RHS Chelsea: What happens after the flower show?

What happens at the end of the Chelsea Flower Show? The gardens have been judged, celebrities and their dogs have finished traipsing round and Sir David Beckham, inexplicably dressed like a retired colonel, has taken his three-piece tweed suit home.

It's not all chucking the remnants on the compost heap and packing the pots away - gardens will live on in a multitude of ways.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) encourages designers to repurpose gardens after the flagship show, and has sent its own feature gardens to new homes since 2016.

Last year, its Monty Don-designed "dog garden" went to Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

The annual event sees garden designers competing to earn coveted bronze, silver or gold medals with their imaginative landscapes and floral displays.

Charity gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show have been funded by two anonymous philanthropists through Project Giving Back since 2022, with requirements for the gardens to be relocated or repurposed after the event – something the RHS has mandated for all gardens since 2023.

Gardens have gone to hospitals and health services, helped charity work, become community growing spaces or transformed areas for nature.

Displays often have to be reimagined - dense planting schemes can be spread out to fill larger spaces, and the promise of a new garden can breathe life into a much wider area.

Core Arts, a mental health charity in London which runs creative education classes for people referred by the NHS, including art, music and gardening, was already in discussions to take over an area of grass, brambles and wildflowers behind the church next to its building in Hackney.

Nemone Mercer, Core Landscapes project director, said receiving their garden, designed by Andy Smith-Williams, had been "totally transformative" in kickstarting the outdoor space with plants, trees and hard landscaping.

"I'm sure the garden would have happened without Chelsea, but it wouldn't have happened then, and we wouldn't have had that energy and momentum Chelsea gave us," she said.

The garden now provides a space for people to learn skills, experiment with different ways of growing and adapting to climate change, and to help boost confidence and social connections.

Duncan Hall, who designed the Down's Syndrome Scotland garden with Nick Burton in 2025, was inspired by his nephew Liam who has Down's syndrome, to create a space celebrating the compassion, sensitivity, playfulness and fun people with the genetic condition "tend to have in abundance".

The display's post-Chelsea home at Palacerigg Country Park, North Lanarkshire, is part of Watch Us Grow's existing garden working with people with learning disabilities including Down's syndrome, and has provided impetus for reinvigorating and improving facilities at the park.

"What's really key is it will continue to be looked after and developed with Down's syndrome forever now; it's a really genuine legacy, which was really important to us," Hall said.

Glenn Mahaffy, eco-project lead at Mind-in-Furness, in Barrow-in-Furness, said the Mind garden designed by Andy Sturgeon for Chelsea in 2022, had become a "very beautiful place we love" in its new home on a derelict site next to the charity's building in a deprived area in the town centre.

He said the space was a focal point for his groups at the mental health charity, enabling social opportunities and giving a chance to spark conversations that are different from face-to-face counselling sessions.

And he said: "If they step inside the garden and show a bit of interest, I'll nurture that interest at a level they can take home to their window sill.

"If they can nurture a plant, it's very empowering, there's something about planting that seed and the hope that comes with it."

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