Everything in the garden is lovely, reports Jennifer Cunningham, from a horticultural showcase that's giving Chelsea a run for its money.

As the Chelsea Flower Show braced itself for the scrum of home counties gardeners battling to secure their prize specimens at the end of the event, Strathclyde Park was ringing to the sound of hammer on metal, stone, and wood as the marquees and the structure of the gardens began to take shape, a week before the opening of Scotland's National Gardening Show.

It was dubbed the Chelsea of the North while little more than a seedling nurtured by the Royal Horticultural Society's shows director, Stephen Bennett, an indication of the huge expectations attached by both the horticultural trade and the public to the society's first large-scale show in Scotland. It more than lived up to the hype, attracting 70,000 visitors and exceeding the target figure by 20,000. It made the headlines by being so popular on the opening day that the traffic tailed back for miles on the M8 and M73 on the opening day, causing gardeners looking for tranquillity to fume as they were stuck in their cars in temperatures of 79F, while extra traffic police were diverted to find extra parking around Hamilton and Motherwell.

This year there will be a new traffic management system which has been successfully put to the test by the firework display in the

park which attracted 60,000 people last November, according to the RHS's Scottish shows manager, Susan Oliver.

A protest against the use of peat for gardening purposes by Friends of the Earth campaigners dressed as Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men added a sense of urgency to the Chelsea Flower Show, as they distributed leaflets urging gardeners to find an alternative, claiming that 18 sites of Special Scientific Interest in the UK are at risk from peat extraction. That found a sympathetic ear in the chairman of the Strathclyde show and judge at Chelsea, Dougal Philip. The effect gardeners can have on wildlife and the environment is the theme of the garden his nursery, Hopetoun Gardens, is constructing for Scottish Natural Heritage, and which will be rebuilt after the show at SNH's headquarters outside Perth.

The idea is to demonstrate that a garden can be an oasis for wildlife without becoming a no-go area for people, which is the greatest fear of gardeners who would otherwise like to be environmentally friendly according to surveys carried

out by SNH.

''The environmental messages to gardeners have been confusing, particularly over the past five years,'' says Philip, ''with the result that gardeners don't know how to help. Plants don't have to be wild and unkempt to attract wildlife. Many traditional garden flowers attract bees and butterflies, but it is important to grow the varieties with plenty of nectar and pollen and so there is now a close eye being kept on some of the new hybrids. It's also important to avoid the doubles which the bees cannot get into.''

The use of wood and peat are prime examples of conflicting messages which Dougal Philip himself has had to wrestle with. As a demonstration that even the smallest space can be planted with

wildlife-friendly plants, and that a garden can be taken down and reconstructed, his show garden is a series of wooden containers constructed on tarmac, separated by decking to provide viewing areas. ''We thought we should probably use recycled wood, until it was pointed out that new timber from environmentally-managed woodlands was better than cutting up old timber which would do the job not quite properly,'' adds Philip, whose conscience has also been salved by the fact that new preservatives, once in the wood, remain fixed and do not leach poisons. This had brought Fife timber merchants James Donaldson into the sponsorship of the SNH garden and underlines the fact that many small horticultural businesses find the time and cost of exhibiting at the show, but particularly creating a garden, prohibitive.

As part of the Glorious Gardens of Argyll and Bute group of 20 gardens which have banded together mainly for marketing purposes, Mark Sands, of Ardkinglas estate nurseries and tree shop, was involved in the creation of their exhibition garden at last year's show and is an adviser this year to the group which has taken the theme of taming the wilderness - particularly appropriate to its woodland gardens, full of rhododendron-studded glens and crashing cataracts.

It's taken three sponsors to allow them to commission designers, pay for landscaping materials and work and devote time to growing, selecting, and installing the plants. ''People are absolutely astonished when I tell them it takes #30,000 to do one of these gardens at the show,'' says Philip. ''It will cost us at Ardkinglas #2000-#3000 to do a stand in the floral marquee this year. I'm not sure there is the money in Scotland among nurseries and growers to support this kind of show.''

Dougal Philip acknowledges the fact that the last weekend in May is probably the busiest for Scottish garden centres, and that nurseries can create a problem for small businesses which have to take staff away from base to have a presence at the show, but he is convinced waverers will be converted. ''If you are going to have a show of this size, it has to be when people want to buy,'' he says. ''This show did not grow from small beginnings, but started off as a grown-up show, which the RHS has underwritten with a six-figure sum. If this year's is as successful as last year's, it will become a permanent fixture.''

n Scotland's National Gardening Show - including regular information sessions in the Herald Question and Answer Theatre - runs from May 29-31. Ticket hotline 0990 900 123.