The best Chelsea Flower Show gardens, according to our expert

Telegraph

18-05-2025

This year I arrived six days prior to the opening of the Chelsea Flower Show to help build the Horatio's Garden stand, so I was able to get a preview of this year's show gardens.
Even though our stand is only 24 square metres, I still had adrenaline rushes, angst and heartache, similar to when I did my first large show garden in 1994. Few people can realise the thrills and spills that go with a garden build, and as Mark Straver from plant supplier Hotus Loci pointed out, this year we have had no rain for three months, whereas last year we were deluged, so nurseries were flooded and lost masses of stock. Mark has supplied around a quarter of the plants in the gardens this year – quite a feat. Here's my view of what I have seen so far.
My pick of the show gardens
For a few years now there has been a definite lack of structured gardens, straight lines and order. The style over the last few years has tended to be rather amorphous. The gardens are dominated by curves, fluid lines and not much that is adaptable for a garden to live in. I like nothing better than seeing a garden that inspires me, that showcases clever design and shows me something to lust over, but it seems these are firmly on the back-burner. I did, though, find some very clever touches, sensational planting combinations, new techniques and useful advances in horticulture.
The Garden of Compassion by Tom Hoblyn
Four of the six large show gardens are sponsored by Project Giving Back and the first one to catch my eye was Tom Hoblyn's garden for Hospice UK, the Garden of Compassion. His Mediterranean-style landscape works well as a show garden, with the soft peachy terracotta colours and strong statement plants. One of the latter is a fine Pinus pinea five metres high by four metres wide – the umbrella or stone pine that provides the edible pine nuts for pesto. Ficus carica 'Crystal Ice', a new rare fig with finely cut leaves that look quite like a doily, and Arbutus andrachne with its cinnamon bark will be high on acquisitive gardeners' hit lists I would think.
The garden, inspired by the olive houses in the Med, has similar interconnecting 'rooms' and wonderful dry-stone walls that look slightly higgledy-piggledy, as you would expect. The colours of the rendered walls are daring, going from moody purple aubergine to burnt sienna and yellow ochre. Render always features at Chelsea, and Tom dyed the sand and cement by stirring in various pigments, guided by interior designer Rachel Chudley. Look out for Delphinium peregrinum, a long-flowering annual that flowers all summer long, with dark purple/blue flowers (buy seeds for this from seedsofpeace.info).
The GlassHouse Garden by Jo Thompson
Jo had thrown down the trowel as far as Chelsea was concerned but was tempted back by working with the GlassHouse, a social enterprise that helps to reduce women prisoners reoffending by offering horticultural training and re-employment. As Jo pointed out, it is extraordinary that we think we can reform people by keeping them isolated and locked in a cell, while the rest of us are latching on to the benefits of nature.
The garden features a generous amount of shrub roses in beautiful, sumptuous shades of mauve, apricot pinks and rich purples. These include my firm favourite, Rosa 'Emma Bridgewater', and a new favourite, Rosa 'Wild Rover'. The purple Baptisia 'Burgundy Blast' makes you drool, but is, says Jo, a 'bit of sod' to keep alive. The crazy paving was treated brilliantly: huge pieces of York stone that had been tumbled so they looked river worn, and studded with low creeping plants such as Mind Your Own Business.
The Hospitalfield Arts Garden by Nigel Dunnett
This garden was inspired by the dunes on the east coast of Scotland near where the garden is to be relocated. Nigel's dunes are created from timber 'fins' filled with earth and topped with 10cm of pinky sand that is studded with a wide range of Mediterranean-type plants. A star is the Bulbine frutescens 'Sunset Yellow', also known as the Burnt jelly plant, as it has jelly-like sap traditionally used for minor burns and the like.
The Avanade Intelligent Garden by Tom Massey and Je Ahn
This is one of the few gardens not sponsored by PGB and is definitely a stand-out. Avanade Microsoft has equipped this groundbreaking garden's trees with sensors that monitor growth, sap flow, soil conditions, air quality and weather patterns. AI analyses the data to spot trends and provide advice.
The monitors are small black boxes (10 x 3cm) and should be widely available in three years or so. The building is fascinating. Tom Massey with Architect Je Ahn designed it with the help of Sebastian Cox (sebastiancox.co.uk): it was made using shavings of goat willow and birch inoculated with a bracket fungi, which works through the wood and holds it together. The growth of the fungi is stopped at a critical point (otherwise potential it would become powder).
Dogs' business
Monty Don and his dog Ned will no doubt swallow up masses of air and pull in many devoted fans with their Garden for Dogs (which is for the RHS and not judged), but in reality I think Ned would far rather the many thousands of pounds went to Battersea Dogs Home… The pots, though, are impressive and will be available shortly for around £70. These beauties, designed by Monty and Jim Keeling (whichfordpottery.com) feature Ned in relief on one face and a golden paw print on the other.
For doggy fans, Plankbride (plankbridge.com), which makes shepherd's huts for the Pig Hotel among others, is exhibiting a hut containing a full kingsize bed with a dog bed built underneath that rolls out on castors.
My favourite charity
Horatio's Garden is a charity founded by the parents of Horatio Chapple, who was tragically killed while on an adventure holiday aged 17. I helped out on their stand this year, which is in conjunction with Country Living, and features a bench where visitors can have their photograph taken in front of one of the magazine's covers. We created cylindrical wire-mesh arches and columns to frame a wirework bench and planted inside them with fragrant Trachelospermums, and we also flooded the floor with meadow planting.
The focal point is an antique wirework bench from English Salvage (englishsalvage.co.uk). The Worm That Turns (worm.co.uk) lent us a simple Fermob bistro set while Pictorial Meadows (pictorialmeadows.co.uk) gave us their superb, instant perennial flowering turf.
The best balcony garden
The garden sponsored by ME+EM has some clever planters. Caroline and Peter Clayton of Viriditas Studios used basic pots and clad them in dark green glazed-clay tiles from Bert & May (bertandmay.com). A beautiful built-in sunbed beckons, and different shaped and sized pots all clad in similar tiles create a highly useable, unified space.
A small garden with style
Killik and Co's Save for a Rainy Day Garden designed by Baz Grainger had some truly great touches and yet is very easy on the eye. Huge, 22 x 20cm cedar beams cantilever out from a 3D-printed concrete wall – the beams are hollow troughs that collect rainwater which empties out to a pool that is designed to flow over periodically.
Fun features
The Saatchi Gallery's garden (not judged) is designed by Naomi Ferrett-Cohen. It features fun sculptures made of old baling twine by Darcey Flemming, including a chair and a picture – a new use for 'bind a twine'. It's all set amid relaxed naturalist planting and enclosed with an equally naturalistic fence of vertical rustic poles that would be easy to make, and which I will copy somewhere, sometime.
The future
The Great Pavilion holds endless fascination for many. I learnt about tree ferns from Billy Alexander from Kells Bay Gardens: I had not realised he has 6–8 acres of naturalised tree-fern forest in County Kerry, and that a fair few have spread by seed there. He, like a good handful of growers, said they would have difficulties coming back if peat was present in their show plants' compost, especially as his plants grow in natural, peaty soil. So many top growers who are seasoned horticulturists cannot get the results by using peat-free composts, so as a result many will bow out when the ban kicks in next year.
The Show Gardens will also dwindle to almost nothing when Project Giving Back gives up sponsorship after 2026. But as for this 2025 show, with good weather forecast and a fair but dwindling number of exhibitors and show gardens, I think it is definitely worth a visit.