Sunday at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is judging day. The judges move down Main Avenue like a shiver of sharks, one garden at a time, conversing quietly. You can usually tell where they are at any time by the palpable hush that accompanies them, and the dearth of other people around whichever garden they are on. The designers have been told politely to go away for a bit, and no one else is allowed near lest they hear something they shouldn’t.
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Aside from the judging and some excitement at watching the BBC cameras capture the holy trinity of Monty Don, Sophie Raworth and Jo Whiley on the Dog Garden all at the same time, it was a pretty quiet Sunday this year, with a noticeably small crowd on the showground. But there were still plenty of people to ask that most common of questions – “What do you think?”
Best in Show announced for RHS Chelsea 2025
Responses were invariably some version of ‘sparse’ or ‘a bit light’ from regular attendees – those who remember big gardens packed cheek by jowl down the avenue in the pre-Covid years. There are but six large show gardens in 2025, mixed in along the row with some small and medium-sized ones. Many are sponsored by charities supported by the grant-making organisation Project Giving Back, which finishes up next year after five years and 60 show gardens – begging the question of what will happen to the show then, for 2027 and beyond. Some have faith that the RHS will figure it out, some have no idea what will happen.
One commentator proposed that in the future it will become normal to see more smaller show gardens and less large ones, to cut down on the cost of making and relocating the show gardens, and also to make sure they stay relatable to visitors and people watching at home (as we all know the biggest crime a Chelsea garden can commit is not having enough of those ‘take-home’ ideas).
Big names are back
For this year, at least, you could say it is more about quality than quantity, with those six big gardens coming from designers who are true veterans of the event, including Jo Thompson on her 11th outing and Tom Hoblyn on his 10th, to Joe Perkins who has worked on, built and designed gardens at the show since 2006. Nigel Dunnett is back for the first time in a while and Tom Massey has done so many lately I’m not sure he doesn’t just now live at the Royal Hospital with the Chelsea Pensioners between shows.
RHS Plant of the Year announced for 2025
Other big names returning include Manoj Malde, Catherine McDonald, and Mr Ishihara, who has crafted another exquisitely manicured piece of perfection for Japanese garden lovers, but this time smack bang in the middle of Main Avenue. There are plenty of first timers too, though, in the smaller garden category and for the little but lovely All About Plants gardens, which are now outside on the showground rather than stuffed a bit sadly into the Great Pavilion, and all the better for it.
The gardens this year are quite different, with no majorly obvious thread or theme tying them together, but maybe that’s the headline – we are all individuals! Of course, with designers always being inspired by each other and trends in the industry, there are bound to be some common elements, features and materials. Most obviously, the colour palette is maximalist, bright and brilliant – no green textural stylings or achingly subtle minimalism here – with candy pops of pink and apricot-orange everywhere alongside burgundy and neon yellow against dark purple. It’s as if Ann-Marie Powell has been sneaking in to sprinkle her own brand of planting inspiration ‘sugar’ on the designers’ cereal each morning when they weren’t looking.
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And it really is all about the planting. When Tom Hoblyn first told me he wanted to grow a lot of his Mediterranean plants himself from seed, I asked why he would do that to himself, but my concern was unfounded as he actually seems to really enjoy it. His garden is packed with interesting things that are sure to confuse the plant identification app on your phone, just as you want at Chelsea (and his steam bent benches are worth a gander too).
One noticeable design-feature-slash-material-choice is the presence of big rocks – rocks used as tables, as seats, as bird-bath-cum-benches, as steps. Chunky lumps of stone, sleek slices of boulders, everywhere you look. Visitors will also see a bevy of ‘unmade’ hoggin-y paths rather than perfectly paved ones, and there are a lot of gravel and mineral mulches to hit that hip dry garden aesthetic – though with the hot weather during buildup one designer told me it’s been difficult to keep the plants happy and healthy when 1) chucking tons of hot rocks on top of them, and 2) managing drought-tolerant planting that is not established yet so needs water, but not so much water that you drown them.
Rills are de rigeur, and trees are still having a moment too, with most gardens featuring several tasteful multi-stems, from new favourite Zelkova serrata to river and silver birches, and there are some truly gorgeous pines too. Whatever happened to the Tree of the Show Award? If it were still happening, perhaps the winner this year would be the bent ‘umbrella’ tree on the ADHD Foundation Garden.
Who's the favourite to win?
There were plenty of off-duty designers not involved in the show this year who took the opportunity to visit the gardens before they opened to the public, and when prodded for a favourite, a large proportion picked Tom Massey’s garden as the standout space for them. Despite a pre-show brouhaha online about the integration of AI into the garden, tech barely gets a look-in save for a few screens inside showing data streaming from sensors hidden on some trees outside.
And there is a lot more to talk about here. The mycelium fibre walls are intriguing, but the whole pavilion by craftsman Sebastian Cox is a wonder, and it’s hard not to love the ‘mush’ pit: a tiny courtyard lined with shelves of beautiful fungi. Another clever element: the hefty blocks used as benches and low walls in the garden, which have been rented for the week at £5 each and are usually used to control traffic for roadworks.
Nigel Dunnett’s Hospitalfield Arts Garden is the most visually arresting and ‘even-photogenic-on-my-phone’ of the designs and seemed to get the non-designer, casual observer vote. The fins of his sand-dune-echoing mounds give an unexpected and welcome topographical wow factor. They frame the extremely covetable rust-coloured bothy where artist and art education advocate Bob and Roberta Smith has been painting up a storm. Foxes may have been in every night to dig up the sand, but despite that setback the planting team of young, creative gardeners spearheaded by Jane Porter have created a real sense of delight and much pondering along the lines of ‘what is that?’ – ‘is that a dwarf lupin or just stunted from growing in sand?’ – and ‘do lupins grow in sand?’
Jo Thompson has the prime spot at the top of Main Avenue and has brought her trademark romance to the show again with a blowsy mix of roses and English country garden favourites, but it’s the details that are her true triumph. The large stone slabs that make up the floor of her elegant pavilion are pockmarked from a hailstorm some many millions of years ago, and were left as rejects at the quarry before she saw their potential – don’t think we don’t see the neat parallel with her sponsor The Glasshouse, which provides opportunities for women in prison to retrain in horticulture to give them a second chance at life.
Also, the jointing of her paving is filled with the scraps of stone that came off stone that was tumbled. And amidst the pink and burgundy wash of blowsy flowers there are choice cultivars to discover. Take some time to look closer and you will be rewarded. Never doubt that this woman has thought about Every. Single. Thing.
Them indoors
In the Great Pavilion, it feels fuller than it has been in years, and there’s a real sense of fun, from an Olde Sweet Pea Shoppe to a fuchsia-draped carousel and the candy-striped new rose from David Austin named for the King. I loved Frank P Matthews collection of flowering Malus (apple) trees and the jungle-forward Kells Bay Garden tree fern exhibit, which will stop you in your tracks. The flower-cradled woven willow coffin from Farewell Flowers is also likely to have visitors stopping to stare, and perhaps begin some difficult and heartfelt conversations about funeral preferences.
After a full day on site, this reviewer is still not sure what to think of the show overall this year. Some things gave me the feels, as the kids might say, but I couldn’t tell you what the vibe is. It’s a slippery one, hard to sum up, or easily encapsulate. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s how it should be. We’ve got the rest of the week. Let’s just enjoy.
