This is the big one, Road Trips Gardeners, and it’s never to early to make plans to head to London for the Chelsea Flower Show.

This year, the show is May 22 through 26, 2012, at Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London, England (map). As usual, it’s sponsored by the Royal Horticultural Society.

The show gardens are usually show-stoppers. Among them this year: one designed using inspiration from the Arts & Crafts Movement, another by Sarah Price, who also is co-designer of the 2012 Gardens at the Olympic Park in London, a woodland garden featuring rhododendrons, azaleas, acers and primulas amid reclaimed timber and thatch, and an evocative garden of near pristine vegetation representing Korea’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

(Photo courtesy of Chelsea Flower Show)