What exactly was Elvis Costello on about when he crooned "I don't want to go to Chelsea"?

I like to imagine an unfortunate childhood incident involving too much sunshine and an overdose of roses and sugary drinks courtesy of Great Aunt Fanny dragging the innocent lad around that fine bastion of Englishness, the Chelsea Flower Show.

I'm sure someone will set me straight.

Elvis notwithstanding, as the world’s gardening eyes turn this week to the opening of the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show, it seems a good time to chat about festival gardens. Can these temporary installation gardens provide clues to benefit our home landscapes, or are they a just a bit of a novelty, and waste of precious resources?

The worst garden festivals are truly throw-away. They last barely a few days, and a huge amount of time and effort is invested in making instant gardens that end up in landfill. The best garden festivals do things differently, often using materials and plants that can be recycled or reused, mulched or donated. Most importantly, they invite us to think about our gardens and landscapes in different ways.

Here are 10 Ideas from Installation Gardens that can be used to help shape your own landscape.

1. Mystery

Should Alice go left, where the path looks clear? Or right, and into that curious archway?

2. Texture

There’s a fine, gravelly deco path. There’s wildly looping grass. There’s soft leaves and feathery flower heads…

3. Colour

Red contrasts with green, right? So does crimson, pink, magenta and maroon. The varied shades and shapes of the flowers and foliage build the intensity of colour.

4. Restraint

A small garden representing Australia, where the deliberately restrained enclosing grasses and simple red earth invite stillness and silence, and focus attention on the central floor artwork.

5. Whimsy

Did you smile when you saw these big woven onion thingys? Course you did. And wait till the nasturtiums completely take over and you have a big onion-shaped nasturtium thingy instead.

6. Detail

You squinted to get a closer look, right? These tiny flowers and seeds sandwiched between sheets of perspex show the fragility and beauty of everyday plant species. The miniature size forces us to look closely. Small things are as important as the big stuff.

7. Delight

Like frozen raindrops, how lovely are these strings of suspended glass balls?

8. Surprise

As the fog starts drifting out of this valley the air smells different, the colours changes, you hold the handrail a little tighter, and all the senses are tuned in.

9. Art

Held in an adjacent out-building, this festival exhibition also challenged visitors to reconsider gardens, nature and landscape. Did the chair legs sprout and start growing into trees, or were the trees there first, with a seat added later?

10. Stewardship

A reminder that every time we make a garden, park or city, we make choices. Each of the labels in this garden lists the name of an endangered or extinct plant species. The absence of the plants themselves makes the message more poignant.

11. Time

OK, so there's really 11! One of the most magical aspects of landscape is time. This festival is held in the grounds of a 15th century chateau. Renaissance garden and contemporary festival co-exist, in a landscape that becomes both timeless and timely.

These images are all from the International Garden Festival, held every year in Chaumont-sur-Loire. Although the festival theme changes yearly, the over-arching aim of the festival is to inspire people to think differently about what a garden is, and can be. Garden festivals are but one of a range of temporary or installation parks that challenge us to re-think our landscapes. I find them so intriguing that I’ve devoted a whole chapter of my forthcoming book to discussing the world of Installation Parks. But that's a whole other Elvis Costello song.

Now I want to hear from you.

Which of the 10 Ideas most appealed to you and why? Which can you see working in your garden landscape? Leave a comment below and let me know.

Know someone who might enjoy this article? Be sure to share it with your friends. See you soon for more landscape inspiration.