We look at the winners and losers at this year’s RHS Chelsea – which saw victory for many first timers
The results are in: the medal-winning gardens and the Best Show Garden winner at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024 have been announced. As ever, garden designers, journalists and the public will be hotly debating the winning gardens and those that missed out on the top accolades will be scratching their heads, wondering where they went wrong.
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The Best Show Garden winner is notoriously difficult to predict, but was widely tipped to be one of the ‘two Toms’ – Chelsea veteran Tom Stuart-Smith and Tom Massey. In the end, it was won by Ula Maria, whose quietly assured and thoughtful garden for Muscular Dystrophy UK impressed the judges. Her achievement is all the more notable as this was her first Chelsea garden, which originally started out as a smaller Sanctuary garden. Project Giving Back and the RHS had loved the initial concept, and offered her a Show Garden on Main Avenue instead.
Ula, who was RHS Young Designer of the Year in 2017, fought off strong competition from another woodland garden, created by none other than Chelsea veteran Tom Stuart-Smith – whom she used to freelance for. The pair had even included some of the same plants in their gardens, including the highly covetable Saruma henryi. And if that wasn’t enough, rumour has it that Tom Stuart-Smith had even timed a cake to come out of the AGA in his beautiful oak hut just as the judges arrived.
The winners this year show that not having done a Chelsea garden before is no barrier to winning the ultimate prize
On paper, the Best Show Garden is the one that has achieved the highest score on the judges’ checklist, which covers nine criteria. Show judge James Alexander-Sinclair explains: “The answer is just do everything really, really well – and do it better than the others.” Many of the gardens that win wild praise from fellow designers and journalists on Press Day fail to bag the ultimate prize. This was the case with Sarah Price’s exquisite Benton End-inspired Nurture Landscapes garden last year. In 2022, the shock winner was Urquhart & Hunt’s Rewilding Britain Garden, which while technically excellent, certainly divided opinion.
Andy Sturgeon, who has won gold at Chelsea many times, observes that often Best in Show designers are given free reign by their sponsors and aren’t tied by a particular brief. This was the case with Ula Maria’s garden – while it had a strong message, it was a subtle one, based on a meeting that Ula had with a man called Martin, who was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in his twenties and found himself processing the news in his car in a barren hospital car park. Rather than portray a ‘journey’ of emotions in the garden, she simply set out to create a beautiful and tranquil space where patients and their families could process the news they had just been given. The knapped flint wall in the garden features a beautiful texture and form, reminiscent of the muscle cells affected by the disease that Ula saw under a microscope.
She simply set out to create a beautiful and tranquil space where patients and their families could process the news they had just been given
“Best Show Garden has to be a garden with a heart and soul,” says Andy Sturgeon. “But in the end, it comes down to planting. You have to have it nailed to win. It has to be faultless.” This was echoed by RHS Chair of Show Garden Judges Liz Nicholson: “Coupled with faultless planting to make an innovative, artistic, and precise garden, it is a clear winner.”
Even the wildly popular Kazuyuki Ishihara had to settle for a Silver Gilt this year
As with every year, some designers will be delighted with their medals, while others will be less pleased with their award, which comes after at least a year of hard graft on the part of the designer and their hardworking teams.
This year, several top designers like Ann-Marie Powell and Matthew Childs had to be satisfied with a Silver Gilt, although Ann-Marie did win the first ever Children’s Choice Award. One show garden on Main Avenue won Bronze, which is unusual. This must surely be a blow to Miria Harris, who created a highly personal garden for the Stroke Association (Miria herself is a stroke survivor), using many sustainable materials.
The Sanctuary Gardens saw Silvers awarded to three very strong-looking and widely admired gardens – the Freedom from Torture Garden by John Warland and Emma O’Connell, the Flood Re garden by Naomi Slade and Dr Ed Barsley, and the Bridgerton Garden by Holly Johnston. Even the wildly popular Kazuyuki Ishihara had to settle for a Silver Gilt this year.
To the untrained eye it is unclear why these gardens were marked down, but judging a Chelsea garden is very much a head over heart affair, as judges are always at pains to point out. Tamsin Westhorpe, one of the judges this year, explains: “The brief that designers submit in advance of the show is vital. Judges are expecting to be presented with a garden that fits that brief, and if the designer has moved away from their initial plan it can have an impact on their marks.”
The winners of this year show that not having done a Chelsea garden before is no barrier to winning the ultimate prize, as first-timers dominate the ‘Best In’ awards this year. Tom Bannister, who won in the Balcony and Container category for The Ecotherapy Garden has created show gardens for other designers but had never designed one himself until now. And Helen Olney, winner of the Best Sanctuary Garden for her Burma Skincare Initiative Spirit of Partnership Garden has never created a show garden anywhere before. And even more impressively, her day job is not even in garden design – she is Creative Director of BBC Sounds.
If you fancy having a go at creating a Chelsea show garden yourself, here’s everything you need to know.