1. Turn to paintings for border inspiration

Let your favourite painting inspire you to paint with plants. At Boodles National Gallery Garden the orange and yellows of Geum ‘Lemon Drops’ and ‘Totally Tangerine’, plus pink aquilegias represent Turner’s colour palette for the The Fighting Temeraire, while the evergreen yew topiary is a nod to the bold ‘blocky’ trees that feature in Van Gogh’s work.

Designer Catherine MacDonald has also used the texture of bark and leaves to evoke the distinctive brush strokes of Impressionist painters such as Cezanne and Monet.

Where? Site no 288

2. Do wildflowers properly

Instead of waiting to see which wildflowers (we no longer call them weeds!) turn up in your plot, along with the ubiquitous dandelions, actively plan your planting.

Research by Kent Wildflower Seeds, the first wildflower company ever to exhibit at Chelsea, shows that some species can actively improve your soil, act as a living mulch to protect it or attract all-important pest predator insects to your veg plot.

Sow clover (Trifolium repens) to stimulate soil micro-organisms, rosette-forming ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata) to provide year-round green cover and vetch (Vicia sativa) to add nutrients to the soil, while yarrow (Achillea millefolium) will attract aphid-eating hoverflies.

Where? Site no 41, Kent Wildflower Seeds is in The Great Pavilion

3. Treat rainwater as a valuable resource



The WaterAid Garden, designed by Tom Massey and Je Ahn

The spectacular canopied rainwater harvesting system at Tom Massey’s and Je Ahn’s Water Aid garden is certainly attention grabbing. While it’s not something you could immediately copy at home, you can adopt the same principles. “It’s a visual way to start a dialogue,” says Tom.

In your own garden he suggests rerouting your downpipe from the drain and diverting it into a water butt (don’t forget to add an overflow pipe) to stop wasting this precious resource. Or do away with a downpipe altogether and install a rain chain in its place – an ancient Japanese technique to direct water from the gutter into the flower beds.

Where? Site no 323

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RHS No Adults Allowed Garden explained

4. Use every inch of space

The gorgeous combination of purple foxgloves, blue irises and zingy lime-green euphorbias immediately catches your eye in the Octavia Hill Garden by Ann-Marie Powell, designed to celebrate the pioneering social reformer and founder of the National Trust.

But it pays to look closely too, from the extraordinary gooseneck-shaped stems of Allium ‘Forelock’ to the cracks between the reclaimed stone paving, which have been painstakingly planted with Mind Your Own Business (Soleirolia soleirolii).

That’s something that will happen naturally in your own paving if you rake out any hard cement and brush in sand instead or you can, of course, give nature a hand and add some rooted cuttings or sow seed.

Where at Chelsea? Site no 321

5. Get children growing

The first-ever Chelsea garden designed by children for children is packed with ideas guaranteed to encourage your own offspring to get their hands dirty.

From digging a pond to building a den and even a garden slide, No Adults Allowed is the perfect demonstration of how an outdoor space for children doesn’t need to be dominated by garish plastic play equipment.

The children at Sulivan Primary School in London – with a helping hand from designer Harry Holding and his team – have created a space to appeal to children everywhere. Exotic carnivorous plants such as Sarracenia (hardy in the UK) and native sundew spark the imagination and there are wild strawberries for foraging.

Where at Chelsea? Site no 330

6. Grow your own popcorn, plus sunflower microgreens



The popcorn is the tall plant with variegated leaves

Growing corn for popping is a lot easier than regular sweetcorn as there’s no need to worry about cross-pollination, which can affect the sweetness, explains Lucy Hutchings at She Grows Veg seed company. Zea mays ‘Quadricolour’ is the variety you need.

Inspired by Renaissance painters, the team have displayed their heirloom veg in ornate gilt frames to showcase their good looks. Marvel at the giant ‘Titan’ sunflower seedhead from last year’s harvest and try the team’s top tip: use your harvested sunflower seeds to grow your own microgreens – and save some for the birds, of course.

Where at Chelsea? Site no 45, She Grows Veg is in The Great Pavilion

7. Planning to revamp your garden? Use what’s already there



The Chelsea Repurposed Garden showing fountain and rubble flower beds

In the Chelsea Repurposed Garden everything is secondhand. If you’re a show regular, you might recognise the steel columns that first featured in Andy Sturgeon’s 2010 design for the Daily Telegraph, an Islamic-style fountain from Tom Massey’s debut Lemon Tree Trust garden in 2018, or the brightly coloured backdrop from St Mungo’s 2022 design, which all go to show that you don’t have to start from scratch if you want to revamp your garden.

If you’re faced with a new plot that has areas of builder’s rubble or you’re breaking up a concrete patio, take heart: the planting beds here have been formed from crushed concrete and sand – ideal for native species such as wild marjoram, hedge bedstraw (Galium verum) and quaking grass (Brizia media) that flourish in poor soil. It goes without saying that after the show every element will be reused – again and again.

Where at Chelsea? Site no 322

8. Thinking of planting a tree? Make it a ‘future’ tree



Won Tree of the Show award, No Adults Allowed

These are trees that are well adapted to cope with climate change:

The Chinese fringe tree, Chionanthus retusus, was awarded the well-deserved accolade of RHS Tree of the Show this year, in the No Adults Allowed Garden. This delightful deciduous tree is drought tolerant, has beautiful and abundant flowers, attractive bark and can be grown either as a shrub or a small tree.

Where at Chelsea? See it in situ at site no 330 – The No Adults Allowed Garden

Another contender is the strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo. Although it produces edible fruits, the name strawberry rather raises expectations about how tasty they are. Instead its real attraction lies in its resilience and all-round adaptability.

In the garden designed for the charity Freedom From Torture it symbolises survival: it can grow in a range of soils from damp to dry, can withstand drought and is fire resistant. It does well in a pot and has beautiful bark and is evergreen: an ideal tree for a small garden.

Where at Chelsea? See it in situ at site no 285.

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