Features: Credit crunch Chelsea

You might think the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, an icon of never-mind-the-expense perfection and the gold standard by which everything that follows is measured, would be immune from matters as mundane as the credit crunch.

But the figures speak for themselves. Show gardens are down to 13 from a high of 22 last year, as sponsor after cash-strapped sponsor pulled out. Headline names such as Cleve West and Diarmuid Gavin - both potential exhibitors this year - are conspicuously absent, and budgets for most of those gardens which remain are tight. The RHS has had to think on its feet.

"It has been difficult," says show manager Alex Baulkwill. "But you know you can't let something like Chelsea, the flagship show, go down the drain."

One of their solutions was to invite 2007 winner Sarah Eberle - one of those whose sponsor had dropped out - to fill one of the empty show garden plots with three small gardens. They gave her just over two months to do it in, and the budget for all three was £15,000 - small change compared to the £250,000 plus that can go on one of the more glitzy show gardens.

Sarah relished the challenge: she and co-designer Peter Dowle begged and borrowed materials instead of buying them and were forced to rely on good ideas, not money. It's a trend repeated throughout the showground: an emphasis on designs on a more human scale. The recession has allowed a new kind of designer on to Main Avenue: a little less glamorous perhaps, but with a down-to-earth approach well suited to difficult times.

Adam Frost, already a highly successful designer of small gardens with two gold medals and a Best Urban Garden award under his belt, is one of those graduating to a full show garden with his peaceful, poetry-inspired 'The QVC Garden'. It's a little smaller than full-sized and the budget is tight - but Adam sees that as the way forward.

"If you look around, what you do see gone from Chelsea is big-budget gardens," he said. "My gut feeling is that, in a funny sort of way, that could be the best thing that ever happened to Chelsea."

Visitors seem to agree. As renowned designer John Brookes told journalists at a debate for the VISTA lecture series this week, "Chelsea seems less fevered." He thought this year's show would go down as a quiet one, but as he put it, "that makes it nicer."

Camilla Swift, taking a day out from her job at the National Botanic Garden of Wales to visit the show, has also found the show more relaxed.

"There's a lot that isn't beyond us normal gardeners' reach, and I love that," she says. "I love the variety there is this year, and I love the feeling of informality - yeah, it's tough, but look, we're here."

Alex says it would have been inappropriate in any case to stage the full quotient of big-budget show gardens when people are struggling to make ends meet.

"It's not in good taste, is it," she said. "That's why the Credit Crunch gardens up in Royal Hospital Way by Sarah Eberle have done so well - because people realise what you can do with a smaller amount of money."

"I think this year has proved that it doesn't dampen the spirits," she said. "In fact if anything, people turn to gardening in their hour of need. It's when you feel down and depressed and fed up that you always turn to gardening. So I think that gardening is going to do very, very well out of this."