Charles Quest-Ritson: The 'Sir David Beckham' rose is so good that one day he'll be better remembered as a flower than a footballer
From spectacular South African blooms to a home-grown marvel, Charles Quest-Ritson shares his favourite plants from the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
I love the Chelsea Flower Show and this year’s was a corker. I first went in 1974. It was free to members of the RHS (we were known as Fellows then) and I don’t remember any of the jostling crowds that people complain about now. Nor was it so micromanaged: journalists today are urged not to refer to the Chelsea Flower Show, but to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. I am happy to confirm, therefore, that it is micromanaged by the RHS and not by Chelsea F. C.
There are, indeed, many different Chelseas, which means that there is something for every-one. First, there are the gardens that get all the media attention. Their purpose is to promote their sponsors and to further the careers of their designers. Television programmers love them, but they offer little to real gardeners. Second, there are the innumerable stalls along the Eastern Avenue, whose relevance to gardening is sometimes hard to deduce, although almost all are manned by pleasant people selling beautiful things that you end up buying because you had not realised how much you needed them.
Then there are the plants, because it is in the Great Pavilion that you find the best of all possible Chelseas. I made a beeline for the new roses, especially ‘Sir David Beckham’ from David Austin. I recounted the story of its life, from seedling to commercial launch, in Country Life last year. It’s unusual among Austin roses — quite like a Floribunda, with a hint of the Hybrid Musks, although its incurved petals form the shape of a Champagne goblet and also reminded me of ‘Mme Pierre Oger’, a fine Bourbon rose from the 1870s. The flowers are scented, medium-sized, mother-of-pearl in colour, fading quickly to pure white and held in large clusters. The slender pedicels sometimes bend a bit sideways, which I think will make a fine effect in the garden, although it is hard to know how it will perform as a cut rose.
It will make a good modern substitute for ever-popular ‘Iceberg’, first introduced in 1958 and now rather too susceptible to blackspot in our damp, cool climate. If the new rose fares as well as I hope, Sir David may eventually find that he is remembered less as a skilful footballer, but more as a fragrant English rose.
‘Sir David Beckham’ was Austin’s only new rose at Chelsea and I rather miss the prolific days of the 1980s when David Austin had established his house style — strongly scented, repeat-flowering roses with an old-fashioned shape. His business was expanding fast and we filled our gardens with his wonderful introductions: nine were launched in 1982, 14 in 1983, and 12 in 1984. The company believes its roses are constantly improving, so I heartily wish it would introduce many more.
Harkness Roses introduced no fewer than five new roses at Chelsea (and one disturbingly pink garden gnome), including a fine twin-tone bush rose ‘Youth Without Limits’ in support of the charity that runs the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.
The Harkness Roses garden gnome.
I will certainly buy its new ‘Special Granddaughter’, a splendid super-pink ground-cover rose with a vigour and sheer prettiness that show up the shortcomings of old favourites, such as ‘The Fairy’. Harkness also introduced two new Persica hybrids — Philip Harkness has been working with Rosa persica for many years and his father, Jack, pioneered Persica-breeding 50 years ago with double-flowered ‘Tigris’. Mr Harkness’s ‘Chelsea Sunset’ has really large, semi-double flowers with a thumping red splodge at the centre of the flower, an excellent follow-on from last year’s ‘Memories and Moments’. Both should make hearty garden plants.
Yet there is more to Chelsea than roses. The Flora of South Africa exhibit brought a spectacular display of native plants and all on a princely scale — fynbos proteas stacked up, row upon row, to a great height, contrasting with a little rock garden planted entirely with forms of Drakensberg rhodohypoxis. I gasped at its boldness and brilliance, certain that it was the most inspired and inspiring exhibit in the show. The judges agreed.
Burncoose Nurseries can be relied on for excellent unusual plants: I greatly admired its new pink Cornus kousa ‘Scarlet Fire’ and covet its rare Debregeasia edulis ‘Elite’. Also impressive were cosmos from National Collection holder Jonathan Sheppard in Lincolnshire, clivias from Hoyland in Yorkshire and Anemone coronaria forms from Little Cornish Glasshouse.
Kevock Garden Plants, the Edinburgh nursery that trains and employs disabled persons, had a thoughtful design of spring-flowering herbaceous plants. Raymond Evison brought three splendid new clematis cultivars from Guernsey: ‘Queen’s Nurse’, ‘Eliza’ and ‘Ithemba’. His 50 years of devoted hybridising have transformed the way we grow clematis.
Finally, Blue Diamond’s massive exhibit showed the new Hydrangea paniculata cultivar Groundbreaker Ruby, whose flowers turn from white to crimson. It’s a good plant, but which novelty plant was best of all? The judges plumped for a purple-leaved hosta called ‘Red Ninja’, but I fell for a runner-up, Hydrangea ‘Velvet Night Red Lace’, with dark-red leaves, almost black, that set off the rich pink lace-cap flowers. Soon, I hope, we shall all be growing it.
Charles Quest-Ritson edited the RHS Encyclopedia of Roses. His book Climbing Roses of the World (2003) describes more than 1,600 climbers and ramblers.
