1: Water features to calm your spirits
We’ve had water features at Chelsea before, of course, but they are everywhere in 2026. You could almost rename it the Chelsea Water Show. In the Parkinson’s UK garden, below, Arit Anderson’s snaking Accoya wood ‘hand rill’ ties the whole space together. It’s a dual-purpose affair – at once a supportive handrail and a lovely, gently flowing water feature. In the Tate Britain garden, there’s another sinuous rill, while in both the Eden Project’s ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ garden and Kazuyuki Ishihara’s Japanese courtyard, water is present in calming reflective pools. Elsewhere, there’s bubbling, trickling and gurgling galore – into copper cauldrons, recycled planters, stone urns and even from copper stills to wooden casks in May Starey’s ‘Fettercairn: The Angels’ Share’ balcony garden.
2: Terracotta and earth tones to ground your anxiety
In 2023 the sandstone and terracotta palette of Sarah Price’s Nurture Landscapes garden kicked off a trend that’s reached its scorched-earth peak this year. Provence-based James Basson’s Project Giving Back space features towering weathered red sandstone cliffs anchored in pine woodland, a powerful space very much rooted in the south of France. The Lady Garden Foundation by Darren Hawkes is dominated by five sculptural clay forms immersed in soft planting, while the ochre pathways in Sarah Eberle’s ‘On the Edge’ garden are striking in their richness. Finally, a favourite spot for Frances Tophill in her feature garden: a lime-rendered wall in terracotta and saffron. There’s no doubt these colours make greens pop and muted pastels sing in harmony.
3: Inky depths to add drama
At the heart of Frances Tophill’s The RHS and The King’s Foundation Curious Garden is a fascination for rural crafts, in particular dyes and pigments. Dye plants and richly coloured perennials such as ‘Black Knight’ delphiniums and midnight blue irises reflect the inky theme. Elsewhere, plants such as Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’, great urns of near-black agapanthus, airy wine-coloured verbascums, Lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’ and the rich burgundy-hued foliage of physocarpus and black elder show how a palette majoring in deep, moody tones can bring drama to your garden stage.
4: Creative water-saving to fight floods and drought
It’s not the first time Chelsea has showcased some brilliant water-saving/diversion ideas, but this year, designers have really upped the ante. Clever hexagonal planters are at the heart of John Howlett’s Persian-inspired ‘Contain the Rain’ urban space, while heading indoors for inspiration, the ‘Hanging Gardens of Botanica’ demonstrate water conservation and evapotranspiration with a series of hanging planters in round terracotta pots.
5: Edimentals to feed your soul
The sunny mix of edibles and traditional decorative plants in The Eden Project’s ‘Bring me Sunshine’ garden is hugely inspiring, with coastal edibles such as samphire and sea kale giving Chelsea favourites such as alliums and irises a run for their money. In fact, you can hardly move for tasty morsels popping up among the ornamentals this year. Again, Frances Tophill’s garden is a great place to let the eye wander: curly kale with poppies, pomegranate trees and cabbages… There are scores of ideas to take home and bring to life in a standard urban or rural garden.
6: Being present with Mother Nature
While a full-scale replica of Sarah Eberle’s jaw-dropping Mother Nature sculpture, in her garden ‘On the Edge’, is unlikely in most of our gardens, this is a trend ripe for tweaking and borrowing. The garden is all about the fragile fringes that lie between town and country, under pressure from development, and these could have manifestations galore at home, from re-wilding parts of the garden to creating smaller-scale artworks from fallen branches or simply embracing the naturalistic look that benefits biodiversity so profoundly.
7: Gnomes, gnomes and more gnomes
For the second time in 113 years, Chelsea’s lifted its ban on these cheeky charmers. There are celeb-decorated gnomes up for auction for the RHS Campaign for School Gardening, and we’re on board. You can bid for a top-tier gnome painted by the likes of Bill Bailey, Sir Brian May, Dame Mary Berry or Cate Blanchett, or unleash your own creativity to welcome a family of bright, brash beauties or a more retiring pastel-hued clan. After all, gardening is about creativity and fun, so there really is gnome limit…
… and two you might just want to run from?
Sexy gardens
With Lovehoney sponsoring an Aphrodite-themed ‘pleasure garden’ at Chelsea this year, some fans of the show might say the organisers have gone a step too far. There’s no tasteful terracotta in ‘Aphrodite’s Hothouse’, just a big, bold riot of red and green and a hothouse stuffed with lush, sultry plants designed to tease and seduce. We love it, but run if you blush easily.
AI
Garden designer Matt Keightley has landed the cat slap bang among the pigeons with Spacelift, an app that’s designed three gardens at Chelsea this year. The impact of AI on garden design is a serious conversation that needs to be had, and Matt is a brilliantly talented designer, but before you blindly rush out to overhaul your own plot based on the suggestions of AI, remember that successful design isn’t simply about plants and patio paving. It’s about how your garden works for you, where the light falls on a sunny September morning, and what makes your heart sing.
