As the RHS Chelsea Flower Show draws to a close for another year, the Gardens Illustrated team have been hotly debating their favourite gardens. Here's our verdict – do you agree with our thoughts?
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The Muscular Dystrophy UK Garden
Chosen by Stephanie Mahon, editor
Ula Maria’s forest bathing design for Muscular Dystrophy UK seemed so simple at first glance, but the longer I spent looking at the elements, the details and the planting, the more my appreciation grew. I was instantly struck by the size of the water bowl and how its larger than usual scale had such quiet impact, and how it was allowed the space it needed to be the core focal point, with no clutter or overloading of features as can be typical of Chelsea gardens. It was hard to stop looking at it.
In the hot sun on my first day at the show, I took in the pleasing pastel scheme of white, pink and bluey-purple and thought, ‘Well, that’s nice’, but it wasn’t until a closer look on my second day that I noticed the buds opening on a peach-hued martagon lily and a dusky apricot geum – a colour note that suddenly changed the scheme completely and revealed hidden layers. This attention to detail was also apparent in the stacked and ordered recycled materials of the bungaroosh wall, which I didn’t think I would like, but I loved.
In general the garden offers dappled serenity and a restful sense of balance that momentarily sooths a frantic mind – which since it was created as a calm place for someone to process a life-altering diagnosis, was just what the designer intended.
The WaterAid Garden
Chosen by David Grenham, art director
There have been memorable sculptures and structures at Chelsea over the years, from Andy Sturgeon's 'stegosaurus' in the Telegraph Garden in 2016 to The Plantman's Ice Garden by John Warland in 2022. And this year there is Je Ahn's structure, complemented by Tom Massey's thoughtful planting in the WaterAid Garden. It's difficult to ensure a large structure in the middle of a garden doesn't overpower the planting but the graceful lapped steel funnels rise from Tom's resilient planting like a canopy.
The National Garden Scheme Garden
Chosen by Juliet Giles, production editor
I loved the quiet serenity of Tom Stuart-Smith’s garden for the National Garden Scheme – a calming antidote to the frantic bustle of Chelsea. Beneath the canopy of glorious hazel trees (Corylus avellana), his subtle palette of mostly greens, white and cream with just the tiniest touches of colour, is a wonderful mix of the familiar and unusual. From the white foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea f. albiflora) that tower over a froth of cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) and the delicate grass Melica altissima 'Alba' to a rare lily of the valley, Convallaria majalis 'Hardwick Hall’, the somewhat unfashionable but highly fragrant white azalea, Rhododendron 'Daviesii', and the wild ginger, Saruma henryi, that everyone wanted to know the name of.
Killik & Co. Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees garden
Chosen by Niki Goss, deputy art editor
Away from the drama and buzz of Main Avenue, I am always keen to explore areas of the show on a smaller, more domestic scale for relatable inspiration to take away to my own small suburban family garden. I found myself drawn to the Killik & Co. Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees garden, designed by Baz Grainger, for his creation of a stylish family space to come together to eat and relax. The use of exquisite materials and fine details is dreamy – clever tonal co-ordination of the pale colour of the drystone limestone pergola surrounding the dining space, with the limestone aggregate and the creamy-white trunks of the multi-stem Betula; wooden cobblestone paths snaking between the areas of planting and creating different ‘zones’; simple rusted steel beams across the top of the stone pergola feeding a cascading water channel down into a small limestone well and chunky oak raised beds-come-benches lifting the planting up closer to eye level made for a really immersive experience. Planting towards the sunnier front of the garden is bright with pops of pink Cirsium and yellow Achillea, with a dreamy multi-toned Baptisia and purple stems of Selinum, while towards the back under the dappled shady canopy of more multi-stem trees it is softer with pale pink and white Digitalis alongside soft purple Hesperis. For me, it was an exquisite space to imagine escaping to.
Flood RE: The Flood Resilient Garden
Chosen by Daisy Bowie-Sell, digital editor
Water is a hot topic at this year’s Chelsea - and indeed in horticulture as a whole - what with climate change making our wet seasons longer and rather a lot wetter. It must be hard, therefore, to give a new angle on the subject and to make it sexy. But Naomi Slade and Dr Ed Barsley have done just that, offering not just a solution to the problem, but a solution that you actually want in your back garden. Mitigating flood risk in gardens was their focus, but in designing this space they created something so colourful, tactile and joyful that any latent anxiety around flooding and climate change recedes into the background.
With woodland-style stone paths around a central sunken pond and a raised decked seating area complete with galvanised steel troughs as a water feature (filled with pond plants), it has a shady, secret-spot kind of feel. I immediately wanted it for my own non-flood-prone garden. The purple, pink and orange colour scheme (poppies, iris, roses, astrantia) was off-set beautifully by swathes of messy green and little moments of white Digitalis. This is a garden that will be resilient in the face of flooding, yes, but it’s also a garden to cherish.
Tomie’s Cuisine the Nobonsai garden
Chosen by Veronica Peerless, content commissioning editor
My first garden was a balcony on a busy main road, so I’m always drawn to the smaller spaces at Chelsea. This year I fell hook, line and sinker for the Tomie’s Cuisine the Nobonsai garden, designed by Tsuyako Asada. Nobonsai is a word that Tsuyako has created, and loosely translates as 'enjoying the natural, wild landscape in a small space'. I couldn’t tear myself away.
Despite it being so tiny, this balcony is a complete garden and ecosystem. The person tending it can save water, make compost and mulch, just as a regular gardener can. The living drain on top of the wall allows rainwater to filter down a rain chain (which Tsuyako made herself) into the tank beneath, before being circulated to the planters. The innovative composting system is a deep hole in the soil, topped with a terracotta rhubarb forcer. I’ve never thought of mulch as pretty before, but all of the planters here are topped with finely chopped, confetti-like plant material. The bottom of the planters are stuffed with cardboard and newspaper – lighter than soil but still able to retain water.
Add in some beautiful edimental planting, attractive ceramics, a cute ladder, and a simple plank table and an clever chair that can become a stepladder (actually inspired by something similar that Tsuyako saw in an antique shop in Lewes), and you have a total gem of a small space.
The Ecotherapy Garden
Chosen by Molly Blair, content producer
It’s not just the Main Avenue show gardens that can stop you in your tracks - Tom Bannister's Ecotherapy Garden in the Balcony / Container category did this for me. A perfect sequence of water features and delicate shady planting, it immediately made me stop and take notice. With a small bench tucked away to one side, it’s the kind of space you really want to be in. I particularly liked the herringbone paving with attention given to add little bits of moss between the cracks as if the garden had been there for years, not days. Every bit of space is maximised to calming effect, and I could have looked at it for hours.