Hi-Viz vests are reaching saturation point on Chelsea embankment as organisers cock the starting pistol on the Greatest Flower Show in the World aka Chelsea.
The RHS’s overall theme of ‘Your space, your story’ leaves the field wide open for garden designers to go all ways – and they’re not missing the opportunity, so buckle up!
Here we flag the exhibitors we think will be intriguing, and the stands we’re tipping to win the ultimate glory – ‘best in show’.
Yes, Chelsea Flower Show this year is going to be a veritable gallimaufry (LOVE that word!) of ideas. One of the strongest themes is imagining what our gardens will be like in the future – I’ve coincidentally been reviewing a book on this very subject recently – my review will appear next week on our social media channels.
One of the big show-gardens for 2025 is the Avanade Intelligent Garden, which examines how AI and smart sensors of all kinds can track the growth of urban trees, and ‘tell’ us what they need to thrive. In association with Microsoft (who else?), the award-winning designer Tom Massey has designed a garden in which data about soil, water availability, general plant health, etc. is constantly fed into a computer. Then it analyses it and tells us how we can help the plants in question to be healthier.
Wowee! Where will it end? Perhaps we’ll be able to do all our gardening from our laptops in 30 years’ time – it tells us what’s going wrong somewhere in the garden, tells us which button to press to solve the problem (squirts of water, increase the shade, kill a weed and so on..) and we can get on with our empty lives. Bloomin’ terrifying thought!
The same theme is picked up by other show gardens this year, including the Garden of the Future which looks at how the new technology can help smallholders to cope with our changing world.
This sort of technology is already happening worldwide in commercial horticultural enterprises, of course. Its application to our own muddly, error-filled patches (come on, I know it’s not only me) feels a lot less desirable at the moment – I think my smart sensors would blow up! It’ll be interesting.
The King’s Trust show garden ‘Seeding Success’ also has the future in mind, but here it is in the context of plants from seeds that will survive in hostile environments, such as volcanic landscapes – or ones which humankind has degraded by way of changing the climate.
The message is one of Building Resilience, whether it’s in young people or plant material, and this garden looks on paper like a winner to me. Also it’s designed by Joe Perkins, a big Growbag favourite (the poor man got surrounded by us at a press lunch once – I thought he was a jolly good sport, considering 🙄).
Ye Gods! How can Elaine have passed over the main event at this years Chelsea – Monty Don’s RHS and BBC Radio 2 Dog Garden! Maybe it was too low brow for her to mention now she’s reading books on resilience and sustainability….
But as I watch our young Labrador lay waste to my carefully curated collection of pond plants I do wonder if Monty’s vision of creating a canine paradise might be representing the topic through slightly rose-tinted spectacles (see what I did there 🧐) . Either that or Ned is considerably better behaved than Isla.
This aside I don’t think I have ever looked forward to Chelsea more. The plethora of naturalistic gardens drawing inspiration from the local landscape is nirvana to someone most interested in the interface between ecology and horticulture. I can’t wait to see these habitat pastiches represent our wonderful native flora from as far afield as Dundee to the Norfolk coast via some British rain forests.
But it is perhaps the human element to our shared hobby that has touched the deepest chord in my anticipation of the show. I loved the Glasshouse Project stand in 2024, demonstrating how this social enterprise project was offering second chances to women prisoners by upskilling them in horticulture as they neared the end of their sentence, dramatically reducing the rate of re-offending. Their main avenue show garden this year is being designed by Jo Thompson on the theme of Strong Beauty to represent the power of women to give opportunities to other women. With minimal hard landscaping and a palette of bold-coloured pink and red roses against the upright forms of royal fern, (and although this may be a case of my heart ruling my head) this garden is my tip for a top award.
It’s the same with the pavilion exhibits. The human endeavour involved in Tree Nursery Frank P Matthew’s bringing an orchard of apple and crabapple trees in bloom fills me with joy, as will the new sweet pea named ‘Amy Dowden’, and the final word will definitely go to the dogged determination of Phil Harkness of Harkness Roses and the 12 years it has taken his nursery to produce the new rose named after our brave Princess of Wales ‘Catherine’s Rose’.
Coming from the Scottish Highlands, once I’m inside that trade tent I’ll have one destination – Glendoick Nursery who are coming to Chelsea for the very first time.
If Scotland had horticultural royalty the Cox family at Glendoick (‘twixt Dundee and Perth) hold the crown and sceptre. They’re really botanists disguised as retailers so try not to ask them too many daft questions (note to self). They specialise in azaleas and rhododendrons, and to own one of their cultivars is, like the posh watches, simply to look after it for the next generation.
Binny Plants and the shimmering ethereal beauty of Kevock Nursery’s stand will also have you considering a move to Scotland but out in the show gardens our main stock-in-trade – rocky, inhospitable seabeds – are the main act.
The Seawilding garden from Loch Craignish (Argyll) will cause a stir. Financed by a significant wedge from the National Lottery (keep buying those tickets!) this badly degraded sea loch is being restocked with native plantlife. Well, we all crept out from the sea back in the day, and if the King’s Trust stand is to be believed, we may have to again… at least seawilding will help us to be the best lizards we can be!
Unbelievably there are two more show gardens from Scotland this year – Downs Syndrome Scotland and Nigel Dunnet’s design based on the garden he created for the arts venue Hospitalfield in Arbroath, Scotland.
In a volte face from his trademark colour-filled pictorial meadow concept, much loved by Laura, Nigel’s design is all about plants that match your environment – apparently interspersed with armadillos – but by this stage you’ll be punch drunk with Chelsea’s post-apocalyptic scenarios and this will seem entirely normal.
We each have our own ‘Tips for the Top’ – no doubt we’ll be confounded by the judge’s opinions, but:
Elaine I reckon the King’s Trust garden could be a very good bet for Best in Show. The Boodles Raindance Garden (designed by Catherine McDonald) sounds on paper to be crazy-pretty (and therefore RIGHT UP HER STREET) and therefore a possible Peoples’ Choice….and the British Red Cross ‘Here for Humanity’ Garden (a hard-landscape-heavy twist on an alpine garden) looks …er…challenging.
Laura I’m rooting for the Glasshouse Project with its powerful back story for Best in Show, and possibly Tom Hoblyn’s skilful combination of rock and painterly plant colour choices in the Hospice UK Garden of Compassion as the People’s Choice. But I’m not sure that Avanade Intelligent Garden, with its beating heart being a tree sensor, isn’t a bit too clinically clever for its own good ….
Caroline: I’d like to recommend a little gem from the distillery at Fettercairn – one of my former home villages in the Scottish Mearns – with its open-air bath playing into the current craze for plunging into cold water in your birthday suit.
But I think the contesters may be the Addleshaw Goddard: Freedom to Flourish garden or Nigel Dunnet’s Hospitalfield project. Why? Because they both reflect something of Sarah Price’s knockout garden a couple of years ago, which got everyone talking.
My sisters should have spent more time reading the Racing Post, you’ve got to study previous form to pick a winner!
The idea of a standard wisteria is not new but less often seen than one might imagine. This sumptuous wisteria is widely acknowledged to be one of the best, and here Louise explains why…
It’s also time to do the Chelsea Chop in your own gardens, to get sturdier and more floriferous late summer perennials. We show you how we do it in this short video – just click on the picture below to watch.
Elaine’s garden is open for the local hospice today, Saturday May 17th, and Laura will also be there with our pop-up shop. There’ll be a plant stall, lots of tea and cake 🍰😊 and we’re even promised sunshine, so pop along if you get the chance. It will open once more this year, for the National Garden Scheme, on June 1st.
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