This year, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show gardens, big and small, are set to live on across the UK after the show, in hospitals, charity centres, schools, community gardens, in a hospice, a churchyard, a botanic garden and more. For some time now, all those involved in creating a show garden have known that the practices of the past, when materials and plants were often thrown into skips as gardens were being dismantled at the end of show week, are just not acceptable any longer. When Project Giving Back
(PGB), the sponsorship scheme that pairs charities with designers, launched in 2021, it specified that the chosen gardens should be ‘repurposed in permanent sites for the benefit and enjoyment of local communities’.
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Since 2023, the RHS has made it a condition of all show garden applications that each garden will have a future life, either rebuilt in its entirety or repurposed, with all of the elements being reused. For the RHS, explains head of shows development Sarah Poll, the new rule is “mostly driven environmentally. We don’t mind if it goes to different places, as long as it’s not going to landfill”. For Project Giving Back, says CEO Hattie Ghaui, “relocation extends the benefit for the charity sponsor of being at Chelsea for five days. From a pragmatic investment point of view, it’s about making the money we’re investing go further”.
Challenging moves
Designers who already have experience of relocating their show gardens know that it can be both costly and challenging. Hugo Bugg, whose first Chelsea garden for the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in 2014 was relocated to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, says having a sponsor that is financially committed to relocating makes a big difference. “RBC were fantastic as relocation was part of their brief from the start,” he says. “They had a specific team responsible for finding the site, which had to be a community or charity site that would be ready to receive the garden straight away. The cost of transporting
and rebuilding the garden, and its future maintenance, had to be factored in.”
The challenge for the designer, he says, is to “build a magical masterpiece at Chelsea that can be moved and live a really long, healthy life afterwards”. This means detailing the garden so that it can be easily dismantled and moved, but the structures must also be robust enough to last for many years, not just two weeks.
Hugo points out that single-use materials such as poured concrete, which would get damaged on breakdown, should be avoided. The cement-free terrazzo paths in Harris Bugg Studio’s 2023 show garden were constructed from 2m x 1.5m slabs that were lifted and transported after the show for use in the Sheffield Horatio’s Garden. Designers also need to find more weatherproof alternatives to materials such as plywood, chipboard and untreated mild steel.
Climbing costs
The cost of relocation varies according to the complexity of the show garden, as well as transport, storage and the time taken to reinstall it. Designer Darryl Moore reckons the relocation cost can be up to 50 per cent of the cost of the show garden. “At the relocation site it might take more time to build it, and some of the work may need to be done more thoroughly to enable it to last permanently.”
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PGB is monitoring the relocation costs of all its gardens and in 2023 it allocated between 10 and 20 per cent of the total sponsorship amount for relocation. “If it’s a simple relocation, the amount we ring-fence can be enough,” says Hattie Ghaui. “Where it gets more complex, the designer/sponsor team have to think of ways to get in additional financial support if needed.”
Keeping time
Chris Beardshaw’s 2016 garden for Morgan Stanley was a great example of designing for the real world and for the show. “Our focus was to produce a design for a woodland space for Great Ormond Street Hospital [GOSH] rooftop. We only had to subtly manipulate the design for Chelsea – the position of the trees within the show garden was entirely governed by the supporting posts and pillars of the GOSH roof that would hold the weight of the trees. In terms of plants, we had a separate palette being grown in parallel to the Chelsea plants, to extend the season of interest at GOSH.” Chris describes the process as a logistical dance made more complex by the fact that all the construction materials had to be craned over the hospital buildings, and the only way in for the team and their hand tools was through a series of underground passageways.
The relocation of Cityscapes’ 2022
St Mungo’s Putting Down Roots Garden started straight after the show, with all the plants and materials being stored at the site of its new home, by Southwark Crown Court in London. In the past, it was typical for relocated gardens to be broken up and stored in various facilities for a period of time before being reinstalled at their final site. But sending them to storage, says co-designer Darryl Moore, entails double transport and environmental costs. The rebuild should have taken a month or two, but ended up taking five, as judges in the nearby court would only allow a one-hour window each day to do noisy work – an unexpected restriction.
The RHS does not put a time limit on relocations – Phillip Johnson’s 2013 Australian Garden for Trailfinders found a new home in Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden, Victoria, ten years after his Best in Show win – but PGB-sponsored gardens are encouraged to complete within two years. The sponsors are flexible with gardens that are part of bigger development projects, however, such as the Harris Bugg Studio’s Best in Show 2023 garden for Horatio’s Garden. “We knew the Sheffield site wouldn’t be ready straight away,” says Hugo Bugg, “so we had a huge plant sale after the show, while the trees and structures went to a holding nursery in Cheshire. The sale allowed us to buy twice as many 9cm plants than we had in 2-litre and 5-litres sizes at Chelsea.”
The afterlife
If a sponsor has nowhere to receive a complete garden, the best sustainable alternative is to redistribute the elements. London-based design collective Wayward has supplied more than 500 schools and community spaces with Chelsea plants, and there are nurseries and landscape companies with space to store hard landscaping materials for reuse in future shows.
Taina Suonio’s 2022 Connected sanctuary garden for Exante was relocated in six weeks to University College London Hospital, where its tree-trunk shelter provides a seating area for patients and hospital staff. For designers like her, seeing their garden given a permanent home in a community space is “the best thing about making a Chelsea garden”. For Andy Sturgeon, the way his reinterpretation of his 2022 garden for MIND has been taken on by the workers and volunteers at the MIND centre in Barrow-in-Furness is a particular joy. “What is brilliant about it is the way they have involved so many community groups to use it and maintain it. It has taken on a life of its own.”
Some relocation plans will inevitably fall through – the RHS does not, as yet, keep a tally of no-shows – but with those that are completed, who will monitor them to make sure they are looked after in the long term? At the moment, PGB pays for filming and photography, says Hattie Ghaui, “to incentivise and create a bit of competition about who’s got the best relocated garden.”
The RHS is planning to start an audit of relocated gardens this year – those both completed and in progress – but perhaps the best monitors are the designers themselves. After all, it’s going to be
their work that’s on display to the public, day after day, season after season, for hopefully a long time to come.