What's on at this year's Chelsea Flower Show - our gardening expert previews plant launches, medal contenders and Monty Don's dog-friendly garden.
There’s just one place to be in late May if you love your plants, and that’s London’s historic Royal Hospital Chelsea, home of our cherished Chelsea pensioners – and, for just five dazzling days, the world-famous RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
This international catwalk of garden taste and style welcomes everyone from royalty and Hollywood A-listers to aspiring celebrities, budding botanists and the great British gardening public alike. But as designers and charities jostle for your attention, with new plants and products launching at every turn, and big money wherever you look, the stand-out feature of this year’s show will be much more down-to-earth, and very British – it’s dogs!
Pity those hoping to make a splash at Chelsea 2025, as all will be in the shade of our gardening national treasure, Monty Don, and his retriever Ned. After 30 years of presenting from the Chelsea Flower Show, Monty is designing a dog-friendly show garden for the first time – with paws-on help from his loyal companion – and, with all eyes on him, he admits he’s nervous.
Read on to discover more plus all the show highlights, for visitors and viewers alike.
If you can’t get to Chelsea in person, you’ll not miss a thing, as it all plays out over eight days of BBC coverage, from Sunday 18-Sunday 25 May, fronted by Rachel de Thame, Sophie Raworth and yes, that man again, Monty Don.
The most attention at this year’s show will go not to a garden judged for medals, but to the Dog Garden, a show feature created on behalf of the Royal Horticultural Society and BBC Radio2 by Monty Don and the rising star of horticulture, Jamie Butterworth – just 30 years old and already a multiple Gold medal winner.
With the help of Monty’s retriever Ned, they’ve devised a space to be enjoyed by our four legged friends, with resilient plants, topiary balls and a relaxed lawn at its heart – which Monty promises he’ll cut himself during the show – for essential doggy rolling, sleeping and playing.
Criss-crossing paths map routes run by Ned during the design process, while a ‘doghouse’ gives our happy hound a place to sprawl, watching Gardeners’ World clips (Ned apparently enjoys watching himself on TV!) and listening to a pooch playlist devised by Jo Whiley’s Radio2 listeners. Sarah Don has even run up some cushions made from her husband’s old trousers to give Ned a comforting place to lie. After the show, it moves across the Thames to be rebuilt at Battersea Dogs Home.
This is a genuine Chelsea first – and a real-world garden that paw-fect for dogs!
You will be able to discover more about the story and design of this garden in the August 2025 edition of Saga Magazine.
Dogs aren’t the only scene stealers this year – songbirds and bees are centre-stage in two stand-out small gardens, full of take-home ideas for you to boost your own garden's wildlife appeal.
The Songbird Survival Garden takes a bird’s eye view of the world to show how shrubs and trees for shelter, shallow water for drinking and bathing, and naturally grown food are key to a back-garden wildlife haven. The garden highlights how the loss of many of these from gardens, parks and countryside means songbird numbers in the UK have plummeted by 50 per cent in 50 years.
Among the ever-popular Balcony Gardens, Making Life Better with Bees reminds gardeners of the unseen but vital role pollinating bees play in easing climate change and losses in biodiversity.
From drought to downpour and soaring heat, climate change threatens plants as much as creatures, so there’s a rich source of ideas among the show gardens for ways gardeners can cope. Save for a Rainy Day Garden promotes rainwater capture in small gardens to save it for times of drought – both in and out of butts. Among Container Gardens, the C6 Garden (standing for carbon and its atomic number 6) shows practical ways gardens can lock up carbon through the use of bio-char as a soil enhancer and fast-growing trees and perennials that absorb large quantities of CO2.
Bringing a high-tech solution to the frequent loss of city trees is the Avanade Intelligent Garden that uses AI to improve survival by monitoring conditions and prompting actions via an app. While Chelsea’s headline sponsor The Newt and its sister estate Babylonstoren in South Africa showcases succulent plants in a recreation of the flora-rich but arid Karoo region.
Now a well-established trend, since Covid, this year’s focus is on calming gardens that cocoon you in nature. Creating tranquillity for end-of-life patients is the goal of the sensory Garden of Compassion for Hospice UK, which relocates to a Durham hospice after the show closes.
On a smaller scale, the Container Garden Room to Breathe is designed as a sanctuary for carers, delivering an achievable blueprint for hospital gardens constrained by space and money.
With fewer big-name garden designers competing this year (after last year’s gold rush), who’ll scoop the medals this year – which rank from Bronze and Silver, through Silver-Gilt, to Gold – is wide open.
Top contenders are those with experienced build teams behind them, including past medallists Tom Massey and Je Ahn for their AI-driven Intelligent Garden, Nick Burton and Duncan Hall for Down’s Syndrome Scotland, built by multi-award winners Kate Gould Gardens, Jo Thompson’s ambitious pavilion garden for The Glasshouse, and the two Landform Consultants’ designers, Dr Catherine MacDonald (Boodles Raindance) and Baz Grainger (Save for a Rainy Day). The Chelsea Pensioners’ Garden should feature highly in People’s Choice voting.
Chelsea Flower Show is a high-profile platform for plant launches and this year over 30 varieties debut inside the Great Pavilion. David Austin Roses keep their launches under wraps till the Monday Press Day, but are confident enough to reveal it’s their most prestigious launch – after 60 years in the business!
Other debutante roses include ‘Ashton Wold’ from Peter Beales and four new varieties from Blue Diamond garden centres including a chocolate-scented, deep purple rose called ‘Vianne’s Chocolat’ – to be launched in person by Chocolat author Joanne Harris.
World-leading clematis breeder Raymond Evison has been coming to Chelsea since the mid-1960s – and says he never tires of it! This year, he offers three new varieties including the striking clematis ‘Elpis’, with sumptuous, deep velvet red flowers and a compact form, that’s tipped for prizes.
RHS experts have shortlisted 18 plants in the race to win the prestigious Chelsea Plant of the Year prize, revealed on the opening day of the show. Alongside Raymond Evison’s clematis ‘Elpis’, contenders include an agapanthus with variegated leaves, a golden, grass-like hosta, a daylily whose flowers last seven days, a prolific fuchsia bred for earlier flowering and a frost-resistant, winter-flowering weeping cherry.
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 biggest odds are on Camilla, an avid dog lover, dropping by Monty’s show garden. Her beloved Jack Russell, Bluebell, is one of several dogs’ names etched into its path in honour of her support for the Battersea Dogs Home, from where she’s adopted recent canine companions.
The show runs from Tuesday 20-Friday 23 May, 8am-8pm, and Saturday 24 May 8am-5.30pm. The first two days are restricted to members of the RHS.
Day tickets for public days, Thurs-Sat, cost from £112 plus fees, or enter on weekdays from 3.30pm, from £83. Day and half-day tickets are still available.
Read our guide to the flower show to get the most out of your visit.
For a front row seat all week, the BBC has you covered with over 13 hours of coverage. For the latest timings, go to BBC iPlayer.
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.
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