Chelsea Flower Show 2025: All You Need to Know

What Is the Chelsea Flower Show?

The Chelsea Flower Show, held by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), the UK’s leading gardening charity, is one of the most famous flower shows in the world. Located in London, England, it attracts up to 168,000 visitors annually and is filled with amazingly designed gardens, inspirational floral displays, and many shops where the attendees can buy different gardening products and tools.

This year, the show will open on Tuesday, the 20th of May, and end on Saturday, the 24th, with Tuesday and Wednesday reserved exclusively for the RHS members.

History

Surprisingly, the Chelsea Flower Show did not actually begin in Chelsea.

In 1827, the RHS held its first event in Chiswick and while it was initially very popular, it had to be moved to Kensington Gardens in May 1862 as visitor numbers declined due to poor transport options. It was at this time that the RHS officially named it ‘The Great Spring Show’. After the Kensington Garden’s closure, the event was moved once again to the Inner Temple Gardens on London’s Embankment, where it took place annually until 1911.

However, in 1913, a renowned English Horticulturalist called Harry Veitch moved the show to the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, where it was renamed as ‘Chelsea Flower show’. The launch was a massive success with so many people wanting to exhibit, only half were accepted. If you are wondering what the show itself looked like, according to the RHS there was a massive single tent extended over 2 acres, enclosing 84 large groups of flowers, plants and shrubs, with 95 exhibition tables. Out in the open, there were 17 gardens’.

The show was originally a three-day event until 1927, when it was extended to four days due to its growing popularity. It was then extended again to five days in 2005.

Project Giving Back

Have you ever wondered why so many charities participate in the Chelsea Flower Show?

This is largely due to Project Giving Back, also known as PGB. Launched in 2021 and set to run until 2026, PGB’s website describes it as ‘the vision of two private individuals who want to support a wide range of charitable causes whose work suffered during the global Covid-19 pandemic and continues to be affected by the economic downturn and cost-of-living crisis’. The initiative achieves this by funding gardens for multiple charities at the show, providing exposure at one of the world’s most famous horticultural event. This year the PGB will sponsor 10 different gardens, bringing the total of the gardens it has sponsored to 42, and intends to fund up to 60 gardens before the project ends.

After the show, the PGB ensures that all the gardens are either relocated or repurposed. Some of these can be publicly visited, whilst others are moved to private locations, including schools, and used as learning tools.

What to Expect

Here are some of the most interesting gardens making an appearance in the show this year:

Rainforest Garden

The Wildlife Trust, sponsored by PGB, is officially working with designer Zoe Claymore to create a garden inspired by the British rainforests, also known as the temperate rainforests (rainforests growing in colder climates), for the show. Historically, these woods used to cover at least 20% of the British Isles, but centuries of deforestation have reduced them to just 1% of their original extent.

The garden itself is inspired by Devon’s Wildlife Trust Dart Valley Reserve and will include a water feature based on River Dart, a fern and moss wall spanning the entire eight-metre width of the garden, and a silver birch tree. When asked about her design, Zoe Claymore said ‘I want to use this opportunity I’ve been given to really focus on the more unsung heroes of the plant kingdom, the mosses and ferns, the things we overlook when we’ve got an awful lot of flowers’. She also mentioned that while some people may not be happy with her design, she aims to ‘challenge’ the current perception of what a garden should look like, especially with natural-looking gardens becoming increasingly popular.

The Wildlife Trust hopes this garden will inspire others to support the restoration of the temperate rainforests and slowly increase the percentage of the land it covers.

Underwater Seagrass Garden

For the first time in the show’s history, seagrass will be featured in an underwater garden.

Seawilding, a marine restoration charity, sponsored by PGB, is planning to bring the ocean’s only flowering plant to the show. Seagrass, unlike seaweed, behaves like a real plant, meaning it sheds its leaves in autumn and then grows new ones in the spring. Unfortunately, the UK has lost around 95% of its seagrass meadows, which are vital for marine biodiversity. These underwater habitats provide a nursery for fish, help prevent coastal erosion, and absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, playing a crucial role in combating climate change.

The garden designed by Ryan McMahom, is inspired by the shores of and highlights the charity’s efforts to restore seagrass and native oysters to its waters. It will also feature a saltwater pool, stone pathways, a pebble beach area, and native trees.

The charity hopes its garden will be a call to action for people and businesses to work together to restore the ocean’s health.

The Avande ‘Intelligent Garden’

The Avande ‘Intelligent Garden’ has also been announced as the first ever AI-powered garden.

Tom Massey has partnered with Microsoft and designed a smart garden that will continuously monitor its soil moisture, pH, temperature, air quality, wind, and rainfall through a network of sensors. This data will then be fed back to its owner using AI, so during the show, visitors will also have the chance to ask the garden questions like ‘How are you feeling’ and get a response based on current data, for example, ‘I can do with a cut’ or ‘I need more water’.

Whilst the main goal is to make gardening easier, Tom hopes the simple sensor technology could be scaled up for larger estates, replacing traditional timer-based watering systems. Unlike these systems, which activate on a regular basis, even when not needed, this technology allows the garden to communicate with the sprinklers, ensuring they only turn on when necessary, reducing water waste.

Hospitalfield Arts’ Sand Dune Garden

Hospitalfield Arts’ Sand Dune Garden is undoubtedly amongst one of the most interesting designs announced for this year’s show.

Sponsored by PGB and designed by Nigel Dunnett, one of the world’s leading voices in planting design, the garden is inspired by the coastal location of Hospitalfield Arts in Angus, near Arbroath. It will feature a dramatic, highly sculptural sand dune-like landscape, with all the plants growing in sand. The main aim is to spark a conversation about changing gardening habits and introduce people to alternative gardening methods without using topsoil.

Dog Garden

The RHS and BBC Radio 2 have partnered with Monty Don, the host of the Gardener’s World, to design a Dog Garden. The idea behind it is to celebrate the nation’s love for dogs and the outdoors along with making the event more inclusive in the future since currently only guide dogs are allowed to enter the show.

In terms of the design itself, the garden will feature a neatly mowed lawn as well as a large tree for shade and ornamental spring flowering bulbs. It will also bring awareness to different plants that are considered as toxic to dogs and other pets, and what plants to choose instead.

What began as a small event in Chiswick in 1827, has now become one of the most famous flower shows in the world. It offers attendees the opportunity to learn more about gardening and connect with like-minded people, while for charities, it is a valuable chance to raise awareness of their causes by creating informative gardens that highlight the pressing issues we face today. Whether it’s exploring an AI-powered garden, celebrating coastal landscapes, or supporting vital marine conservation efforts, this year’s show is set to be one that people will remember for a long time.

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