London looks blooming lovely as gardeners prepare ahead of the Chelsea Flower Show

For the world's horticultural fans, the third week in May is one that brings a floral banquet of the highest order. 

For a past-time that relies more on wellies and wheelbarrows than lipstick and heels, it remains one of the country's most glamourous events with celebrities from royals to A-listers often in attendance. 

This weekend has seen a frenzy of green-fingered finessing as the show's gardeners have worked around the clock to ensure everything is perfect for the show's public opening on Tuesday. Highlights of this year's show look set to be the L'Occitane UK garden designed by James Basson. 

A Perfumer’s Garden in Grasse focuses on the scents and flowers of the Southern French town, which was once at the heart of the country's perfume industry.

There's also the rust-heavy Dark Matter Garden, designed by Howard Miller with the National Schools’ Observatory which focuses on the appreciation of science through astrophysics. 

Expected to be a visual spectacle in an unconventional sense, the garden has an industrial feel with rusting rods, a grill and a giant ochre-coloured bowl, which is actually made out of concrete. 

New face at Chelsea, Australian Charlie Albone, has created the Husqvarna Garden and has splashed out on his first design, incorporating a £10,000 sandstone firepit carved by Glasgow-based Callum Grey, who transported the horticultural artwork down to London in an 11-year-old Mitsubishi, which has had a 'hard life'. 

And Alison Peace, from the National Chrysanthemum Society, was snapped arranging the Romance varietal in the society's exhibit in the Grand Pavilion.

Also at the colourful event was Miss Sweden, 26-year-old Camilla Hansson, who posed for photos in a floor-length floral gown that made her appear to float over the World Vision garden.

Later the beauty queen was carried out of the water and onto solid ground, revealing the somewhat unglamorous Hunter wellies she was wearing underneath her gown.

The popular summer season event, which attracts royals and celebrities alike, begins in earnest on Tuesday, with Sophie Raworth and Joe Swift set present televised coverage for the BBC.

Elsewhere, Prince Harry's Sentebale Garden is likely to remain a crowd-pleaser. The 30-year-old royal's charity work with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho will help to raise funds for the land-locked African country's most vulnerable children, many of whom are victims of extreme poverty and Lesotho’s HIV/AIDs epidemic.   

This year's garden 'Hope in Vulnerability' was designed by the 2014 People's Choice winner, Matt Keightley, who consulted both the prince and his father Charles while creating the garden. 

Features include traditional and sustainable construction techniques from Lesotho and 'hurdle fencing' made from peeled sweet chestnuts.

Keightley said of his 2015 creation: 'I hope to give the visitors at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show a taste of the amazing atmosphere I witnessed at some of the existing centres in Lesotho.'

The Chelsea Flower Show opens to the public on May 19th and runs until 23rd May. 

(dailymail.co.uk)