This year the gardens at RHS Chelsea Flower Show are divided into six categories:
• Main show gardens
• Sanctuary gardens
• All about plants
• Balcony gardens
• Container gardens
• Houseplant studios
All About Plants is a new category for 2022 and will be located in the Great Pavilion. The gardens will champion ‘the positive power of plants to improve lives and livelihoods’.
Here are the featured gardens:
The Core Arts Front Garden Revolution
Design: Andy Smith-Williams
This garden depicts two urban front gardens joined together to ‘create a positive space for gardening, socialising and environmental gain’. Planting includes native hedging, flowering fruit trees, perennials, evergreen grasses and wildflowers inspired by the local landscape. Colour palette is predominantly steel grey, silver, blue and white. Environmental concerns are addressed with permeable surfaces and a water collection system which overflows into a planter filled with moisture-loving plants.
A Textile Garden for Fashion Revolution
Design: Lottie Delamain
A garden which champions ‘the physical power of plants as an essential element in the textile industry’. To include nettles, cow parsley and other plants selected for their use as dyes or fibres. Challenging the impact of the fast fashion industry by causing us to ask ‘what’s in my clothes?’ The garden is intended to imitate a textile, with planting in distinctive blocks of colour to create the impression of a woven fabric. Shallow reflective pools represent dye baths, with fabric or fibres soaking in natural dyes and a series of paved seams lead through the planting.
The Mothers for Mothers Garden – ‘This Too Shall Pass’
Design: Pollyanna Wilkinson
The designer was previously a mental health counsellor and uses her planting to represent the journey of recovery from mental health challenges that many women face in early motherhood. A muted palette transitioning to bright and exuberant colour reflects this journey from despair to hope. A cloister of bronze-toned walls and archways represent how long days at home with a baby can be both a sanctuary and a cage, and a fractured pathway demonstrates the physical and mental journey of rupture and repair.
The Wilderness Foundation UK Garden
Design: Charlie Hawkes
A naturalistic tapestry of green interspersed with splash of bright colour represents the power of plants to enhance our connection to the natural world. The planting is raised up to draw the viewer into the garden, instil a sense of Nature’s wonder, and inspire a desire to protect it. It is inspired by plant communities in native Japanese forests. Two lichen-covered boulders protrude into the path at the centre of the garden, providing a place to sit and ‘experience the positive impact of the Foundation’s work through the collective power of plants.’