2025 marks the last year the popular flower show will be held in its current format. After this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival, the show will become a biennial event, touring between the historic Badminton Estate in Gloucestershire and Hampton Court
For 2025, the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival will feature a range of gardens showcasing our vital connection to plants, vertical urban gardening, healthy streets, curious gardens, temperate rainforests and a good dose of horticultural design and inquisitiveness.
Delving into the history of our connection with plants, RHS Healer’s Hollow garden, designed by Jude Yeo and Emily Grayshaw, celebrates the long tradition of plants for purpose and the benefits they can bring to our health and wellbeing. Set in an idyllic British woodland, the garden will feature plants that have roots in traditional herbal remedies.
Highlighting the wonder in urban gardens, Adolfo Harrison’s RHS Vertigro is a vertical garden that connects nature with architecture by adding drama to the urban palette. A towering 4.8 metre-tall living wall will feature plants uncommon for vertical gardens such as large trees and shrubs and will demonstrate how green walls can provide insulation in winter and cooling in summer, as well as wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration and air particulate reduction.
Gardens of Curiosity
New category for 2025, the Gardens of Curiosity invites designers to create spaces that spark inquisitiveness. Designer, Daniel March has deliberately blocked views into ‘A Garden of Two Tales’ with ornamental structures, encouraging visitors to explore the garden and discover what they can’t see. In ‘A Woodland Edge’, Nicolas Navarro aims to stir interest in woodland edges as one of nature’s richest environments. Ruderal plants, self-seeders and resilient planting combine to create a rich colour palette in a garden that is rooted in ecology. Looking to the future, Kitti Kovacs is predicting what our gardens might look like in 25 years’ time with ‘Illusion 2050’. The garden’s planting illustrates the transition to more drought-tolerant species, showcasing how gardeners can adapt to environmental changes whilst maintaining beauty and biodiversity. Finally, a forest garden planting scheme seeks to ignite the senses to encourage nature connection in Yoni Carnice’s ‘Aster of Senses’.
In the Show Gardens, Mike McMahon and Jewlsy Mathews take inspiration from the UK’s temperate rainforests in ‘The Subaru Cocoon’. An ornamental, jali wall provides enclosure whilst allowing plants and light to filter in, and epiphyte plants on the garden’s trees create a space that cocoons its visitors in lush, verdant planting. The ‘Surrey County Council: Reclaiming Spaces, Creating Healthy Streets’ by Helen Currie, Steve Dimmock and Diego Carrillo reimagines a parking space to create a street that is safe and resilient, yet still beautiful. As a public garden, planting is low maintenance and resilient whilst also able to absorb pollution and withstand waterlogged soil to help improve air quality and reduce flooding.
Returning to RHS Hampton, Nilufer Danis is honouring three influential 19th Century Spanish women in ‘The Three Graces of Galicia’, a romantic garden packed with shrubs and herbaceous perennials familiar to Galicia. Winding paths and shaded nooks represent Rosalía de Castro’s romantic poetry. Structural topiary honours Emilia Pardo Bazán’s progressive ideas, whilst a space for contemplation reflects Concepción Arenal’s focus on social justice and advocacy for the marginalised. Sadie May Stowell also returns to the festival with ‘Charleston 250’, a garden celebrating the South Carolina city.
Alongside the gardens, the Floral Marquee and Festival of Roses will showcase the best of British nurseries and growers whilst the Lamiaceae borders will highlight talented students from the London College of Garden Design. Pocket Planting returns with a new theme of ‘city’ whilst experts will share their top tips and advice on the How To and Get Growing Festival Stages.
