But to be honest, I needn't have got so stressed out. Amazingly, and despite the downpours of rain of last week, Chelsea 2001 is well underway, with a host of plants, paraphernalia and Show Gardens for us all to drool over. And there's a lot to letch at. For the first time in ages, all the Show Gardens are so radically different to each other that there genuinely is something for everyone. If there's one overriding theme, then it has to be geometry.
Water features, on the whole are straight or perfectly round and dominate the view.
Jeff Goundrill of HMP Leyhill has thrown out the loose informality of last year's hugely popular Meadow Garden and replaced it with a perfect sphere presiding unabashed at the centre of orderly linear beds. Tom Stuart-Smith's, sumptuously soft red sandstone grounds the terrace to the planting with complete ease, while granite surfaces underfoot in Cleve West and Johnny Woodford's garden are practical and purposeful. And at last, concrete is released from its dull grey prison and injected with life in Carol Vincent's Blue Circle Garden. Treated with pigment, polished, lacquered or even injected with fibre optics, Vincent thrusts concrete into orbit challenging all pre-conceptions and proving it as a beautiful material in its own right. Metal is still being used, but it is looser and not so hard as the stainless steel of yesterday.