The Gardens line-up for 2018

Our world-famous flower show was filled with amazing gardens and take-home ideas

Along with a new layout, spectacular Show Gardens and popular Artisan Gardens, the Chelsea 2018 show unveiled a new Space to Grow Garden category. Its overall theme of health and wellbeing offered ideas and inspiration to take home to your own garden. Plus, and for the first time on Friday 25 May, Ranelagh Gardens remained open to the public until late for an evening of live music and entertainment. 

See all the garden awards

The power of plants

To celebrate just how beneficial gardening can be, Chelsea 2018 featured some exciting gardens designed to improve your health and wellbeing, including the RHS Feel Good Garden, as well as displaying solutions to some of the environmental issues facing us today. With eco-friendly solutions for recycling and some great take-home ideas to get greening your own grey spaces, these gardens sparked both interest and debate.


Matt Keightley, designer of one of last year's popular show gardens, returned to Chelsea 2018 with his Feel Good Garden for the RHS. Inspired by his design for a garden to be built at RHS Garden Wisley, Matt demonstrated how plants can make us feel happier and healthier.

Get to know the man behind the Feel Good gardens.

The Garfield Weston Foundation celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, and had asked Tom Stuart-Smith, master planner for RHS Garden Bridgewater, to design a calm and romantic garden for Chelsea. Located in the Great Pavilion, this simple, private space with contemporary and traditional features also included a secluded retreat at its centre.

Read more about the health and wellbeing gardens

The Show Gardens

This year, our 10 Show Gardens filled Main Avenue with tradition and romance, as well as contemporary and urban themes - so there was plenty to spark the imagination.

Sarah Price was back at the show after a five-year absence with a romanticised Mediterranean haven for sponsor M&G Investments. Demonstrating how simple, sustainable materials can be incorporated into garden design, Sarah was among 13 women designers announced across 26 gardens in all at Chelsea - the highest proportion of female show garden designers that we've had in recent years.

Designer Tom Massey made his debut at Chelsea and presented The Lemon Tree Trust Garden. This garden was inspired by the resiliency and determination of people in situations of forced migration and displacement, and their dedication to creating beautiful gardens in the harshest of living conditions.

Returning designer Hay-Joung Hwang created a futuristic Eco-City Garden with LG Electronics. Her garden was intended for a modern city tower block where each unit has a plot. She reimagined the concept of vertical forests and applied it to residential apartments.

Read more about this year's Show Gardens

Space to Grow Gardens

This new garden category, with smaller gardens along Royal Hospital Way, offered original ideas, trends and take-home messages to help you to transform your outdoor spaces and feel the benefits that growing can bring.

Kate Gould's The West End Secret Garden, was a modern interpretation of the gardens and architecture of London’s West End, highlighting the use of environmentally-positive technology to create a contemporary pocket of green space.
 

The Pearlfisher Garden by conceptual designer John Warland, celebrated the beauty of the world’s largest garden found beneath our oceans and highlighted the devastating impact that plastic waste is having on our underwater eco systems.

The Seedlip Garden, designed by Catherine McDonald, was a celebration of the humble garden pea and the wider pea family.

First-timer and former RHS Young Designer Tony Woods used sculpture, materials and plants in his environmentally conscious Urban Flow garden. With bold features and colourful planting, his garden demonstrated how best to utilise green spaces.

Explore this year's Space to Grow Gardens

Artisan Gardens

Continuing into their extended location on the plateau in Ranelagh Gardens, the popular Artisan Gardens showed how to revitalise traditional materials and methods with new design approaches.


Gold Medal-winning designer Kazuyuki Ishihara created a garden inspired by O-mo-te-na-shi no NIWA, a Japanese concept of hospitality. Sarah Eberle also made a return to Chelsea, designing both an Artisan Garden and the Hillier exhibit in the Great Pavilion for the third year running. This year, sge worked with British Council India on a garden to celebrate India’s love of cricket.

Kate Savill and Tamara Bridge joined forces once again with The Warner Edwards Garden, which reimagined the landscape and planting of the gin distillery’s home in Northamptonshire. 
 
After a four-year absence from the show, multi-award winning designer Paul Hervey-Brookes designed an Artisan Garden depicting the importance of wellbeing in the Viking Cruises Garden, which celebrated the Nordic way of life.

Discover the Artisan Gardens