Monty Don's dog, The King's new rose and the 'perfect' garden: What not to miss at the Chelsea Flower Show 2025

Country Life's gardens editor Tiffany Daneff shares her favourite flowers, gardens, clever ideas and nicest surprises from the 2025 Chelsea Flower Show.

Chelsea Flower Show 2025
Monty Don poses with his dog Ned, a Golden Retriever, in his dog-friendly garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower show.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

The Chelsea Flower Show is one of the high points of the summer: a celebration of plants, gardens and creativity, as well as an unbeatable opportunity to rub shoulders with those who share the passion for making the most of this gorgeous time of year in England.

This year, Country Life has its own presence at the show, at stand PW210, and we're thrilled to be part of this incomparable event. We'll be reporting from SW3 throughout the week, and you can see all our Chelsea 2025 stories right here, where we have been (and will continue) to share all the best photographs, stories and more from the show.

To kick things off on the opening day, we were delighted that Country Life's gardens editor Tiffany Daneff was able to record a podcast at the show itself, speaking to Country Life's Toby Keel. Tiffany is a veteran of the show, having been literally dozens of times in her career, and has been talking to many of the garden designers whose work is on display in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea.

She talks through the things not to miss at this year's show, from the best of the show gardens to the cleverest ideas from among the smaller gardens tucked away in the corners, and she also gives a rundown of the finest flowers from inside the Great Pavilion, all while telling the stories and sharing the insights about behind how the show comes together.

And yes, Tiffany also shares her very favourite plant from this year's show, one which she'd just seen before we started recording — so much so that she didn't yet have a note of the name. As promised in the recording, we've added the name here: it's called Ranunculus acris 'Citrinus'.

Episode credits

Host: Toby Keel

Guest: Tiffany Daneff

Producer and editor: Toby Keel

Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

Back next week: James Fisher

Toby Keel is Country Life's Digital Director, and has been running the website and social media channels since 2016. A former sports journalist, he writes about property, cars, lifestyle, travel, nature.