays. Medwyn retired in 2010 with 11 golds under his belt. This year the quality and variety of the vegetables shown by the Robinsons at Chelsea was every bit as good as Medwyn’s ever were. Probably better. ​

There’s been a delicious sense of anarchy about the Chelsea Flower Show today. I first encountered it in the most unlikely place, the garden sponsored by the Caravan Club, whose sense of daring is normally limited to doing 35mph in a 50 mph zone. I was delighted to see them breaking, for the first time in the 99 years of the show, the rule that animals aren’t allowed in Show Gardens, with the appearance of a simply gorgeous creature called Cawdaw (Cawdy for short) in a kennel cunningly disguised as a miniature caravan. I was introduced to Cawdy just after the judging and there was relief all round that the judges hadn’t spotted her. Jo Thompson, who designed the garden, richly deserves the gold medal and the People’s Award which she is tipped to get.
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The other contender for the People’s Award is Diarmud Gavin with his towering 7 storey garden. Diarmud took me up in the lift to the fifth floor, from where you have to tackle a series of ladders to reach the top. His people told me that there had been a lively debate about health and safety before the unhealthy side won. What a marvellous victory. It’s a long time since I’ve enjoyed such a scary afternoon. The best part was the downward journey, where you get the chance to insert yourself into a steel tube which propels you down four storeys in about four and a half seconds. I’d love to read their risk assessment and I take back all those scornful words I wrote about how feeble Chelsea is, when it comes to safety.

Shirley Conran famously said that life’s too short to stuff a mushroom. Not if you follow the Slow Life it isn’t. But I would draw the line at peeling asparagus, which is what Simon Hopkinson recommends in his new column, “Simon’s Kitchen” in Country Life magazine. In fact I think he makes rather a mess of this simplest of vegetables by recommending that the asparagus, once peeled, should be cooked at a rolling boil for 5-6 minutes. I think that after 5 or 6 minutes the tips will be over-cooked and there’s a danger that the rest will be mushy. ​

The Shukkeien Gardens at Hiroshima were created in the 1660’s for a feudal Lord in the Chinese style which is now recognised as quintessentially Japanese, with its constituent parts representing broad expanses of lakes, mountains and seashore. It succeeds very well, creating a quiet haven in the midst of a madhouse metropolis. Of course it was wiped out by the atomic bomb, every plant, every structure. Everything that is, except for the one thing which needed to be destroyed, an incongruously ugly bridge which looks as if it’s made out of concrete blocks. ​

You’ll never see a photo of the gardens at the Adachi Art Museum gardens with people in it. That’s because people aren’t allowed in it. You can only view the gardens from indoors, for the most part through plate glass. The mood is set at the entrance by a statue of the founder, Adachi Zenco, who has his right arm outstretched, alarmingly like a Nazi salute. He must have been a control freak in his lifetime and now, 20 years after his death, his memory is respected, to the letter. ​

When the aubergine growers of the Aki region began their war against whitefly they had to import the predator insects from Holland. Now they’ve learnt how to grow their own stock of predators and their expertise is shared with other vegetable growers of the Kochi region. One such is Frenchman Matthieu who, with his Japanese wife and her family grow sweet peppers (which are smaller and tastier than the “traffic light” capiscums sold here) at their farm in Usa. They keep a small green house aside to grow the plants which attract the predators, such as the sago plant. ​

This aubergine grower is no eco-warrior and yet he persuaded more than 400 of his fellow farmers to stop spraying chemicals. It’s a brilliant story. The Aki region, on the southern coast of Shikoku island, is devoted to the growing of aubergines. They are grown in greenhouses and seeds sown in July will produce plants which will crop continuously from September for ten months. Pest control was never a problem until 1982 when white fly was introduced from abroad (probably by an Englishman seeking revenge for Japanese knotweed). Initially whitefly was controlled by chemical spraying but over time the spraying became less effective and crop yields suffered. ​