A taste of the good lifeThe allotment has officially arrived on the scene at Hampton Court, and veg are taking their place shoulder to shoulder with flowers for the first time.  Rosie Hardy, who designed the Kentish Oasthouse garden in the Daily Mail pavilion, has broken all the taboos by planting parsnips and peas alongside roses, and elsewhere, too, while in Claire Whitehouse’s Centrepoint garden, runner beans are under planted with cosmos and sidalcea. The message is clear: vegetables are good enough to look at as well as to eat. There are dozens of original ideas: if you haven’t much room, try growing lettuce in a hanging basket, like designer Anthea Guthrie in the Torres Tapas garden; and if you’re bored of growing your runner beans up canes, borrow Francesca Cleary’s idea from her Mangetout show garden and grow them up twisty woven hazel sculptures instead.
 It doesn’t stop there: livestock are an integral part of any good self-sufficiency drive, and for the first time there are pigs and chickens at Hampton Court. Hens peck beneath an orchard in the Daily Mail Pavilion, while a little way away Mabel, a Tamworth sow from the South of England Rare Breeds Centre in Kent, is looking after her seven lively little piglets. The RHS is doing plenty to encourage the edible theme: chef Craig James is cooking up a storm in Quaglino’s Kitchen to show you what to do with all that veg once you’ve grown it, while at the weekend the Growing and Showing marquee is handed over to amateur veg growers for the RHS Summer Fruit and Veg Competition. Kids’ stuffSome of the most inventive and colourful gardens in the show are those designed for, or by, children. The kids will be itching to get onto the Child’s Play show garden, designed by Chris Gutteridge, with its inviting, vividly-coloured tunnels and sandpit, and you’ll also have to hold them back from Playscape, a garden featuring a massive climbing frame, boulders and fallen trees to scramble over.
 Plenty of children have been working hard on the show gardens themselves this year, too. Over 30 schools, and 500 children, were involved in the Growing Schools garden, designed by Chris Beardshaw and showing how the garden can become an outside classroom, teaching children about everything from growing food to poetry. At the other end of the scale, children from Alton Infants School have created a delightful small plot in Learning to Look After Our World, complete with vegetable garden and chicken coop.
 “I think it’s fab,” says 7-year-old Charlotte, one of the ten year 2 children who designed the garden. “Most of the stuff that we’ve done is organic, and I’ve really enjoyed getting the chicks and the hen here because they’re so sweet.” At least one of her classmates now wants to be a garden designer when they grow up. You know what they say about little acorns… | 
