20-05-2025
The Chelsea Flower Show debut ‘moving visitors to tears'
The Chelsea Flower Show's first funeral display has been awarded a gold medal on Tuesday after provoking an emotional reaction from visitors.
The display, complete with a coffin and gravestones, is the first time in the show's 112-year history that funeral forestry has been on display in the Great Pavillion and has left many visitors 'in tears'.
Gill Hodgson, the co-founder of Farewell Flowers Directory, a not-for-profit organisation that designed the installation, said she hoped its success would remove the taboo around celebrating funeral flowers.
'We thought it would be a hard sell to bring funeral flowers to Chelsea as everyone is out for a lovely day and enjoying themselves,' she said.
'Many people have come down and cried and burst into tears. People are saying 'it's 10 years since my mum died and I'm still missing them'.
' We don't mind people crying. I think it's nice that people can be moved.'
She said traditional flower displays at funerals were 'awful' and 'have not changed for 50 years'.
'We've learnt how awful funeral flowers are,' she said. 'People think of the rigid letters, like 'Mum', and they see them again and again at funerals and think that's all there is. It's old school. They have not changed for 50 years.'
The funeral display was one of just 55 installations to win a gold floral medal. It features exclusively British-grown flowers, foliage and a willow coffin, and is entirely free of plastic and harmful plastic floral foam.
The centrepiece of the installation is an arrangement of vibrant, wildly natural seasonal garden flowers that burst out of the open coffin and cascade across the tranquil graveyard scene.
Nestled nearby in the grass by the gravestones are personal funeral flower tributes.
'We want to make it personal, rather than have flowers that could easily be a clone of somebody else's,' Ms Hodgson said.
Pointing to a display of flowers planted inside a summer hat, she said: 'A lady who loved fashion would have loved that on her coffin. People at the funeral would say 'that just looks like Margery'.'
Other personalised tributes include flowers formed around a violin, designed for 'a man who loves his music', and walking boots filled with garden-style flowers for a 'farmer or a keen rambler'.
In total, there are four grades of awards presented – gold, silver-gilt, silver and bronze – to the exhibits at the event. It takes 30 judges, six panel secretaries and three moderators to judge all the exhibits in the Great Pavilion.
Carole Patilla, the other co-founder of the directory, added: 'Anything connected with death and dying tends to be very taboo in our society and we shy away from it.
'Funeral flowers aren't celebrated or discussed because when people think about them, they think of a very particular type of arrangement. That's what we're trying to get away from.'
