Shot! The 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show: the arts and crafts, the feats and the follies
This year’s show featured some fabulous artworks and wonderful craftsmanship, as well as piles of rubble and an abundance of weeds.
I’ve been coming to the Chelsea Flower Show every year since 2011, with the exception of course when Covid stopped it taking place in 2020. I’m drawn to the very best in style and design, whether that’s on a show garden, in the Grand Pavilion or on one of the exhibitor’s stands.
As the world’s most prestigious horticultural event, Chelsea attracts the most talented garden designers, artists, landscapers and growers. For six days in May, as well as the world’s media, it also pulls in a large number of visitors.
This year saw visits by the newly crowned King Charles III and Queen Camilla along with the Princess of Wales and even rock royalty in the shape of Queen’s Sir Brian May. And then there were the 145,000 floral fanatics, many of whom paid around £116 for their much-coveted tickets.
2023 not only marked Chelsea’s 110th year, but it signalled some significant changes by the show’s organiser, the Royal Horticultural Society. Among them, this was the very first time all Show Gardens had to be designed with a specific on-use in mind, principally for “a significant part of the garden” to be relocated after Chelsea. That’s an entry requirement I’ve been advocating for some time.
Another first, was that the judging criteria for the Show Gardens — something that up until now had not been fully disclosed — was made clear for everyone to see. Although you had to splash out £15 for the show guide to find it.
We now know the gardens are judged against nine different criteria: client brief, ambition, overall impression, design layout, 3D design, construction, planting design, planting associations and planting implementation. And beginning next year, sustainability will be added to that criteria.
Each criteria is scored up to 4 points for very good through to no points for poor. And to merit a gold medal, a garden needs to accrue between 30 and 36 points. That said, the actual points each garden receives is never revealed, which means it’s impossible to know why one outscores another. More transparency here would be welcome.
Beyond that insight into how show gardens are judged, perhaps the biggest shift was that the RHS actively encouraged weeds to appear on Show Gardens, something that only a few years ago would have been abhorred by judges, designers and visitors alike.
With twelve on Main Avenue, the numbers of Show Gardens were back to how they were a few years ago. As positive as that is, the vast majority of Chelsea’s 36 gardens were sponsored by charities. Of those, 15 received financial support from the charitable fund, Project Giving Back. Now I’ve long argued that this is a worrying trend. First and foremost, charities either don’t have a lot of money to spend, equally they can’t be seen using their resources frivolously.
So those were the key changes, but of course some things stay the same. As always at Chelsea, visitors want to see some stunning show gardens, some beautiful plants, some fabulous floristry and some exceptional art. With Press Day’s limited hours, there’s never enough time to take it all in, which means being very selective and focusing on what really appeals to you.
For me, the best thing at Chelsea this year was undoubtedly Sarah Price’s Nurture Landscapes Garden. Indeed, it was one of the very best Show Gardens I’ve seen. My article about it, along with my images from the garden, can also be found here on Medium. It won a gold, but should also have been awarded Best in Show and People’s Choice. The judges as well as the public got it really wrong this year.
As far as I’m concerned, compared with Sarah’s, all the other Show Gardens paled into insignificance. Perhaps most disappointing for me was Tom Massey’s garden for the Royal Entomological Society, which was the garden that received the most pre-show hype and the one I was most looking forward to seeing. His Yeo Organic Garden was my personal favourite at last year’s Chelsea, but this time nothing about Tom’s garden impressed me.
I thought the domed structure based around an insect’s eye sounded so much better in concept than it looked in real life, and I even thought Tom’s planting was a bit meh. Yes, it attracted a lot of attention — and a lot of insects — but as a garden it had no wow factor.
Frankly, it’s one of those gardens where the sponsor’s story has an adverse effect on the design as in this case the overriding message was about creating a pollinator-friendly landscape, rather than one that looked good. Piles of rubble, a dead tree stump and a row of gabion cages can never be aestheticly pleasing.
Another garden I was really keen to see was Tom Hoblyn’s sancturay garden for Boodles. Now I’ve been a big fan of Tom’s previous gardens, including his two gems for Boodles and who could forget his stunning Dubai Majlis Garden at Chelsea 2019, but I have to say I found this one really underwhelming.
Originally known as Boodles Crafts Garden, by the time it reached Chelsea it had been renamed the Boodles Best of British Garden. Compared to other garden’s Tom had designed, I thought this one just looked like a collection of disparate items plonked together, without his usual panache. Even the colour scheme — from the bronze arbour, the grey paving and the pink, blue and yellow planting, seemed to lack synergy.
From a distance I liked Cox London’s magnolia leafed arbour, but on closer inspection it looked unrefined, even unattractive, especially the metal mesh construction and what appeared to be an ugly tarp hanging inside it.
Shannon Clegg’s elegant plant sculpture — created by hand moulding statice flowers into a vase like form — was a nice addition, but being so small it was lost within too many elements on the garden.
Speaking of small, I also felt Bamber Wallis’ water feature promised more than it delivered. Yes, the idea of seeing raindrops magically falling on a pool as if from nowhere was a good one, but the pond just wasn’t big enough to create the kind of dramatic effect it should have had.
On the subject of scale, the Lilliputian size of these sanctuary gardens often means designers overfill them with too many plants and too many features.
Someone who recognises the benefits of less is more and keeping your exhibit minimal is sculptor Jon O’Connor. I’ve long admired Jon’s long-limbed figures and always make sure to visit him at Chelsea and Hampton Court.
This year he was showing a couple of new works and the one that caught my eye was a lifesize zinc figure called ‘Light’. I liked it for a couple of reasons. It was the first time Jon had put an accessory on his figures, in this case some sunglasses and it was the first of his pieces that was shaded, rather than being in one finish.
Another regular on my list is glass artist Carrie Anne Furnell. Her striking kiln-fused artworks never fail to impress me and I always aim to get some interesting compositions from her display.
The central feature of her stand this year was a wonderful spherical fountain formed from overlapping turquoise glass roundels.
Moving on to the Great Pavilion, perhaps the most unexpected items on display were a selection of exotic mushrooms from two West Sussex-based sisters, who call themselves Caley Bros.
Now I remember a magnificent display by Marks & Spencer from a few years back which featured edible produce, but these mushrooms, especially the sub-tropical Pink Oysters were fabulous. Displayed on columns as if they were artworks, the only negative was that the identifying labels were way too large and spoiled the aesthetic. It deserved a gold medal and got one.
As did way too many other exhibitors. Once again, medals were handed out more like a reward for taking part, than having an exceptional display. Indeed, if I’m not mistaken, only one exhibitor in the Great Pavilion failed to receive a medal of any type.
One who actually justified their gold was Surreal Succulents who once again had an impressive display of exotic succulents including Aeonium Venus and Seponium Destiny which won Plant of the Year in 2022.
This year’s nineteen contenders for Plant of the Year included three entrants that to my eyes all could have won. Top prize went to Black Jack, the deepest, darkest purple Agapanthus, bred in South Africa by DeWet.
Another favourite of mine making its debut at Chelsea was Desire Red, the first ever compact red sunflower, one I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of in the future.
I also liked Pink Shimmer, a vibrant Ecinacea with its rose pink blooms and golden cone, although quite how legitimate a contender it was is questionable as it received an RHS Award of Garden Merit back in 2020!
So, those were some of my highlights, but, as the saying goes, it wasn’t all roses.
Last year’s floristry installations were some of the best I’ve seen in the Great Pavilion, but this year’s entrants were a major disappointment. Much of that I suspect was down to the brief, which had them incorporate either a rubbish bin or lamp post. Not one of the exhibits stopped me in my tracks as being anything special.
And with the exception of Sarah Price’s gold-winning Nurture Landscape garden, none of the Show Gardens did either. Indeed, I don’t think any of this year’s crop matched the best from last year, where Andy Sturgeon’s MIND garden, Ruth Willmott’s Morris & Co Garden and Sarah Eberle’s Building the Future Garden were all memorable standouts on Main Avenue as were two of the sanctuary gardens: Tom Hoblyn’s for Boodles and Lilly Gomm’s Swiss Sanctuary garden.
I cannot end without mentioning some truly underwhelming show gardens of which there were at least two that I felt really deserved brickbats.
Cleve West’s Centrepoint garden was the garden I liked the least. In fact it featured almost everything one would in the past never want to see on a show garden: the remains of a demolished house, a fallen tree, mounds of rubble and loads of weeds. Yes, it was all about highlighting the issue of homelessness, but do we really want to see piles of old bricks, bits of broken pipes and other detritus on a show garden?
This was a garden filled with what the designer described as “so-called weeds” and featured the stump of a dead Silver Birch as a metaphor for being uprooted. According to Cleve West, his garden was designed to “encourage visitors to re-evaluate their preconceived notions of horticultural beauty.”
All I know, is there are plenty of places where you can see overgrown gardens that haven’t been cared for and Chelsea’s Main Avenue should not be one of them, whatever the narrative.
And the narrative in their leaflet handed out at the show — whose plant list includes no less than seventeen different varieties of weeds — even states “the garden may not be pretty, but neither is youth homelessness.”
The Savills Garden was yet another show garden where the concept resulted in a less than attractive garden. Recreating the outdoor dining area and kitchen garden of a country house hotel, just so you can claim to be the first Chelsea garden to cook and feed diners using produce grown on the garden was never going to produce something especially attractive. Echoing Cleve West, the designer behind it, Mark Gregory, said the space aimed to “change the way we think about our gardens.”
Whenever I saw it, it appeared most people looking at it were more interested on what celebrity was on the garden than the garden itself.
Fortunately, there was something on it that I did like, a large zinc water bowl by Domani of Antwerp which was filled with floating flower petals. It looked lovely, even though it felt somewhat out of place with the concept.
Speaking of looking lovely, this year Sarah Price proved that a show garden can take its inspiration from a specific subject matter, and at the same time champion sustainability, yet end up with something beautiful, innovative and inspiring.
However, the constraints of designers being forced to create a narrative in support of a charitable sponsor, all too often produces gardens filled with metaphors few onlookers are even aware of, let alone understand. And more importantly, lead to gardens where that storyline has a negative impact on their very appearance.
Perhaps it was no surprise that The Nurture Landscapes garden has received more coverage on social media than any other show garden I can recall.
The more the RHS goes down the charity route, the more I fear for the future of the show gardens. For one, I don’t think it’s a sustainable source of sponsorship. They will soon run out of charities, few if any will have the big budgets required and their need to tell their story will stifle designers into producing gardens where the imposed narrative dominates everything.
Actively seeking corporate sponsors, especially those celebrating a major anniversary or launching a new product or service would be a far better way forward. Imagine the scale and ambition of say a Ferrari garden, a Chanel garden, or even an Adidas garden? Or what about a show garden inspired by Taylor Swift or Avatar or Apple?
And then are countries. In the past we’ve seen wonderful show gardens sponsored by the likes of Monaco, Dubai and Canada. The world’s a big place, surely there are many more destinations that would benefit from the exposure of having a garden at Chelsea.
As ever it will be interesting to see how things develop next year. I just hope we don’t see an uncontrollable spread of weeds!
Behind the shot: These images were taken handheld with either the iPhone 14 Pro or the Olympus OM-D E-M1. As always at Chelsea, it was all about looking for interesting compositions and trying not to take the same pictures as everyone else at the show.
About the author: Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in creating out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens, not forgetting an array of automotive exotica.
On the writing side, he has used his research skills to author deep dives into some noteworthy songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials, ‘Real Wild Child’ by Ivan and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople.
He has also written a biography of Robert Palmer and the stories behind Whitesnake’s blatant Led Zep rip-off, ‘Still Of The Night’, Harry Styles’ anthem to positivity, ‘Treat People With Kindness’ and the little known Queen track ‘Cool Cat.’
Most recently, Gary has penned the fascinating story behind George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ as well as ‘Believe It Or Not’ a look into the rise of fake news.
All these can be found here on Medium, along with his reviews of gigs and events and chats with musicians including the likes of Royal Blood, Joe Satriani and Wolf Alice.
