Derbyshire allotment holder and dad-of-four takes tips from the Chelsea flower show

So our front garden was in desperate need of a little spruce up, nothing drastic, but just a few more plants to brighten it up. It's south facing so it gets battered from the sun during the summer and the wind during the winter. We have opted for more Mediterranean style plants, things like olives, callistemon, lavender, rosemary, oleanders, trachycarpus and cordylines to name a few.

Bringing these types of plants into your garden will definitely give you the sense of being on holiday, which is very important right now as we can't go away due to Oscar's cancer treatment.

So I was invited down to the Chelsea flower show on press day, to see what all the fuss was about. Me and a good friend went down, Adam aka greenfingeredcityboy on Instagram and we had an amazing day. Some of the gardens were incredible and some were a little weird, with the emphasis on leaving weeds in your garden and letting nature do its thing. This isn't something I'm very fond of, mainly because I don't have a huge garden, but if you have the space it's a great way to encourage more wildlife into your garden.

My absolute favourite part of the whole show was seeing some of the incredible tree ferns they had there. The way they had planted them up to create the look they have in the wild was something I want to create in my garden.

The good thing about these shows is that you can take away little snippets and put them into your garden, another idea I loved was growing edibles and ornamentals together, which is something I don't do enough!

I do have to mention though about meeting the absolute legend that is Sir Brian May. I was a bit star struck at that point, but it just highlighted what an incredible day it was.

This week also marks the one year point since Oscar was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. It's been a rollercoaster of a year, we worked out the other day he has had 230 doses of chemotherapy with another 468 left if there are no more breaks in his treatment. Kind of mind blowing right?!

We have learnt so much over the last year, but the biggest healer has been our garden and the allotment, without those who knows where we would be….

Gardening for your mental health and wellbeing has been proven to help, so if you are struggling, maybe with the loss of a loved one, or just the stress and anxiety of life, I challenge you to get outside and give it a go.

Follow our journey over on Instagram, @a_life_in_the_garden to see what we get up to.