We talk to the talented designers who will be responsible for creating the eight show gardens and seven sanctuary gardens at this year’s spectacular RHS Chelsea Flower Show
WORDS NIAMH COLLINS & CLARE FOGGETT IMAGE JAYNE LLOYD
Before one Chelsea Flower Show is over, plans are already being made for the next one, as designers submit their gardens to the Royal Horticultural Society hoping for approval, partners and sponsors are sought, and statement features and plants are commissioned and ordered. Then, before we know it, it’s upon us. The teams building show gardens are given just one month on the Royal Hospital Chelsea’s showground, when each transforms a rectangle of plain grass into showstopping creations that will be photographed and admired world-wide. Here’s our guide to the gardens at Chelsea 2024.
The Octavia Hill Garden
Working in partnership with Blue Diamond Garden Centres, Ann-Marie Powell honours Octavia Hill with her show garden for the National Trust. The pioneering social reformer was a passionate advocate for the protection of green space and improvements in urban housing, and she helped found the Trust in 1895.
“I had never heard of Octavia Hill,” says Ann-Marie, “so I went away and started researching, and I was blown away. I thought: ‘Blimey, why isn’t she as well known as Florence Nightingale?’
“She championed urban green space and access to nature in the countryside through footpaths, but I didn’t want her to be seen as a historical figure rooted in the past because she is still very relevant today. It’s shocking that 150 years later our landscape is in a worse state than it was in her day. We’re losing our wildlife at a faster rate than anywhere else in Europe, and one in three people in the UK don’t have access to nature-rich environments. There’s no legal requirement for developers to include green space, and budgets are being squeezed on caring for parks, so most of them are just grass deserts. If Octavia were around today she’d be on her soapbox trying to do whatever she could to change the situation.”
The Octavia Hill Garden is conceptually set on an urban brownfield site regenerated into a plant-filled community wildlife garden. The planting palette is in rich maroon, yellow and rusty orange, with plants such as Baptisia ‘Burgundy Blast’ growing below unusual trees such as shrubby, climate-change
