THE CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW
Late May · Royal Hospital Chelsea, London · Five Days · Since 1913
The Chelsea Flower Show is five days in late May in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, beside the Thames. It is the Royal Horticultural Society’s great show of the year: gardens built for the week, and the nurseries of the Great Pavilion.
It is the best known flower show in the world. On the last afternoon, it is sold off to the crowd.
The Temple
The Society held its first Great Spring Show in 1862, in its garden at Kensington. In 1888 it moved the show to the gardens of the Inner Temple, by the river, and the Benchers who govern the Temple grew tired of the noise and the smell.
In 1912 the grounds of the Royal Hospital held a great international exhibition, organised by the nurseryman Harry Veitch, and nearly two hundred thousand people came. The Society had found its ground, and brought its show there the next spring.
The first Chelsea show opened on 20 May 1913. Half the firms that applied were turned away, and of the 244 that showed, three were still showing a century later.
It stopped for both wars, and came back in 1947 as an austerity show. In 2020 it was cancelled, and in 2021 it was held in September, among the autumn flowers.
The Hospital
The ground belongs to the Royal Hospital, which Charles II founded in 1682 as a home for old soldiers. Christopher Wren designed it, and it was finished in 1692.
Some three hundred veterans of the Army live there. They are the Chelsea Pensioners, and in the week of the show their scarlet coats are seen among the gardens.
The show takes eleven acres, and the crowd is limited to what they will hold. Since 1988 no more than forty thousand have been let in on any day.
The King is the Society’s patron. In 2026 he came with the Queen on the Monday, press day, before the show opened.
The Gardens
The show gardens are what everyone comes to see. Each is built on bare ground in some three weeks, by a designer with a sponsor behind them, to look as though it has been there for years.
They are judged, and given gold, silver-gilt, silver or bronze. The best is named Garden of the Year, as Best in Show was renamed in 2025. In 2026 it went to Sarah Eberle, for a garden for the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
Garden gnomes have been kept out since 1927, when the rules banned statuary from the exhibits in the tents. The ban was lifted for the centenary in 2013, and again in 2026, both times to raise money for gardening in schools.
On the Saturday, at four, a bell is rung and the exhibitors sell off their plants. The show goes out through the gates in the arms of the crowd.
What to Know
It runs from Tuesday to Saturday. The first two days are for members of the Society, and the public has the last three.
Tickets are sold only in advance, from the October before, and the members’ days sell out.
The Monday is press day, and that evening brings the Charity Gala Preview, for which one applies the autumn before.
There is no dress code. A lounge suit, and shoes for a day on foot.
The plane trees along Eastern Avenue shed their pollen in May, and sunglasses help.
The mistake is to see the gardens on the Saturday, the busiest day of the five. See them early on a weekday, or after three, and come back on Saturday for the bell.
The Court
The Chelsea Flower Show is not the Court’s own. Tickets, hospitality on the ground and places at the Charity Gala Preview are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay, and the table afterward.
How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.
Set down September MMXXVI