Never mind a gnome, no other garden at this year’s Chelsea flower show can boast a Barbara Hepworth sculpture like the RHS gold-award-winning Tate Britain garden. And few will have such a significant afterlife. Designed by the landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith, it is a microcosm of a major redesign for the gallery’s Millbank garden, opening next spring.
Visitors to Tate Britain may be forgiven for not noticing that the 1897 gallery has a garden at all. The imposing steps and portico overshadow two rectangles of lawn. But this unloved patch will be transformed into a horticultural haven. The gallery, which like many has struggled to recover visitor numbers since the pandemic, could do with a boost.
