Show gardens are designed to inspire and I’ve been thinking back over RHS Chelsea 2025 and wondering what I could use in my garden.
Shades of terracotta seemed to be the theme of many of the RHS Chelsea 2025 gardens. From walls to paths, there were a lot of earth tones about.
A lot of the planting was soft in pastel shades with pops of colour – yellow was noticeable.
Bucking the trend was Chelsea favourite Kazuyuki Ishihara on Main Avenue for the first time with a large garden. It was his usual mix of gravel, trees, rocks and water with impeccable attention to detail that impressed the judges, winning the RHS Chelsea Garden of the Year, which has replaced the Best in Show award.
One of the gardens that appealed to me was in the Small Show Gardens category and designed by Baz Grainger.
The soft terracotta of the hard landscaping was picked up in the garden furniture and echoed in the planting with lovely contrasting shades of blue. It’s a colour combination I’d like to try to replicate.
Annual poppies were having a moment at RHS Chelsea 2025 with many gardens weaving them into the planting.
These were used as a counterpoint to flowers of a different shape, such as achillea, or as a contrast in colour. It’s a planting combination that would change every year as these annuals are often easiest sown where they are to flower.
My favourite poppy was on The Addleshaw Goddard Freedom to Flourish Garden by the Carey Garden Design Studio. It’s another annual that has flowers in shades of pink, white, red and single, both double and single. So, this beauty is probably a one-off as the flowers will change every year.
The garden won gold, the Small Garden of the Year and Best Construction for a Small Garden awards and it was another that appealed to me. Again, rusty tones were set against pastels.
This area of drought-tolerant planting, inspired by the Norfolk coast, has given me some ideas for a particularly dry and, therefore, tricky spot in the garden.
Against all those pastels there were some pops of colour. Tom Hoblyn wove red Papaver carmeli and the vibrant blue Lupinus pilosus among soft heads of Hordeum jubatum or foxtail barley. It was a beautiful combination.
This yellow Baptisia ‘Solar Flare’ was spotted in several places around the show. Here, it was teamed with the pink tones of Centranthus ruber on Tom Massey and Je Ahn’s garden. It was good to see the commonly grown pink valerian being used rather than the more usual Chelsea choice of the white form, which I find far fussier to grow.
Manoj Malde had planted it with Lupinus ‘Masterpiece’, another Chelsea stalwart plant, where its soft form contrasted nicely with the spires of lupin flowers.
I really liked the planting on the Down’s Syndrome Scotland Garden by Duncan Hall and Nick Burton. Nice full borders with a lovely mix of colours.
This combination of primulas, camassia and cirsium with contrasting soft yellow was joyous.
Jo Thompson produced her expected romantic mix of summer favourites – iris, poppies and masses of roses.
It also illustrated her colour philosophy outlined in her book The Gardener’s Palette (reviewed here). You can see it in this astrantia and deutzia combination where the dark shades of the astrantia are mimicked in the two-tone deutzia flowers.
RHS Chelsea 2025 – Containers and Balconies
The container and balcony gardens section are somewhere for small scale gardening inspiration and a chance for newcomers to Chelsea to design a space.
Among the balcony gardens were designs incorporating day beds, places to read and even a copper bath tub!
None of the container gardens this year were designed around just pots as we’ve seen in previous years. Instead, raised beds were this year’s theme.
The Japanese-style Secret Base – The Another Green Room by Jun Ishihara resembled more a traditionally planted garden so carefully arranged were the planters.
Hamzah-Adam Desai’s containers were a green foil for planting inspired by the colour wheel.
I liked the water feature on Joshua Fenton’s garden. It captured water from the roof and sent it out into the garden in an irrigation system.
I’d seen his design work before at BBC Gardeners’ World Live (read about it here). He got silver gilt for this design.
Finally, this seat on Room to Breathe Hospital Garden for the TSA by Jen Donnelly and Catherine Gibbon was so, so tempting after a long day looking around the show.
Enjoyed this? You can read more of my show reports here.
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What a lovely round-up of the gardens. Thank you. And nice to see close ups of the borders and planting combination. Something that gets missed on the TV coverage I think. I am impressed with the yellow baptisia though it’s probably a bit too acidic for me. Looks good with the dark purple lupins though. As for Valerian, it’s everywhere here in Cornwall! White, pale pink and that lovely dark red.
Agree with you about the baptisia. I preferred the purple variety that was on other gardens. Valerian everywhere in my garden too – something that copes with the dry soil!