Chelsea Flower Show 2025
- Rhidian Maltby
- May 26, 2025
- 4 min read
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is one of the biggest and most famous flower shows in the world, with tens of thousands of visitors every year and some of the best designers showing incredible creativity and skill in the show gardens.
Here are three of the stand out gardens for me.
I liked the Monty Don garden, which was designed with dogs in mind, because of it's natural look and it's 'unkept' details. The garden was design with the help of Jamie Butterworth and Monty's dog, Ned. Ned was allowed to run through the initial plan of the garden, this formed the pathways for the final design.
Jamie Butterworth said: “To keep the Garden as authentic as possible, Monty enlisted the help of Ned to design the paths that intersect through the planting. Ned followed his nose and forged the routes that we will now copy at the Show.
“We had imagined that Ned would create sweeps and curves through the planting, or at least that is what we had designed. However, every time he ran off, he returned to Monty via the same route, and as such we have changed the design accordingly.”
Clare Matterson, RHS Director General, said: “We feel very lucky to have one of the nation’s best-loved gardeners and one of the nation’s best-loved dogs designing our RHS and Radio 2 Dog Garden at RHS Chelsea this year! As a nation of gardeners and of dog lovers we hope this Garden makes people smile both when they hear about it and when they see it.”
I could see that people really loved this garden, I imagine partly because everyone loves Monty Don, but did have a nice feel, and felt very achievable to the average flower show goer.
The 'Japanese Tea Garden' by Kazuyuki Ishihara was the overall gold medal winner, it certainly had the feel of a traditional Japanese garden, with the Acers, Moss and small stone areas that have been raked leaving almost perfect lines. There is definitely a sense of calm and tranquility in this garden. The Garden incorporates varying elevations, creating a sense of depth and is influenced by the traditional flower arranging art of ikebana (‘making flowers alive’), specifically the Ikenobo School.
This garden was interesting to me for a few very specifics reasons. Firstly, it has the idea of making industrial sites, or very urban sites (like a round about in Manchester, which was on an episode of Gardeners World) work better for us and wildlife, by bringing in trees and plants and good design, it not only makes people feel much better, it can also help to draw harmful gases out of the air, helping to bring pollution levels down.
Secondly, it used cutting edge technology to understand what the trees needed to stay alive, reports suggesting that 50% do not survive beyond 10 years and up to 30% of urban trees die in their first year. They have used sensors on the trees, that link to an app to 'talk' to the trees, asking how they are feeling, if they need feeding or water, and sensing if they are growing at the rate at which is expected. So obviously this could be very beneficial in making sure more trees, live a longer and healthier life.
The last reason that made this an interesting garden for me, was the inclusion of a pavilion with outer panels made from mycelium-bonded wood shavings. The Pathway Garden also incorporated mycelium structures, specifically tall, monolithic sculptures grown from recycled materials. These mycelium walls highlight the potential of this sustainable and biodegradable material for both architectural and design applications.
Could these mycelium structures be a thing of the future, maybe as a temporary structure that then degrades down to feed the garden?
It was not only show gardens that I found interesting, the large pavillion houses many plant breeders and growers, notably David Austin, who is a very well known Rose breeder.
There were many others, far too many to mention, here are a selection of phiotos from some of the other stalls.
There were a few stalls that focused on environmental issues, for example, water plants that filter polluted waterways and ponds, they created a small but powerful display. Obviously, the best option is to not pollute the water in the first place.
The spread of the Colorado Beetle was another issue pointed out at another stall, this is entering the UK and can seriously damage potato crops, so people were being asked to be aware of this and report it if it was seen.
Overall it was a really good day, i was very grateful for getting the opportunity to go with Rob and Abi, i think we all took different things away that i'm hoping will benefit us in some way in our day to day work.
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