Isabel Hardman

Chelsea Flower Show: the winners, the losers and the weeds

What’s worth seeing on the ground

  • From Spectator Life
Tom Massey’s wildlife garden for the Royal Entomological Society [Alamy]

If you’d read the advance coverage of this week’s Chelsea Flower Show, you might be forgiven for thinking the entire event had been choked by bindweed, dandelions and nettles. Yes, there are some show gardens that use plants commonly called ‘weeds’ as part of their designs, but the show gardens this year really aren’t radically different to the traditional Chelsea model. And regardless of the planting choices, there are some real gems to be seen.

The highlights

The RHS’s Best in Show award went to Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg’s magnificent Horatio’s Garden design. This is the eighth garden provided by the charity to hospital spinal injuries units across the country, and the first full show garden that it has sponsored. So it has a story behind it and an important brief: to create a wheelchair- and hospital bed-accessible sensory garden that real people can enjoy as they come to terms with a life-changing injury.

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