Chelsea Flower Show, Costs & Benefits

At What Cost, to Whose Benefit?

A resignation and some soul searching

This year, Tayshan Hayden-Smith resigned as an RHS ambassador for young people and communities. His Grow to Know campaign's aim is to reclaim space, elevate community voices and demand justice through nature. He cited the RHS inability to listen, adapt and truly share space, and raised particular concerns about the environmental, financial and social costs of Chelsea Flower Show in particular. 

On the one hand, my garden design practice is deeply concerned with the wellbeing of people and planet, and access to gardens and beauty for all. On the other hand, particularly through my work with The English Gardening School, I promote and celebrate Chelsea Flower Show. Tayshan's statement has lead me to explore my thoughts here on this seeming disparity.  

When I started in garden design, Chelsea Flower Show did not sit well with me, partly through its throw away nature and partly through its perceived exclusivity. Through the last 8 years at the EGS I have heard lectures from, and had informal chats with, several show garden designers,  and its on this basis that I have formed some more nuanced opinions.

Environmental Cost

A few years ago, when I entered the industry, I was shocked that show gardens could be purportedly about sustainability whilst only existing for a few days - how could that possibly make sense? They also often create unrealistic expectations for how real gardens can and should be, but that is an essay in itself! However, now, although there is undoubtably an environmental cost to their construction, most gardens are now rebuilt elsewhere or at least recycled to balance out that cost.  This requirement is now part of the entry requirements and judging system and is a huge improvement. Many designers also take care to use recycled materials (some trees are even used from one year to another!) and to use the gardens as a platform to show how to garden in a more sustainable fashion, by using water more wisely and planting for climate change. If we also consider sustainability to be about more than our environment, then we also have to take into account the financial and and social benefits, and these I consider below.

The Glasshouse Garden

Financial Cost, Social Benefit

While it must cost the RHS a huge sum to stage the Chelsea Flower Show, public focus seems to have been on the cost of the gardens themselves. This may be a shock to some, but main avenue show gardens can cost up to around a million pounds to create. However, this money is not provided by the RHS,  it is provided by sponsors. For several years now, Project Giving Back has been sponsoring many of the gardens. Between 2022 and 2026 they will have funded and supported 60 gardens, for 60 good causes. I’d love to see a cost/ benefit analysis for the show gardens but for now I have to believe that it benefits the sponsors, or in this case the charities, otherwise the maths would suggest that no one would ever sponsor gardens. The end of the amazing PGB support next year will be an interesting time for Chelsea Flower Show, and is likely to change the show as we have come to know it for the last few years, but I would argue that they have already raised the bar, and expectations for what a show garden can and should do.  By providing funding they have supported more radical designs and some smaller charities. Personally, I'd feel hard hearted not to want the clear social and financial benefits they bring to charities. As a example from this year, The Glasshouse Garden this year is for a tiny charity. The garden will likely result in more clients for their indoor planting projects just through the networking that took place on the garden, before even going into the extensive wider publicity. This indoor planting is worked on by female prisoners, with a zero reoffending rate for those going through the programme. Now the conversation has been opened up nationally for this programme to be rolled out to other prisons, which I do hope will happen. The garden itself will also be relocated to a women’s prison.

Click the link below to read Project Giving Back’s clear explanation of the reach and the impact that Chelsea Flower Show can have for charities.

While we can’t know if future sponsors will meet the bar raised by Project Giving Back, I do know that other sponsors already have, which provides me with optimism. The Bridgerton Garden, sponsored by Netflix, was designed by Holly Johnston, one of my ex students, last year. This year it was relocated to Cambridge University Hospital. Can we imagine a hospital affording to build such a high quality garden, which will undoubtedly benefit their patients, without this funding? 

The Bridgerton Garden

Similarly, gardens certainly raise public awareness, which is a social benefit. For instance, through Manoj Malde's Tackle HIV Challenging Stigma Garden this year I learned that ‘undetectable is untransmissable’. This garden will bring HIV back into the public consciousness. 

Tackle HIV Challenging Stigma Garden

Gardens also raise awareness of how to garden more radically and more sustainably. This year, Nigel Dunnett’s Hospitalfield Arts Garden showcased planting in sand, not compost, which creates resilient, drought proof planting. 

Hospitalfield Arts Garden

Financial Cost and Social Cost

We’ve talked about the social benefits of the show gardens making money for charity and raising awareness. However, the garden is staged in London, and the UK, which has high levels of deprivation and inequality, and I do believe that the RHS has a responsibility to make it more accessible.  Public tickets started at £111.85 this year, so can hardly be called accessible. It would be a good idea for instance for the RHS to open up a proportion of lower cost or free tickets to local schools, which would have the added benefit of getting younger people interested in the industry, and giving back to their hard working teachers.  

It's been put to me before that we could simply view Chelsea as an industry event. Nurseries and trade suppliers of all types exhibit there and garden designers attend to learn as well as to network. Certainly, if we did view it as an all day learning and networking event, suddenly the cost seems comparatively reasonable, given how much is on show and how it gathers so many from the industry in one place.

But it is not seen primarily as an industry event. Largely thanks to the highly accessible BBC coverage, it is seen as a national and very public event, with a huge place in the hearts and minds of the nation's gardeners.  

Even if the ticket price was lower, perception is of the event being exclusive, white and middle class. It could be argued that this is in fact the major issue, since other less ‘exclusive’ events such as gigs or even football matches often command a similarly high ticket price. With their stated aim of inclusivity, and what must be a large proportion of their funds going into the staging of Chelsea Flower show, the very public pinnacle of their work, the RHS has much to work on in this respect.  

Their response to Tayshan has been largely defensive, stating what they already do in terms of environmental, financial and social benefits. I'd like to see the RHS raise their hands, admit that they don't always get it right and work constructively with young people like Tayshan, allowing more diverse perspectives to permeate the organisation and create more accessibility to the show itself. This would enable the public to feel wholeheartedly good about a show that has so many positives, celebrating beauty and excellence, while providing a global platform for charities through the show gardens.