RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 episode 6: Creativity, Colour and the Art of Garden Design
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 has arrived with a clear statement of intent: creativity is back at the heart of British garden design, and this year the showground is asking every visitor to bring their own imagination along. Monty Don and Arit Anderson take centre stage as co-hosts, guiding viewers through a programme packed with artistic ambition, horticultural revelation, and genuinely practical ideas for gardens of every size.
From Rachel de Thame crowning this year’s RHS Florist of the Year to Adam Frost breaking down the fundamentals of hard landscaping, and from James Basson’s extraordinary Provençal rock installation to three brand-new plant varieties making their world debut, the 2026 show makes a compelling case that Chelsea has never been more alive to what gardening can do.
Arit Anderson arrives on screen having just stepped away from her own show garden on Main Avenue — “utterly exhausting” in Monty’s words, though Anderson herself describes it as energising once the dust settles. Her presence as co-host brings a designer’s eye to everything she encounters: sharp observations about scale, personality, and the way a garden can communicate something deeply personal. It sets the tone for a programme that is less a tour and more a sustained argument for why gardens matter, why they should be bold, and why the people who make them deserve recognition alongside any other creative art form.
The evening’s central theme — creativity and innovation in garden design — connects every segment, from the intimate balcony gardens on Serpentine Way to the geological spectacle of the Project Giving Back garden. Chelsea 2026 is not simply a flower show. It is a manifesto.
Designer Christina Cobb’s garden might be the most quietly radical thing at Chelsea this year. Its premise is disarmingly simple: put your phone down. A small tray sits at the entrance, inviting visitors to deposit their devices before engaging with the space directly. The idea, as Monty explains while standing inside it, is that the endless mediation of a screen stops people from truly inhabiting the present moment.
What Cobb has built around that idea is equally thoughtful. A studio occupies the centre of the garden — a beautifully made structure that Monty freely admits he would repurpose as a greenhouse, since “gardening is a craft.” Anderson points out that the entire space is devoted to handmade work, the activity of using one’s hands as a form of presence rather than distraction. The planting features soft, considered colours including Beaux-Éléee, and everything within the garden is made rather than manufactured.
The deeper argument the garden makes is that creativity requires unmediated attention. You cannot be inspired by what you refuse to look at directly. Anderson puts it plainly: “People are forgetting to truly be in the moment.” At Chelsea 2026, that observation lands with real weight.
RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 episode 6
Lynne James Channels the St Ives School in the Sea Salt Painted Garden
Colour takes its most explicit artistic form in the Sea Salt Painted Garden, where designer Lynne James has drawn directly from the painters of the St Ives School. The result is vivid, brave, and entirely coherent. A sculpture in the manner of Barbara Hepworth — carved, Monty suspects, from fallen ash — immediately communicates the garden’s allegiances. Post-war modernism, resourcefulness, and the belief that art should be made from whatever is at hand.
The upcycled filing cabinets are the most provocative element. Painted in the bold hues associated with Cornish abstract art, they serve as a reminder that the great figures of St Ives made their work without money or conventional resources. James has applied the same logic to planting: colour used in a painterly way, each hue defined and clustered rather than blended indiscriminately. “Do one thing and do it well and do it strongly,” Monty advises — and this garden does exactly that.
It also points toward something practically useful for any gardener working with a small plot. Restraint is not the same as timidity. Choosing one strong idea and committing to it completely produces something far more striking than trying to cover every possibility.
The Boodles Garden Demonstrates How Colour Depth Can Transform a Show Garden
Reporter Jamie’s trend observation for Chelsea 2026 is unambiguous: colour is back. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Boodles Garden, designed by Catherine McDonald, which takes its palette directly from Royal Historic Palaces. McDonald has used planting to tell a specific story — the dark purple iris called Irish Superstition represents the ravens of the Tower of London, while a claret peony named The Kybell references the Damask wallpaper of Hampton Court and Kensington Palace.
The technical accomplishment here is significant. McDonald has separated the purple tones to the front of the garden and the reds to the rear, then clustered every other colour into defined groups throughout. The result is that each tone reads clearly when you stand back. The glue holding it all together is green foliage — Artemisias, Festuca amifastina, and a plant described simply as Breezer — three plants working as a foil to stop the colours from fighting.
The lesson for home gardeners is direct: if you want bold colour to work, resist the temptation to mix everything together. Segregate by tone, use green as the mediator, and the palette will feel joyful rather than chaotic. McDonald’s garden is a masterclass in exactly that.
James Basson’s Ochre Mines Garden for Project Giving Back Challenges What a Garden Can Be
No garden at Chelsea 2026 has generated more debate than James Basson’s installation for Project Giving Back. Basson, who won Best in Show on Main Avenue in 2017, has spent the last 25 years living and working in the south of France, and his garden this year is drawn directly from the ochre mines of Provence — dramatic compacted sandstone cliffs, soft enough to be constantly cleaned by wind and rain, and therefore perpetually brilliant in colour.
Commercial mining ceased around 60 years ago. In the decades since, pine forest has grown back through the mineral landscape, creating a rare moment where geology and vegetation coexist in a state of visible transition. Basson describes it as the beauty of resilience — the sense of something having survived, found its footing again, and begun to flourish. He could not transport actual Provençal rock to Chelsea, so landscape architect Mark Wyman’s team built a large metal structure and rendered it on site. Guy Valentine brought ten men and re-rendered the entire landscape in two days.
The debate it provokes is genuine. Monty asks Basson directly: does this need explaining before people can appreciate it as a garden? Basson argues that a garden begins the moment human care enters a space — even a broom sweeping a path constitutes gardening. Monty agrees. Many visitors disagree entirely. That tension is precisely what makes the Project Giving Back garden worth arguing about. Basson’s purpose extends beyond aesthetics: Project Giving Back has supported 63 charities across Britain over five years, and this garden carries that quiet, accumulative energy into the showground.
New Plant Introductions at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 Include a Morphing Clematis and a Norfolk Wildling
The Great Pavilion has always been the place to find plants that do not yet exist in most gardens, and Chelsea 2026 delivers three introductions that are genuinely worth noting.
The first is Clematis Mochi, bred in Japan through a process of sowing thousands of seeds and eliminating candidates over many growing cycles until only the strongest two or three remain. What makes Mochi exceptional is its transformation over time. The flower opens single — valuable for pollinators, since insects can access the centre for pollen. Gradually, petals build up around a frilly centre until the flower becomes fully double in maturity. The sepals are lined and veined with intricate markings. Plant it with roots cool and the top growth in sun; it will reach two metres or scramble over a low shrub.
The second is a Streptocarpus requiring a warm position, out of direct sun, watered only when genuinely necessary and never left standing in water.
The third is Polemonium Violet Tart, which required no breeding at all. Mother Nature produced it as a seedling in a Norfolk garden. Pale lilac petals surround a deep violet centre, giving it its name. It is a true herbaceous perennial — plant with plenty of organic matter, mulch well, and water only when the ground genuinely needs it.
Jekka McVicar’s 40-Year Legacy Defines Chelsea’s Herb Culture
RHS Vice President Jekka McVicar represents a particular kind of Chelsea institution — someone whose contribution extends well beyond a single exhibit or garden. Frances catches up with her to explore a career spanning more than four decades, rooted in a childhood shaped by a mother who used herbs not merely for cooking but for her children’s wellbeing. McVicar was chopping and identifying herbs before she was old enough for school.
Her transition from family tradition to professional horticulture came from a single moment of recognition: a friend asking to take some French tarragon. The lightbulb came on — she could grow it. French tarragon started everything. Her acknowledged influences include Penny Hobhouse, known to McVicar simply as Penny since childhood — a figure associated above all with the idea of right plant, right place.
Her proudest Chelsea memory is winning her first gold medal, back when competitors camped in Battersea car park and friendships formed over canvas and cold mornings have lasted decades since. At this year’s show, McVicar’s herbs appear in Frances’s own curious garden — a quiet professional tribute that says as much about Chelsea’s community as any medal.
Jade Takes the RHS Chelsea Florist of the Year Title with “Nature Magnified”
Rachel de Thame reveals the winner of the RHS Chelsea Florist of the Year 2026 inside the Great Pavilion, where this year’s theme for the competition is Floristry Laboratory — science and nature as mutual inspiration. The quality of the entries is so high that the judges award three gold medals before naming an overall winner.
Jade’s winning display is titled Nature Magnified. The concept derives from the geometry of plant cells seen under a microscope — circles, transparent layers, the structured patterns of the unseen world made visible. The transparent discs in her installation are handmade papers constructed from layered fibres, mulberry fibres, and pressed seeds. The star plants are orchids, which Jade describes as something she felt “really spoilt” to work with.
When Rachel asks how it felt to see RHS President Keith Weed approaching with the Florist of the Year award, Jade’s answer is immediate: “All the emotions going on.” She had already absorbed the gold medal, which felt extraordinary in itself. Florist of the Year was beyond what she had imagined. She will almost certainly be back next year, she admits — but needs approximately a week before she can commit.
Helen James Flowers also earns recognition for a display called Fusion and Fish, which references the moment atoms explode and release energy. Glass test tubes shaped like rocket nozzles hold the flowers; the colours detonate outward. It is floristry as physics demonstration, and it works.
David and Gail Shills Return to the Great Pavilion After Seven Years with Four Auricula Theatres
Former doctors David and Gail Shills last exhibited at Chelsea seven years ago. Their return brings four auricula theatres to the Great Pavilion, each one the result of years of obsessive propagation at their Lake District home, Summerdale House. When they arrived there 30 years ago, the garden had been untended for four decades and was overrun with brambles. Gail began propagating plants to fill the space. The surplus led to garden open days. The open days led to a small nursery. The nursery eventually grew to encompass over 500 auricula varieties, with 1,600 individual plants prepared as potential Chelsea exhibits.
Auriculas come in several categories: alpine varieties divided into light-centred and gold-centred forms; border auriculas with long cottage garden heritage; doubles; and show auriculas subdivided into selfs with solid petal colours, stripes, and edges. David’s current favourite is Icecap — a double that opens cream and deepens to blue as it matures. Gail’s preference runs to the edged varieties, which are the hardest to grow. Star Wars Number One and Grey Lag are her examples; both covered in farina, a powdery bloom that washes off in rain and must be hand-watered around to preserve the flower’s definition.
The logistics of getting perfectly timed auriculas to Chelsea are considerable. The show falls after their natural flowering season, so many plants spend months in a fridge at four degrees with no light, brought out carefully to open on cue. The timing is, David admits, “a bit unfathomable.” The journey south was achieved by cramming every plant into the back of the car with the air conditioning at full power. Gail wore thermal leggings. They won gold.
Adam Frost Deconstructs Garden Materials to Show Why Surfaces Define the Whole Space
Adam Frost’s nightly design segment reaches its conclusion with a focus on materials — the most overlooked element of garden planning, and, he argues, the one that ultimately determines how a garden feels. Most people head straight for plants when designing a garden. The trees, shrubs, perennials, and colour take priority. The surfaces and verticals — paving, walls, fences, structures — receive less thought. That, Frost believes, is a mistake.
His framework is straightforward. Start by understanding the relationship between your materials and light. A dark paving on a north-facing terrace will absorb light and create a depressive atmosphere through winter months. A grey paving will tone in with the surrounding architecture and feel considered rather than arbitrary. From there, the key is cohesion: repeat materials through the garden rather than introducing them in isolation. A red brick wall suggests a brick-edged terrace, a brick path, perhaps a brick boundary. Everything pulls together.
The number of materials matters too. Frost recommends two to four in most gardens, rising to a maximum of perhaps four in a larger space. Reclaimed materials feel traditional; smooth polished concrete reads as modern. Texture and finish change a space’s mood as dramatically as colour. A pergola or arbour introduced in isolation looks stranded; a steel arch on the path leading to it connects the structure to the garden’s language. “It’s not necessarily about the materials you choose,” Frost concludes. “It’s how you put them together.”
Practical Advice From Monty and Arit Answers Real Gardening Questions
The programme closes with viewer questions, which produce some of Chelsea’s most direct horticultural advice. Katie’s cherry tree came down in the wind and she needs a replacement for a small garden that offers blossom and autumn colour. Anderson recommends crab apples without hesitation — she calls them the reliable answer — alongside the Judas tree as an alternative. Monty adds medlar: a small tree with good fruit, good structure, and the spring blossom that many gardeners overlook in favour of more fashionable choices.
Terry is struggling to germinate Tithonia. Monty’s diagnosis is heat. Tithonia seeds demand a minimum of 20 degrees to germinate — above a radiator or on a heat pad is the practical solution. At pricking-out stage, overwatering becomes the second hazard; the seedlings will collapse and die if kept too wet. Water from below, maintain heat, and the plants will establish.
Echinaceas are giving another viewer trouble. The answer, as Monty demonstrates from his own heavy clay garden, is to stop watering them altogether. They need drainage and heat; they do not need supplementary moisture once established. Sweet peas get the final word: if they are already in the ground and growing, do not pinch them out now — it is too late for that intervention. Tie them up, let them climb, and water generously. Sweet peas need cool conditions and consistent moisture above all else.
The Great Pavilion as Creative Laboratory: Botanical Art and the Return of Living History
The Chelsea Physic Garden Florilegium Society brings something unexpected to the Great Pavilion: botanical painting in the tradition that predates photography. For centuries before reliable photographic reproduction, painted and drawn records of plants were the definitive identification resource. If you found an unknown plant and needed to know what it was, you looked at these paintings. They were functional documents first, works of art by consequence.
The society documents specimens growing in the Chelsea Physic Garden using drawing and painting, continuing a practice that stretches back through the centuries when botanical illustration carried real scientific weight. Monty stands before the display and states simply that he finds them genuinely enjoyable — the function long since absorbed, the jewel-like art form remaining. The exhibit sits quietly among the more conspicuous displays of the Great Pavilion, but it represents something the show does better than anywhere else: keeping the connection between gardening and human culture visible and unbroken.
Deborah Meaden, Dragon’s Den star and committed sustainability advocate, judges the sustainable business and lifestyle product categories at the show. She awards the sustainable product of the year to a wooden planter made entirely from recycled wood, built to last, and free of chemical treatments. A wildflower meadow tea called Silic earns recognition too — valued not merely as a drink but for the insect populations supported by its growing conditions. Meaden’s view of gardening is ecological as much as aesthetic: “If you love your garden, you’ve got a better chance of understanding what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in nature.”
That may be the best summary of what RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 is arguing, across all its gardens and pavilions and late-evening segments. The show remains the most concentrated expression of what British gardening knows, aspires to, and believes in — and in 2026, what it believes in most clearly is the power of creativity to transform both a plot of land and the person who tends it.
FAQ RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 episode 6
Q: Who won RHS Chelsea Florist of the Year 2026?
A: Jade took the title with a display called Nature Magnified, inspired by the geometry of plant cells viewed under a microscope. Her installation used handmade papers constructed from layered fibres, mulberry fibres, and pressed seeds, with orchids as the centrepiece. The judges awarded three gold medals before naming an overall winner, reflecting the exceptional quality of entries across the Floristry Laboratory theme.
Q: What is the theme of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026?
A: Creativity and innovation run through the entire 2026 show, with designers and exhibitors encouraging visitors to embrace both in their own gardens. From the Cleary Gottlieb Time for Creativity Garden — which asks visitors to put their phones down — to James Basson’s geological Provençal installation, the show makes a sustained case for bold, personal, and imaginative garden-making.
Q: What is the Project Giving Back garden at Chelsea 2026 and why is it controversial?
A: Designed by James Basson, the garden recreates the ochre mines of Provence using a rendered metal structure rather than conventional planting. It has divided opinion because it challenges the traditional definition of a garden. Basson argues that any space touched by human care qualifies, while many visitors disagree. Project Giving Back has supported 63 charities across Britain, and the garden’s theme of resilience and renewal directly mirrors that mission.
Q: How do you use colour effectively in a small garden like the Chelsea show gardens?
A: Cluster colours into defined groups rather than mixing them throughout. Catherine McDonald’s Boodles Garden demonstrates this by placing purples at the front and reds at the rear, then using green foliage plants — Artemisias, Festuca amifastina — as a foil to prevent colours from competing. In small spaces, committing to one strong idea and executing it fully produces far more impact than attempting multiple effects simultaneously.
Q: What are the three new plant introductions at Chelsea Flower Show 2026?
A: The three notable new introductions are Clematis Mochi, a Japanese-bred variety that opens single for pollinators then transforms into a fully double flower; a Streptocarpus requiring warmth, indirect light, and minimal watering; and Polemonium Violet Tart, a natural Norfolk seedling with pale lilac petals and a deep violet centre that requires no breeding — Mother Nature produced it entirely without intervention.
Q: How do you grow auriculas successfully at home?
A: Auriculas need protection from midday summer sun and must stay dry in winter — wet conditions are their main enemy. Grow them under cover with summer shading removed in winter. Edged varieties, which carry a powdery farina on the petals, require hand watering to avoid washing off that bloom. Contrary to their reputation, most auricula categories are not difficult to grow provided those two conditions are consistently met.
Q: What design advice does Adam Frost give for choosing garden materials?
A: Start with light. A dark paving on a north-facing terrace absorbs available light and creates a depressive atmosphere in winter. Choose materials that connect with your home’s existing architecture and repeat them through the garden — a brick wall suggesting a brick path or edging — so everything feels coherent rather than assembled at random. Limit yourself to two to four materials in most gardens, and consider texture and finish as carefully as colour.
Q: What is the best small tree to replace a cherry tree in a small garden?
A: Crab apples are the most reliable choice, offering spring blossom and excellent autumn colour in a compact form. The Judas tree is a strong alternative with striking magenta flowers before the leaves emerge. Monty also recommends medlar — an underused small tree with good spring blossom, interesting fruit, and attractive autumn foliage. All three suit gardens where space is limited but year-round interest is essential.
Q: Why won’t my Tithonia seeds germinate and how do I fix it?
A: Heat is the answer. Tithonia seeds require a minimum of 20 degrees Celsius to germinate — place them above a radiator or on a heat mat rather than on a cool windowsill. Once seedlings reach the pricking-out stage, overwatering becomes the second hazard; they collapse and die if kept too wet. Water from below only, maintain consistent warmth, and the plants will establish without difficulty.
Q: Should you pinch out sweet peas once they are already growing in the ground?
A: No — once sweet peas are established in the ground, pinching out is counterproductive. That intervention works earlier in the season to encourage side shoots before planting out. At the growing stage, simply tie the stems up and allow them to climb freely. Sweet peas need cool conditions and consistent moisture above all else; water them well and they will flower prolifically without further intervention.
