Chelsea Flower Show 2026: The entirely unofficial awards, according to Country Life
The coveted Gold Medals are the preserve of the RHS's elite band of judges — but our team in SW3 had a different take on the best of RHS Chelsea 2026. Here are our highlights, our lowlights, and the things that made us smile.
The garden you'd most want as your actual back garden
Addleshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City by Joe and Laura Carey at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026.
The big show gardens on the largest plots tend to dominate the headlines at Chelsea, but this year it's one of the entries in the Small Show Gardens category that earns our vote: the Addleshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City garden.
It's the creation of garden designers Joe and Laura Carey, a Norfolk-based husband-and-wife team — and it's won them their third gold medal in four years at the Chelsea Flower Show.
'It's a garden you feel you could live in, and enjoy the planting there,' says Kathryn Bradley-Hole, Country Life's former gardens editor of this beautiful space. 'Absolutely,' says garden photographer Clive Nichols. 'I think we'd both happily have that as our back garden.'
Most ambitious garden
Sarah Eberle's design for The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden — ‘On the Edge’ — was unarguably the standout.
Is she sleeping? Is she dying? Mother Earth in the CPRE garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026.
The vast stone arch alone might have done it, but the undisputed talking point was the giant fallen tree carved into a giant Mother Earth-style head. Epic in scale, as well as a clear and moving comment on the state of the world. Sarah had actually retired from making show gardens, but the CPRE coaxed her back — and we're very glad they did.
The 'look what I brought home' award
'But darling, they were only £3,000 — I could hardly leave them there now, could I?'
Chi Africa's stand of animal sculptures is tucked away, yet unmissable thanks to the giraffes. For those with gardens less able to take a 9ft sculpture, they also had a family of ducks, some penguins, a spitting cobra and an adorable little warthog. Very Lion King.
Most heroic use of gravel
Last year, the Japanese designer Kazuyuki Ishihara won the Besst in Show award. This year, working alongside Paul Noritaka Tange to create 'Tokonoma Garden – Sanumaya no Niwa', he's outdone himself once again. A masterpiece wrought in gravel.
The garden you’d happily downsize for
The Whittard of Chelsea Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026.
The container gardens at Chelsea are always full of clever, charming spaces — and never more so than with The Whittard of Chelsea Garden this year. Designer Ollie Pike has worked wonders with just 130 square feet.
Best small space with delusions of grandeur
Boon’s ‘Chelsea Cabin’ is the garden shed that dreamed it was a country cottage. It’s clad inside and out in reclaimed timber and features one bedroom, a bathroom, double-glazed windows, a wood burning stove and a minty green bath on the deck and gravel terrace.
Best use of rusty metal that somehow looks chic
A surprisingly hotly contested category this year, but there was a clear winner: Capital Garden Products 'Pavilion Glasshouse with rust finish' — so beautiful that you'll forgive the fact that it's a glasshouse without glass...
There's an honourable mention to make as well, though: ArtFe's highland cows.
Why is one wearing a traffic cone on its head? We're presuming that it hit the King's Road with a group of students the night before the show began.
The ‘yes, but could you mow it?’ award
Another hotly contested category — never before have we seen so little lawn at the Chelsea Flower Show — but this has to go to 'Journey Beyond the Tracks: From Adelaide to Perth'. How brave it is to create a garden based on one of the world's driest and most featureless deserts... and yet, Max Parker-Smith's design is utterly beautiful.
The 'it seemed like a good idea at the time' award
'Who doesn't love Sir David Attenborough? What could go wrong making a model of him from great British textiles?'
'Apart from turning him into a zombie, you mean?'
The most handsome, yet simultaneously horrifying, garden gnome
Garden gnomes will always be in Marmite territory. So why not double down and create one that goes beyond 'love it or hate it' and all the way to 'adore it or think it's so appalling that those responsible should get lifetime bans from Chelsea'? That's seemingly the Harkness Roses approach.
Most heroic interpretation of rewilding
When weeds grow up through the cracks at home, you pull them up and get out the spray. When weeds grow up through the cracks at the Chelsea Flower Show, you get applauded for your bravery. That's just the way it is, and The Children’s Society Garden — designed by Patrick Clarke — just doubles down and somehow pulls it off.
Best garden to sit in and ignore emails
In some years, the houseplant gardens have tended to be just a bit you walk past between the main show gardens and the container and balcony gardens at Chelsea. This year, they were among the most beautiful there. The Composer's Cabin, designed by Martha Krempel x London St Pancras Highspeed, was the best of them: a living roof, a grand piano inside, wonderful planting and by far the comfiest looking garden seats of Chelsea 2026. We loved it.
Most theatrically-scented bloom
The scent gallery at David Austin roses shows just how much flowers differ — even within the same species.
Can you stop and smell the flowers at Chelsea? Not really, to be honest: the show gardens are kept safely behind ropes, and even the lucky few getting guided tours are shooed around relatively speedily. In the main marquee, things are different, and David Austin's stand does it brilliantly, with a flower walk letting you bask among the blooms, and even a scent bar. The King's Rose, originally introduced last year, may not be particularly pretty, but it's got a scent like a long weekend in Morocco.
Best plant you’ll immediately kill at home
Architectural Plants at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026.
The Architectural Plants stand is one of the most impressive at the entire Chelsea Flower Show in 2026. We'd love to fill our houses with these incredible, towering specimens. And yet, sometimes you have to just accept that keeping a subtropical tree alive in a living room in Sussex just isn't in your skill set.
The 'is that it?' award for the biggest disappointment
The RHS awarded its coveted 'plant of the year' award to the extraordinary achievement of creating the first ever red hosta. Sadly, the plant itself didn't play ball by flowering in time for the show. Sad times.
The ‘could this work at the vicarage?’ prize
Lovehoney's stand at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026
As a Country Life reader of elegance, grace and discernment, there's every chance that you'd never heard of Lovehoney — or at least, every chance that you'd deny having done so. Let's just say they're more Soho than Chelsea — as is their garden.
Best water feature which actually serves a practical purpose
Parkinson’s UK – A Garden for Every Parkinson’s Journey at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026.
Arit Anderson's design ('Parkinson’s UK — A Garden for Every Parkinson’s Journey') is one of the standout show gardens at the 2026 Chelsea Flower Show... and its highlight is a magnificent rill which snakes its way through the entire space. Sinuous, beautiful and actually quite a good way of watering the plants — unlike most of the fountains, spouts and mini-waterfalls you'll see elsewhere at Chelsea.
And finally... the garden you'll be talking about on the way home award
Darren Hawkes designed the Lady Garden Foundation ‘Silent No More’ Garden
It has to be Darren Hawkes design of the Lady Garden Foundation ‘Silent No More’ Garden: grand, impressive, beautifully planted, full of interest, and raising awareness of the five gynaecological cancers. It's a Chelsea classic.
