Show Installations

Wander around the Festival grounds and you’ll discover a dazzling array of sculptures and floral installations

RHS Letters

RHS Letters

By Sophie Powell

Each year, a different leading floral designer takes up the challenge of adorning the iconic 7ft-high RHS Letters with a bounty of beautiful blooms. This year RHS Judge and floral artist Sophie Powell brings her ‘Ode to the Pea’. Sophie has carefully coiled all manner of leguminous plants – including sweet pea stems from Minnow and Wolf Flowers and climbing beans from heirloom seed company She Grows Veg to create the perfect floral selfie backdrop.
 

RHS New Shoots Youth Volunteer Garden

by RHS New Shoots Youth Volunteers

Now in its second year, the RHS New Shoots Youth Volunteer programme aims to inspire a new generation of green fingered talent by giving insights into the horticultural industry and a taste of working in a public garden. Five youth volunteers on the RHS New Shoots pilot scheme at RHS Garden Wisley have co-designed this naturalistic ‘mini garden’ featuring their own hero plants. RHS New Shoots staff and volunteers are on hand at the Festival to answer questions and share experiences.

New Shoots

What is a Weed?

What is a Weed?

By Students of St John the Baptist School in Woking and Kings College in Guildford, supported by creative practitioners Ada Rose and Linden McMahon

This installation aims to change your mind about so-called ‘weeds’, using a range of media, including artworks and animation, to challenge negative stereotypes about these much-maligned plants.The display encourages visitors to engage with the issues and challenges present within contemporary horticulture and think about the implications of rigid ideas of beauty and perfectionism in society as a whole. Inspiration was drawn from the RHS Lindley Library collections.

Rusty Bramble

by William Moulton-Day

This installation by metal artist William Moulton-Day, aka Rusty Creations, celebrates the fast-growing, much-maligned bramble, championing its importance for biodiversity and its unique place within the British landscape. An eight-metre-wide bramble bridge towers over visitors; its tangle of branches complete with oversize thorns. Made in large part from recycled and reclaimed rusted steel, the bramble is underplanted with Rubus cockburnianus ‘Goldenvale’ AGM (whitestemmed bramble) and Leucanthemum vulgare (ox-eye daisy).

Rusty Bramble

Buzz of bees

The Buzz of Bees

By Kingston Beekeepers Association

This interactive exhibit features a fascinating display of live bees inside a glass-sided observation hive connected to a Perspex sphere. On hand to explain the workings of the bee colony, and to answer any questions, are volunteer beekeepers, who are also able to offer advice about the importance of choosing the right plants for pollinators in your garden. The stand is bordered by hexagonal containers planted with some of the best examples of flowering plants that are attractive to bees and other insects.
 

Kingston Forest School

by Kingston Forest School

Keep the kids entertained and inspired with Kingston Forest School, a group that provides sessions for children and their families to connect and learn in nature in South West London. At this year’s Festival, they’re presenting a range of hands-on nature-based learning activities for kids and adults. From mini beasts to den building, and foraging to  exploring plant life, all activities let you experience nature at close quarters and connect with the natural world.
 

Soil display

The Soil Food Web and the Evolution of Plants

By Eddie Bailey

This installation, by soil food web expert Eddie Bailey of RhizoPhyllia, tells the story of plant evolution through the ‘auspices’ of soil microorganisms. A narrow, winding ‘garden’ highlights significant moments in the evolution of plants, from the earliest algae and bryophytes to early vascular plants, all the way through to gymnosperms and angiosperms, and includes insightful information on the bacteria and fungi that made it all possible. Visitors can learn more in a series of eye-opening presentations and demonstrations, on the hour, every hour.

Eddie Bailey will also be on the How To Stage on Friday
 

Making Space for Nature

by Surrey Hills National Landscape

2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, the birthplace of our Protected Landscapes. To celebrate this milestone, visitors to the Festival are invited to create a ‘Postcard from the Future’ setting out what they think the Surrey Hills – itself a designated National Landscape – might be like in the year 2100. Plus, get involved in a creative conservation activity, making solitary bee hotels from bamboo and colourful wool, that will help you make space for nature.
 

Landscape garden display

The Landscape Garden and Design Studio

By The Association of Professional Landscapers

Industry experts from The Association of Professional Landscapers are on hand throughout the Festival to answer all your design conundrums and pressing landscaping issues. Bring your garden images, plans and dreams along to one of their incredibly useful and informative Landscape and Design Clinics, held twice daily from 11am–1pm and 3 –5pm. Find them at their stand under a handsome Renson canopy and marvel at a series of immaculately crafted garden features, including one promoting water-smart permeable construction principles.
 

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The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity. We aim to enrich everyone’s life through plants, and make the UK a greener and more beautiful place.