Your Chelsea Flower Show 2026 preview – what not to miss
We reveal the big themes that will get gardeners talking and the newest plant launches you’re sure to love – as well as how to enjoy the show on TV or in person.
We reveal the big themes that will get gardeners talking and the newest plant launches you’re sure to love – as well as how to enjoy the show on TV or in person.
Where Monty Don and his dogs held the limelight at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show, this year’s scene-stealers are set to be gnomes. And not just any gnomes – they’ll be decorated by some truly starry names, including Dame Mary Berry, Sir Elton John, Baroness Floella Benjamin, actor Cate Blanchett and Queen guitarist Sir Brian May. Even the King is rumoured to be involved.
With such A-list participation, this world-famous flower show is guaranteed to make headline news – but for gardeners and plant lovers, it’s more than that. Just as the fashion world’s catwalk shows give a glimpse of future styles, so Chelsea is our annual barometer of gardening trends and talking points.
Key themes from this year’s 36 gardens, large and small, are health and good living, bolder use of colour (for our turbulent times) and the importance of greening our cities, not just for our wellbeing but the survival of wildlife.
Read on for the highlights to watch for and new plants to covet, plus this year’s medal contenders. So whether you’re enjoying the show on TV from the comfort of your armchair or venturing to SW3 to get close-up and personal with plants, the future of gardening starts here.
BBC has coverage all week, with daytime shows on BBC1 and evenings hosted by Monty Don on BBC2.
The preview is early evening on Sunday 17 May, with two to three daily shows from Monday 18 to Friday 22 May, and highlights over 23-24 May.
Don’t miss the triumphs-and-tears reveals of the medals on Tuesday and People’s Choice on Friday. All on iPlayer.
Gardening is known to be good for us, but this year three major gardens demonstrate how active gardening in well-designed spaces makes for a better life. Highest profile is A Garden for every Parkinson’s Journey from landscape designer and TV presenter Arit Anderson, advocate for the charity Parkinson’s UK after close family members became affected by the condition. Read more in our exclusive interview with her.
Anderson draws on medical research and real-world experiences to create a garden full of design features and practical solutions that anyone can recreate at home – and make you think differently about your outdoor space, whatever the state of your health.
While many of us take for granted our ability to smell the roses, those with asthma and other lung disorders can struggle with simply taking a breath. So the Breathing Space garden, for Asthma + Lung UK, is created to be a garden where you can literally breathe more easily. The design, for a sheltered space with calm colours, flowing water and low-allergen planting, is set to become a blueprint for NHS specialist centres.
Better ageing through good gut health inspires the Microbes and Minds Garden, by designer Tina Worboys for the Alzheimer’s Society. With research showing that up to 45% of Alzheimer’s cases can be prevented or delayed by improving our lifestyle and diet – and that gardeners’ microbiomes are generally more diverse and healthy than in the average population – this garden champions the value of edible gardening. After all, everyone can grow a health-giving apple tree (one of the best fruits for our gut) in even a pot.
The Royal Horticultural Society has relaxed its self-imposed ban on garden gnomes at the show, first introduced in 1990 amid fears of them lowering the tone! While Queen of herbs Jekka McVicar has been smuggling them onto her stand for years, this year’s decorative gnomes will grace the King’s Foundation Curious Garden.
It’s designed by top horticulturist and TV presenter Frances Tophill to celebrate the joy of plants and how they influence our lives. She’s supported by a starry trio of the King himself (a gnome fan), long-time friend and colleague Alan Titchmarsh and avid new gardener Sir David Beckham, whose iconic number 7 shirt is echoed in seven raised beds within the design.
Tophill aims to inspire a new generation to discover the creativity and fun of a career in horticulture so, appropriately, the gnomes will later be auctioned off to raise money for the RHS’s Campaign for School Gardening.
Expect more bare-faced cheek in the show’s first tunnel of love, which explores the sensuous powers of plants in Aphrodite’s Hothouse, one of the Houseplant Studios. We’re promised a playful stage set of lush foliage, scented flowers and suggestive shapes. As the first Chelsea exhibit sponsored by a sex toy maker, Lovehoney, the RHS warns visitors this space will challenge a few taboos! No getting hot under the collar...
Chelsea Flower Show welcomes many national treasures in its opening few days but everyone has fingers crossed that the greatest of all, Sir David Attenborough, will attend, in the month of his 100th birthday.
He’ll be unveiling Bringing Nature Home, an interactive display in the Great Pavilion that celebrates how gardens are vital for UK wildlife. It focuses on 10 plants inspired by each decade of Attenborough’s life, that boost biodiversity and create valuable habitats.
As gardens become smaller and balconies are the new patios, Chelsea Flower Show hosts 10 plots dedicated to small space success. Australian-Greek heritage designer Katerina Kantalis brings her Little Garden of Shared Knowledge for a downsizing couple, using large containers to create a colourful balcony full of life.
If lack of space is limiting your ambitions, her answer is to go bold and think big with pots. For city dwellers, Contain the Rain garden demonstrates how dense, lush planting cools the air for comfortable living while capturing water to ease flooding driven by climate change.
Flowers from the Farm will recreate a vivid cut-flower field in miniature
She Grows Veg elevates the colourful beauty of edibles into living art
Blue Diamond garden centres create a 35m-long planted, walk-through space with creative solutions to real-world problems including dry soil and shade
Journey Through Western Australia transports us Down Under to a piece of theatrical planting that’s all about climate change solutions
Plant Heritage, which protects national plant collections, brings spectacular wisteria, pelargoniums, foxgloves and cosmos in full bloom
Two veteran garden designers are lured back to Chelsea this year and go head-to-head for the judges’ top garden award. Sarah Eberle, the most decorated garden designer in RHS history, brings a garden celebrating nature-filled spaces on the edges of our cities. Elsewhere, Tom Stuart-Smith OBE – the late Queen’s choice of garden designer and multi-award winner with three previous Bests in Show – previews his forthcoming Tate Britain immersive garden with a version in microcosm.
Sparring with them will be Arit Anderson, whose garden for Parkinson’s UK will be a masterclass in putting wellbeing at the heart of a garden – also making her a strong contender for People’s Choice. And Kazuyuki Ishihara, the fedora-sporting Japanese design guru, returns with a homage to the Japanese tea garden that’s certain to be immaculate.
Chelsea is a launchpad for many new plants, with debutant roses the most hotly anticipated. David Austin Roses has already grabbed headlines with its early teaser for the “Sir David Beckham” rose – a scented white rose, 10 years in the making and commissioned by the footballer’s daughter Harper to mark his 50th birthday.
Closer to home is our very own “The Saga Rose”, from world-renowned breeders, Harkness Roses, celebrating 75 years of Saga. A repeat-flowering floribunda bush rose that blends a sweet scent with notes of light spice for a deeper fragrance, it’s perfect for the centre of a bed or large container growing to around 1m high. It’s one of five major rose launches from Harkness, alongside “Resilience”, a wildlife-friendly Persian rose with a prominent central ‘eye’, which will raise money for Parkinson’s UK.
An exhibitor for more than 60 years, Raymond Evison is synonymous with clematis – and this year, he brings three elegant but robust new varieties, all designed for container gardeners. Most eye-catching is “Queen’s Nurse”, smothered in two-tone mauve and pink blooms as they open before deepening to a rich magenta hue. Every plant sold raises funds for the Queen’s Institute of Community Nursing and the National Garden Scheme.
Competition will be fierce to win the prestigious Chelsea Plant of the Year title. Early favourites include Hillier’s flower-packed small shrub, Pittosporum “Green Mound”, which produces clusters of nectar-rich blooms with a strong, honey-like fragrance in early evening. And Blue Diamond launches Prunus “Japanese Lantern”, a colour-changing cherry tree whose blossom transforms from white to dusky pink as it ages.
The royal family visit on the Monday evening before the show formally opens, in a tradition dating back to 1913, when Queen Alexandra opened the inaugural Chelsea spring show. As the King and Queen are both keen gardeners, they rarely miss it.
The show runs Tuesday 19-Friday 22 May, 8am-8pm, and Saturday 23 May, 8am-5.30pm. The first two days are RHS-members only days, while Thursday is already sold out.
Tickets for Friday cost £137 and Saturday £114 (plus fees). Or dance along to the Friday Late session, from 5.30pm with a DJ set by Radio 2’s Jo Whiley at 8pm, from £107.
Make more of your day at the show with our Visitor Guide to Chelsea Flower Show.
Head to Instagram and search #RHSChelsea for regular updates.
Follow @the_rhs and @gardenersworldtv for official news.
Get the inside story from show manager Gemma Lake @chelsea.gardens_the.edit and man of the moment @themontydon.
(Hero image credit: RHS)
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