Soap stars, royalty, actors, sportsmen and models all appeared at Chelsea for Press Day on Monday, as they took the wraps of floral exhibits and gardens.

Gardening celebrities, Charlie Dimmock, Alan Titchmarsh, Andy Sturgeon, Anne Swithinbank and Monty Don could all be seen, and even media mogul Chris Evans, arrived at the show on a moped to pose briefly for the cameras at the Marie Curie Cancer Care garden.

Many stars took time out to describe how they garden. Clive Mantle, who plays a TV doctor in the BBC show Casualty and Holby City, said: "My responsibility is for vegetables. The bottom half of the garden is mine and my wife has the pretty bit. I grow aubergine, mange tout, but always far too much - the people at Holby City get fed up with all the courgettes I bring in."

Foppish interior designer, Changing Rooms’ Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen, came to the show in the same rose print suit as he wore to last year’s Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. "My new stuff is not ready. But this will be its last outing ever. I think I’ll shred it for compost," he said.

Another celebrity who has been bitten by the gardening bug was Carol Vorderman, who fronted ITVs recent Better Gardens. "I learnt a lot from the show. But especially that if you patch things together, it’s not as good as taking the overall view. You need to do a proper design."

Elsewhere show visitors could see the likes of flutist James Galway, actors Terence Stamp and Helen Mirren, supermodel Jodie Kidd, HRH Duchess of Kent, and Miss Great Britain, Louise Larkin, helped to promote the Sainsbury, the National Farmers’ Union and UK Horticulture floral exhibit.