The Royal Horticultural Society revealed details of its inaugural Show Garden for the 2027 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, with Joe, a designer holding three prior gold medals at the event, leading the creative vision.
Joe says: “We wanted to challenge some of our assumptions about what an English garden should look like, while retaining the qualities that make them so beloved.”
The garden, called The Wimbledon Garden: Nature in Play, will be a tennis court-sized area that brings together distinctive planting, thoughtful water management and resource-conscious construction.
The Garden’s Design
The garden’s design explores how a familiar horticultural tradition can adapt to changing weather patterns, where rich textures, climate-adaptive planting and striking trees take centre stage.
By combining carefully chosen material choices – such as gravel mulch – with planting suited to the conditions, the scheme shows how gardens of the future could look and how well they can work.
Sculptural stone rills guide rainwater through the environment towards retention basins, with Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) integrated into the design.
Planting and Features
The planting will combine deep purples with yellows and white, grey foliage, soft greens and warm pale apricot blooms to create a layered environment of colour and movement.
Hardy, drought tolerant perennials and grasses, including Salvia, Verbascum and Briza media, will be woven through a gravel planting matrix alongside herbs and small shrubs such as ballota, oregano and thyme.
Six parasol trained trees will provide a further, subtle reference to Wimbledon’s unique heritage, representative of the teams of six Ball Boys and Girls on each court at The Championships.
The garden is being brought to life on site by Jake Catling and the team at The Landscaping Consultants, working alongside specialist teams on elements such as the pavilion.
Excavated soil from the rainwater basins will be reused on site to create micro-mounds and subtle changes in level, avoiding the significant cost and environmental impact of transporting soil off site while adding depth and variation to the environment. It is an approach that illustrates a wider principle for garden-making: working with readily available materials can reduce waste and costs while creating opportunities in the design.
Following RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2027, elements of the garden will be relocated to create community garden spaces, local to Wimbledon, extending the project’s legacy beyond the show.
