By the time you read this the RHS Chelsea show garden designers, planters, builders and bodgers are well along with their horticultural alchemy, briefly converting the 23 acres of show ground into some of the most imaginative gardens in the world.

Assuming you’ve been following Niwaki’s ‘Road to Chelsea’ coverage, you will already have gleaned some insight into the planning that goes into this annual spectacle – from choosing trees and plants to growing structures from fungus (yes, really, in Tom Massey and Je Ahn’s “Avanade ‘Intelligent’ Garden” – see below).

Our latest dispatch is a double feature, starting with a report so far behind the scenes we had to take a ferry to bring it to you.

Last month, Niwaki was invited to accompany Tom Massey for a day out at design partner Je Ahn’s Isle of Wight hideaway. We’ll gloss over the mild panic that accompanied driving a long wheelbase Land Rover with a 12' Original Tripod Ladder on the roof on and off the ferry (easier in real life than feared) and focus on the good bits: a very relaxed afternoon of planting and plotting, with Tom, Je and author, apiarist and plantswoman Amy Newsome.

Although no strangers to Niwaki tools, Tom, Je and Amy didn’t pass up on the opportunity to put some of their Chelsea kit through its paces while they discussed the upcoming build.

A large part of any Chelsea garden is making something from nothing, which is a challenge Je has had to meet in his own plot of rubble-strewn, decommissioned farm yard.

It’s tough digging with many submerged chunks of broken concrete to deal: just the job for a Golden Spade. Just as Tom and Je’s Chelsea garden recycles concrete slabs from previous builds, so Je makes good use of the materials to hand, repurposing the chunks he digs out of the ground to create a drainage layer and to avoid needing too much compost to fill up some recently acquired zinc cattle troughs. The concrete is covered with a geotextile membrane, then filled and planted.

With the planters in place, Je turned his attention to food prep while Tom and Amy planted out fennel, wild garlic, artichokes and rosemary, amongst other edible delights. Useful/edible plants are a theme at the pair’s Chelsea garden too – everything from the trees to the underplanting is consumable in some form. It’s always interesting to see how gardeners use their tools, and we were especially interested in Amy’s delicate wielding of the Hori Hori in the dry garden: perfect for teasing out weeds without disturbing any more desirable nearby roots.

Dr Catherine MacDonald had been called away on urgent business from the Boodles ‘Raindance’ garden, but the trees didn’t seem to mind. In Japan, Ginkgo biloba is celebrated for it’s golden show in autumn, but on a warm afternoon in the UK in early May the vibrant green canopy was filtering the sun to create a very peaceful corner of the site, even with the mini-diggers and tele-handlers beeping away all around.

Back at the Avanade garden we were introduced to furniture (and more) designer Sebastian Cox, who was cutting strips of ash to weave into the “shed” (bit of an understatement) at the back of the garden. Seb was also responsible for growing – yes growing – the mycelium and ash sawdust panels that clad the bits that weren’t woven in Je Ahn’s design. He explained how all the wood in the structure comes from a single patch of woodland that he himself manages, making this build the architectural equivalent of a ‘farm-to-table’ operation. Not only that but he uses Japanese saws, so you know he’s a good sort.

We were too early for the planting stage of the three builds so our coverage ends there, but stay tuned for our final dispatches from this Sunday onwards … just a few sleeps now, gardening fans!