Fruit and vegetable displays are a common theme

Fifty gardens and floral displays are on show at the 11-acre site, which took 800 people three weeks to transform.

A preview on Monday was attended by several royals, and celebrities such as Michael Caine and Rod Stewart.

TV presenter Gloria Hunniford launched an apricot rose in the Cancer Research UK garden in memory of her daughter Caron Keating who died last year.

Other gardens include the commemorative Peace Garden, designed by Sir Terence Conran, which is all white with a few red poppies.

Vegetable garden

On Monday the Imperial War Museum released 60 white doves from the garden to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War Two.

The Fetzer garden features a vegetable patch of carrots, beet, chard, leeks and cauliflowers - one of several featuring the so-called "Jamie Oliver" influence.

The Chelsea Pensioner's Garden, with thatched cottage pub, roses and wild flowers, also featured a "Dig for Victory" vegetable garden.

Set in 1945, it is meant to represent a "soldier's dream of Blighty". On Monday, Normandy landings veteran Wally Offord, 88, sat in the garden and chatted to the Countess of Wessex.

He said afterwards: "She liked the garden, and she said it was very pretty and I think so too."

Other royals at the south-west London event included the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent, Lady Helen Taylor, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent and Princess Alexandra.