We catch up with Tom Stuart-Smith, designer of this year's winning garden, the Daily Telegraph garden.

And the winner is...

Tom Stuart Smith is no stranger to Chelsea gold. This is his sixth gold medal at the show, and he's won Best in Show before too, in 2003. But this year he's excelled himself. Despite a series of setbacks that would try the most patient of gardeners, he's stolen the show with a remarkable garden. Tom says he knew he was in with a chance.

Tom Stuart-Smith

"I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I know now when I've done well enough. You know, I can look at it and think, right, you’ve done OK, that's all right."

His calmness is quite remarkable when you consider that he had disaster after disaster in the build-up to Chelsea. First the great, craggy Viburnum rhytidophyllum he uses along the side of the garden wilted dramatically. They revived just in time, but then he discovered – as he was building the garden – that his hornbeam hedging had been chewed by a deer. Last-minute replacements were found. Then, when they took the protective covering off the oak decking, they found it had turned black.

"Somehow some little shavings of metal got on it," says Tom. "And the day before the show we had to wash the whole deck down with oxalic acid, which is not really something you want to be doing in the pouring rain at four o'clock in the afternoon on the day before the show is opening."

His garden has come through it all, gale-force winds and rain included, and still looks gorgeous. The colour scheme of deepest purples, violets and dusky reds is touched with the oranges of Euphorbia griffithii and Geum 'Prinses Juliana', reflecting the velvety Corten pre-rusted steel wall behind.

"I just think there's something wonderful about working with really saturated colours," says Tom. "This effect you can get with these deep irises – it's so mouth-wateringly sumptuous."

And irises run like a ripple throughout the planting scheme, in extraordinary combinations: the buff coloured Iris 'Cable Car' against deep purple I. 'Superstition', for example. Tom’s favourite, though, is I. 'Supreme Sultan'. "It's the one that really steals the show," he says. "It's the only iris I haven't had to dead-head so far, after all this weather."

He didn't set out to create a romantic look. "I see it as a sort of fusion between romanticism and modernism," he says. "I don't think I'm being romantic. But there’s something about plants – you just do what you do, and if it ends up looking romantic, then that's fine."