Chelsea: Flower Power rules the start of UK season

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - A topless model poses in the foliage, environmentalists plead for the water vole, yoga enthusiasts balance on tip-toe amid the plants.

Media day at Britain's Chelsea Flower Show can be a truly surreal experience when former Beatle Ringo Starr rubs shoulders with Britain's national sailing team and "Weakest Link" TV presenter Anne Robinson launches a garden for Alzheimer sufferers.

The world's most famous flower show is bedecked for the day in some very unlikely finery -- TV soap stars, interior designers and even donkeys, chickens and a Shetland pony are on display. No gimmick is too outrageous.

But then it's all-change as the show goes upmarket.

The camera crews and jostling reporters are ushered out on Monday afternoon so Britain's Queen Elizabeth can tour the show in regal solitude.

For High Society, Chelsea is the launchpad for the summer season with socialites then trekking indefatigably to Royal Ascot races, Wimbledon tennis and a night at the opera in the country at Glyndebourne.

But for green-fingered enthusiasts fuelling Britain's 2 billion pound ($3.91 billion) gardening industry, this is serious business.

Gardening, in the words of British designer Terence Conran, is "the new rock 'n' roll for the young". Famous cooks vie with gardening experts for airtime on the latest makeover show.

Celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh, who hosts a nightly BBC Television show from the grounds, has no doubts about the prowess displayed across this green and pleasant land.

"The Brits are the best gardeners in the world. It is not an idle boast. We have the greatest skills and experience," he told Reuters at the show's sun-kissed opening day.

"We have been cunning over the years and we took inspiration from the French and the Dutch and ran with it and added our own."

For Chelsea is the horticultural Olympics.

The show, staged in elegant grounds on the banks of the River Thames, attracts exhibitors from as far afield as Australia and the Cayman Islands.

For four days, this is the centre of the gardening universe as up to 170,000 visitors cram into Chelsea.

"If you talk to the man who has brought orchids from Japan to the show, this is where he wants to be -- at the Chelsea Flower Show -- as he has nothing like it back home," Titchmarsh said.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)