This year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show is offering up a riot of patriotic tributes, including a life-size topiary of the late Queen’s pony, Emma, a garden featuring some of the King’s favourite plants and a Union Jack made out of roses.
Yet, while pristinely manicured gardens may once have dominated the biggest horticultural event in the calendar, this year’s show promises to push a wilder format, as the public is encouraged to learn to love weeds and use repurposed litter on their plots. There will also be an emphasis on wellbeing and the value of community gardens.
There will be a total of 36 gardens: 12 main show gardens, seven sanctuary gardens, six All About Plants gardens, five container gardens, four balcony gardens and two RHS feature gardens. Here are just a few of the themes to look out for…
Royal flush
Unsurprisingly, various royal tributes will be featured, including a life-size topiary display of the late Queen’s pony, Emma, in the Great Pavilion, while a display celebrating the coronation in Dave Green’s RHS A Garden Of Royal Reflection & Celebration, is designed as a tranquil space featuring some of the Windsor family’s favourite plants.
It incorporates a palette of light pinks and whites to reflect the tastes of the late Queen.
Also featured in the garden will be the King’s favourites, including clematis ‘Duchess of Cornwall’, lupins and geraniums, while drifts of camassia, as planted in the meadows in front of Highgrove House, along with a bronze statue of the King, will be among the highlights.
Weeds
Look out for clover and common knapweed in the Royal Entomological Society Garden, featuring plants which are important food sources for pollinators. There’s also an outdoor laboratory, built into a hillside, offering an ‘insect eye view’ and a space in which to study.
The Centrepoint Garden incorporates nettles, red campion and bindweed as an experiment to see if ornamentals and weeds can cohabit in a pretty way.
Rubble
Gold medal-winning designer Darren Hawkes will be creating a garden using 85% reclaimed materials from demolition sites, scrap yards and farmyards in the Samaritans’ Listening Garden to mark the charity’s 70th anniversary.
Using salvaged materials recovered from sites around his home in Cornwall, Hawkes will be honing, shaping and polishing them to create beautiful new forms and textures, ascribing the Japanese tradition of kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired using gold to transform it into a new work of art. The result will be a garden of salvaged concrete and steel transformed into a beautiful space.
Also see how the Centre for Mental Health’s The Balance Garden uses crushed site waste as a growing medium for climate-resilient planting. At the heart of the garden is a ‘mushroom den’ made from a reclaimed steel-clad shipping container.
Litter
The RSPCA will use repurposed litter sourced from its rescue centres, including a fishing hook removed from a swan’s foot and tin cans removed from hedgehogs for its sanctuary garden designed by Martyn Wilson, while Jane Porter’s Choose Love Garden, inspired by refugee migration routes across Europe, features a sculpture made from discarded tents.
Drought resistant plants
Look out for drought-resistant plants – some 55% of perennials in the show gardens will be drought tolerant, almost double that of last year – including fennel, bearded iris, Stipa gigantea, salvia and cistus.
A buzz around insects
Visitors can enter a human-sized hive in this immersive beehive experience – the ‘Beezantium’ exhibit for The Newt in Somerset, hosted by gardeners and beekeepers, offering insights into the mysterious life of the bee through a scaled-up beehive surrounded by nectar-rich planting. It’s aimed at helping visitors understand the importance of bees in our global ecosystem.
Edible ideas
Vegetable gardeners should be wowed by The School Food Matters Garden, an edible, climate adapted garden for children, with more than 80% of the planting being edible, while the Hamptons Mediterranean Garden provides a contemporary outdoor living space growing edible fruits and herbs.
Or visitors could immerse themselves in the grounds of a ‘country hotel’ with The Savills Garden, designer Mark Gregory’s ‘plot to plate’ vision, revealing an intimate walled seasonal potager with the show’s first ever working kitchen at its heart.
Global landscapes
The Fauna & Flora Garden brings a slice of Africa to Chelsea, offering a window into the spectacular Afromontane landscape of Central Africa’s Virunga Massive, while A Letter From A Million Years Past is a garden with medicinal herbs from the ‘mother mountain of Korea’.
Wellbeing wonders
With a focus on the wellbeing benefits of gardening, Horatio’s Garden features a wheelchair-accessible space to step out of busy city life and take a moment to relax, while the RHS and Eastern Eye Garden of Unity celebrates the richness of cultures, traditions and backgrounds and the benefits of gardens for the communities they are in.
All about plants
The All About Plants category will champion specialist plants, while the Balcony and Container Gardens will be designed for urban living.
If you haven’t bought tickets, be reassured that Sophie Raworth and Joe Swift will be leading the BBC’s presenting line-up. Coverage begins on BBC One from Sunday, May 21, kicking off with a Countdown To Chelsea at 6pm.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show takes place on May 23-27. For details visit rhs.org.uk.
