What you'll see at RHS Chelsea 2026: Rustic royal cottages, curvaceous designs and a taste of the Australian outback

If variety is the spice of life, then the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show promises to be a richly varied show, this year sponsored for the first time by Range Rover. The gardens, as always, are far-reaching in their ambitions and presentation. Some have been brought from, or inspired by, locations across the world; others celebrate our homegrown traditions, drawing upon historical references and a very English passion for horticulture.

Nowhere is the comfort of familiar things more winningly presented than in The RHS and The King’s Foundation Curious Garden, by Frances Tophill. In essence, it is a charming English cottage garden with a centrepiece open-sided, oak-frame building, around which are productive raised beds, edged with wattle hurdles. Billed as an educational exhibit, its beds nurture abundant homegrown vegetables, flowers for cutting, herbs, dyer’s plants, and a summer bonanza of herbaceous blooms (including The King’s favourite blue delphiniums).

A traditional beehive, teepees of climbing flowers, fruit bushes and some quirky topiaries support its rustic theme. This charming and horticulturally intensive garden could well be the show’s top crowd pleaser. The point of its beautifully crafted oak hut is to display worthwhile har-vests gleaned from the homestead garden, variously dried, pickled and bottled.

Latest Videos From

A royal connection continues in The Boodles Garden, by Catherine MacDonald, inspired by key features within the Historic Royal Palaces. For example, a rill around its central flagstoned and crazy-paved courtyard hints at the shape of the (now dry) moat at the Tower of London; a ceiling in Queen Charlotte’s rustic Cottage within the botanical gardens at Kew inspired the latticed design of a central pavilion. This pretty garden features flowers in gemstone colours, such as regal purple and dark ruby in Astrantia major ‘Claret’, burgundy-petalled ‘Buckeye Belle’ peonies and darkest-violet Iris ‘Superstition’.

Plentiful flowers in both rich and pastel colours enhance The Lady Garden Foundation ‘Silent no More’ display, by Darren Hawkes. Its sculptural walls and alcoves are in peachy tones, reminiscent of rendered adobe. Curvaceous and subtly feminine, the walls are prettily draped in roses and vines. This year has not delivered the kindest start to spring for delicate iris blooms (even when the sun has shone, it has often been paired with a cold north wind), but look out for the ravishing Iris ‘Wondrous’, a peaches-and-cream charmer.

Warm-tinted elevations of a wilder kind feature in The Project Giving Back Garden, by James Basson. It focuses on a series of gouged-out, golden-orange ‘cliffs’ set within a forest of Scots pine trees (Pinus sylvestris), echoing an ancient, quarried landscape around Roussillon in southern France. This area has been mined since prehistoric times for the red and golden ochre pigments locked in its hills; the iron oxides give local villages their characteristic warm colours.

Basson has pushed the boundaries of garden versus wild landscape in previous shows and executes his wildernesses with panache and deft plantsmanship. Expect the ambience of the South, with aromas of pine, cistus, heather and thyme.

Is 2026 the year of the pine tree? The Eden Project Bring Me Sunshine Garden features Austrian or black pines (Pinus nigra) to provide structure and scale across its evocation of a coastal garden. Its moated ‘open-air classroom’ in the garden’s heart is roofed with a shell-shaped canopy, with paths fanning out into different parts of the garden, among grasses, meadow flowers and edibles, such as sea kale, samphire and artichokes. It is a sample, in miniature, of the Eden Project’s proposed satellite garden in Morecambe, Lancashire, due to open in 2028.

Specimen Scots pines lend a different feel to the Asthma + Lung UK Breathing Space Garden by Angus Thompson, pictured at the top of the page. Amid a show with much curvaceousness, this is one of the few rectilinear gardens. Mr Thompson draws upon the Japanese concept of yohaku no bi (the beauty of empty space), ‘a design philosophy that values restraint and uncluttering, reducing visual noise and allowing both mind and body to rest,’ he says.

The empty space is a large, cantilevered platform in the garden’s heart, appearing to float above water. Its gnarled pines are placed to anchor the garden amid soft, woodland-edge planting in a predominantly soothing green and white palette.

Compare and contrast it with Tokonama Garden — Sanumaya no Niwa, which delivers a different flavour of Japanese gardening, from Kazuyuki Ishihara and Paul Noritaka Tange. Crowded with colour and incident, yet mesmerising and contemplative in their refined detail, Mr Ishihara’s gardens have charmed showgoers for more than 20 years with their compositions of serene waterscapes, neat little buildings and layered emerald, lime and copper leaves of acers.

His pine trees differ greatly from all others at the show, being of the discreet, bonsai kind, crouching at the waterside among the immaculately positioned rocks and vivid green moss.

Inspiration from East Asia continues, in the planting of The Tate Britain Garden, by Tom Stuart-Smith. It showcases part of the new Clore Garden at Tate Britain on London’s Millbank, due to open later this year. Its serpentine pathway incorporates an inlaid water feature including bronze dishes and lights, with water flowing along thin rills.

The heart of the garden displays Barbara Hepworth’s Bicentric Form (1949), plucked from Tate’s collection for the duration of the show. Planting is drawn from Asian woodland species, including Schefflera shweliensis, from the Himalayas, and Japanese sago palm Cycas revoluta, as well as fruiting trees, such as figs, pineapple guava and pomegranates.

Still with thoughts from abroad, the Indian Pacific epic train ride across Australia has inspired Journey Beyond the Tracks: From Adelaide to Perth, by Max Parker-Smith. Its central garden building is modelled on a railway carriage, facing ‘the wild Western Australian outback’ on one side, with tiered sand beds and native plants.

The other side suggests the city of Adelaide, its national-park status and cooling water among much greenery. Planting throughout focuses on native species including gnarled eucalyptus trees and bright flowers, particularly reds, from callistemons, grevilleas, hakea and the felty fingers of kangaroo paw, Anigozanthos.

At home and away, there is something for everyone at Chelsea — including Country Life’s elegant stand. Do drop by to say ‘hello’.

The Country Life ‘Garden Lover’s Library’, designed by George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture, is at stand PW215 at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 18–23.

To celebrate, you can buy a year-long subscription for £150 and save more than 40% on the cover price. International offers also available. Until May 31.

The first 200 subscribers at Chelsea will receive a bottle of The Grange Classic Sparkling NV, worth £39. Rated 94 points by Decanter magazine, this premium sparkling wine from Hampshire was described in Country Life as ‘the connoisseur’s choice’. Offer available with subscriptions for UK delivery only.