Chelsea 2025: Planting a Gold Medal-winning Garden

Back from an exhausting and inspiring week at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where I was involved with the planting team on the London Square Chelsea Pensioners Garden, designed by Dave Green. The planting involved areas of dry shade, deep shade and a colourful edge, with meadow-style planting.

A huge amount of care is taken to look after the plants as soon as they arrive. They are inspected, picked over, in some cases cleaned, watered and kept in shade to protect them from the strong sun we have had.

No planting plan is used when planting a show garden, we are really painting with the palette of plants provided, so there is a lot of thinking on our feet. It’s great fun though and the team have worked together a number of years now, so great camaraderie.

The icing on the cake was the garden winning a gold medal, which I happened to be there for at 8am on the Tuesday morning as I was watering.