Every horticulturist dreams of achieving a gold medal from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and that dream will come true for some at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show next week.

However, if Colin Squire had his way, all the 599 exhibitors would get gold for their courage in overcoming a cruel climate that has threatened to devastate plant growers and retailers alike.

Producing displays of the standard required for an RHS show is never easy. But, said Colin, to do so after 18 months of the most extreme weather for more than a century is all but miraculous.

For example, 2012 started with the most severe drought in a generation, followed by the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in England.

Meanwhile, 2013 has already brought the coldest and wettest spring since records began in 1910.

As he spoke, more than 2,000 people, all experts in their particular fields, were nearing the end of their three-week exercise to transform 34 royal acres of the Home Park at Hampton Court Palace into the unique “garden city” known as Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.

Since its birth in 1990, this has blossomed into the largest annual event of its kind in the world.

Colin has exhibited, and won medals, every year from the start, and hopes to do so again this time with a miniature old English garden in the floral marquee.

If he does, it will be a fitting way of marking his 60th anniversary in the horticultural industry – a subject of which no one in the UK knows more than he.

For Squires Garden Centres, of which he is chairman, was founded in Twickenham by his father, David, in 1935, and Colin, born a year later, became interested while still a young child.

The firm was originally devoted to cultivation at a time when plants were grown in open fields, and could only be lifted in autumn.

So Colin, by then a trained architect and landscaper, with more than 200 large gardens in and around Kingston and Twickenham to his credit, became one of the first to grown plants in containers and, in the 1960s, an English pioneer of the new American concept of garden centres when he opened his first one at Twickenham.

Today, Squires has 14 garden centres, plus nurseries for the growing of roses, herbaceous perennials and bedding plants, and has been joined in the horticultural business by his daughter, Sarah.

- The Hampton Court show runs from Tuesday, July 9 to Sunday, July 14, with the first two reserved for RHS members only.

- On the remaining days, all-day tickets for the general public will be £29.50 or £19 for entry after 3pm (2.30pm on the Sunday) and £23 and £15 respectively for RHS members. However, each paying adult can bring two children aged under 16 free of charge.

- Opening hours are 10am to 7.50pm Tuesday to Saturday and 10am to 5.30pm on the Sunday.

- There will be eight show gardens, eight conceptual gardens, four low-cost, high-impact gardens and 15 summer gardens.
 

- Each of the displays have taken up to three weeks to build, but must be cleared in only three days when the flower show
closes.
 

- The floral marquee will house 95 top British nurseries, and around 120 designers and craftsmen will be offering jewellery, clothing, arts and crafts and other items in the Country Living Magazine Pavilion.