RHS Chelsea Flower show 2019 preview: the top gardening trends and must-see gardens coming up at this year's show

If there’s one message that the RHS Chelsea Flower Show wants us to take home this year it’s to reconnect with nature.

Woodlands and forests abound, from a playful family garden full of adventure co-designed by the Duchess of Cambridge to Sarah Eberle’s stately forest glade.

"Get outside and get your nature fix," say Adam White and Andree Davies of Davies White Landscape Architects, who are designing the RHS Back to Nature garden with the Duchess of Cambridge.

The garden, which will not be judged, will include a hollow log to hide in, a tree house, stream, campfire and den to reconnect children to the natural world through play.

Trees may be taking stage this year, but there is one exception. Oak trees are banned from the show to prevent spreading the destructive pest oak processionary moth which has been found in the grounds.

With Europe-grown lavender already off the menu because of the disease xylella – a headache for designers because English-grown lavender is hard to get to flower in May – plant health is no longer a subject that can be ignored, even at Chelsea.

We all need to do our bit to prevent diseases spreading said RHS Director General Sue Biggs at a press conference to launch the show in central London this week.

"If there’s one message we’d love to get out there, it is ‘Don’t bring plants back from holiday.'"

So, royal tree houses aside, what will be the other highlights this year for the 170,000 people who will swarm the showground this May?

Look out for Tom Dixon’s indoor food laboratory for Ikea, the return of Chelsea heavyweights Thomas Hoblyn and Andy Sturgeon and an installation to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day featuring haunting figures of servicemen that recede into the distance amid a sea of 10,000 pink sea thrift plants.

There will also be a Yorkshire canal, Patagonian waterfalls, a Zimbabwean classroom, a new clematis called ‘Meghan’ named after the Duchess of Sussex and the intriguing prospect of the introduction of a ‘watermelon radish’.

As for the Donkey Sanctuary garden in the Artisan Category, we’re hoping for a real donkey.

Take a look through our gallery above for the best highlights to watch out for at this year's show.

Designer Tom Dixon’s ‘Gardening will save the world’ garden for Ikea is an exciting prospect that celebrates how we can grow food even in inner cities.

The lighting, furniture and accessories innovator has turned his hand to a sort of ‘upstairs, downstairs’ edible fantasyland where subterranean mushrooms and other hydroponic edibles in the lower storey are topped with a wild landscape. The public will be able to wander through garden which will be in the Great Pavilion.

A first-time Chelsea designer, Dixon confesses to nerves about how the yellow lighting in the tent will make the plants look, but reassured that he will be dry whatever the weather.

The power of the natural world takes centre stage with several gardens celebrating its ability to endure and regenerate.

Andy Sturgeon’s M&G landscape is a Jurassic-looking bold-leaved woodland sliced through with enormous charred timber formations inspired by rocks he saw on a Australian beach.

Sarah Eberle’s restful forest for the Forestry Commission is inspired by the gardener William Robinson who introduced the idea of wild gardening to the Victorians.

Titled ‘The Resilience Garden’, it highlights the importance of helping forests adapt to climate change and pests and diseases.

Multi-award winning Eberle is never boring. Last year her garden was a giant cricket wicket. This year the centrepiece is an enormous farm grain silo that doubles as tree researcher’s workshop.

Thomas Hoblyn returns to Chelsea with the Dubai Majilis Garden inspired by the beauty found in arid landscapes.

Goat-browsed plants and a sand dune pavilion will bring a Middle Eastern feel.

Last year Mark Gregory scooped the People’s Choice Award for his patch of the Dales complete with babbling brook, bird sounds and sheep poo.

This time for Welcome to Yorkshire, in his 99th garden for Chelsea, Gregory is building a canal with flowing water, a lock keepers lodge and working gates.

You can almost smell the bilge water. Likely to be another crowd pleaser.

Jo Thompson celebrates Wedgwood's rich 260-year history by setting its foundations in Etruria, the 18th-century Staffordshire village that Josiah Wedgwood created for his workers.

Framed by pavilions and arches and underplanted with airy planting, this will have an elegant, classical feel inspired by Thompson’s childhood in Rome.

Kate Gould is designing a garden for Greenfingers, the charity that helps life-limited children and their families.

A lush split-level garden with sloped walkways and a lift to access the top storey, it evokes a peaceful space filled with trees where children and their families can relax together.

Last year Jonathan Snow recreated the burnt landscape of the South African fynbos in his show garden.

This year he’s heading west to Patagonia for his Trailfinders garden complete with waterfalls, to evoke a ‘land of snow-capped mountains covered in ancient forests and dense vegetation’.

Expect gunneras, ferns, fuschias and geums. His challenge will be trying to make a dramatic waterfall with only a few metres of height to play with. But the former army officer will doubtless relish the challenge.

The Space to Grow gardens always offer a fresh take and Jilayne Rickard’s garden for the charity Camfed that supports girls’ education in Africa brings rural Zimbabwe to Chelsea with colourful oil drums and edibles.

Kampo no Niha celebrates healing plants for common ailments inspired by the landscape of northern Japan.

And Facebook comes to Chelsea with Joe Perkins’ Beyond the Screen garden which imagines an ever-changing coastal landscape to explore the positive side of social media.