Talking trees, Japanese moss mounds and slow gardening – these are my RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025 highlights

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of attending the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to meet garden designers and explore their masterful garden showcases.

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is the pinnacle of garden events, the greatest of all the shows to discover glorious garden trends and inspiration to transform outdoor spaces of all sizes.

My RHS Chelsea Flower Show highlights demonstrate how garden design is changing and evolving. Aside from admiring The King's Rose this year, I found myself captivated by the powerful messages behind many of the show gardens, each with a heartfelt message to help preserve nature in all its forms.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show highlights 2025: key design elements

While all the gardens are enormously inspiring, I found myself particularly drawn to the following aspects of landscaping, sensory garden design and underlying environmental themes that feel significant for how we will be designing gardens for the future.

Cha No Niwa – Japanese Tea Garden

The immaculate landscaping was truly breathtaking in this garden, it was undoubtedly one of my favourites. Designed by Kazuyuki Ishihara, it was immediately clear to see why it was awarded a Gold medal in excellence.

Celebrating traditional Japanese garden ideas, the display was a masterful fusion of tonal Acer trees, raked gravel and incredible mounds of moss that added a touch of whimsy to the picture-perfect planting. Designed to be "a place for quiet reflection, to be immersed within the beauty of nature and be inspired by its living art," this garden was a stunningly serene space.

As detailed on the RHS site, "the planting includes trees commonly seen in the landscapes of Japanese satoyama (countryside), including Acer palmatum, Enkianthus perulatus, Iris, Sedum, Hornbeam and Pachysandra terminalis."

Avanade Intelligent Garden

Designed by Tom Massey and Je Ahn, this gold medal-winning garden was resoundingly the most impressive in terms of showcasing how technology is being used to change the landscape of gardening.

Using a range of sensors, the garden was connected to allow the team to demonstrate how smart tech can help 'talk' to the trees and plants to gauge their needs, to 'learn what specific care they need and how they feel.'

Working with Microsoft to explore how technology like AI, this futuristic garden intelligently tracks tree health, monitoring growth, water levels, soil types and conditions and weather patterns. AI is able to analyse the data and offer advice to ensure optimal care. It was mind-blowing to see how far smart tech has come.

The aim of the Avanade Intelligent Garden is to spark a conversation around the future of urban trees as they face increasing challenges due to climate change and modern living.

The Addleshaw Goddard Freedom To Flourish Garden

Exuding the same sense of charm that comes from the rewilding garden trend, this unhurried garden oasis was laidback, relaxed, but stunning nonetheless.

Inspired by a Norfolk colloquialism, this garden was a creative interpretation of nature's call to embrace a slower pace of life to enjoy stillness and calm. Yes please.

"Nature is never in a hurry, yet everything is accomplished", a reminder that creativity flourishes in stillness. not haste. In the busy, fast-paced world we live in, this was a refreshing message to 'stop and smell the roses.'

"Layered gabions draw inspiration from eroding cliffs, a subtle reminder of the delicate balance required to protect rest in an increasingly busy world," say the team at Carey Garden Design Studio. "The naturalistic planting scheme is inspired by wildflowers in the landscape of North Norfolk."

Hospitalfield Arts Garden

This striking garden was like a slice of escapism, instantly transporting me from the fields of Chelsea to the rural sand dunes of Arbroath on the Scottish east coast.

The planting has the "qualities of the robust and resilient dune vegetation," says the designer Nigel Dunnett. "It is very textural, with grey-blue-green grasses forming a matrix within which colourful flowering plants can perform.

"Pine trees and coastal Tamarix give large-scale structure, and evergreen shrubs congregate in more sheltered parts of the garden. All this aims to encourage exploration of planting in free-draining lower-fertility materials such as sands and gravels, as opposed to rich topsoils, as we adapt our gardens to an increasingly extreme climate."

Seawilding Garden

The Seawilding Garden had a simple concept at the heart of its design: restoring lost biodiversity. All the plant species incorporated into the scheme are native, each suited to the exposed coastal location of Loch Craignish.

Among the rich array of familiar coastal plants, the garden featured an RHS Chelsea Flower Show first: seagrass. "Seagrass is our marine environment's only flowering plant," explain the design team. "It is a semi-deciduous perennial plant spreading along the seabed via rhizomes. Inconspicuous flowers appear underwater in summer, followed by seeds."

"When I learned seagrass grows in our seas, I was intrigued," says Ryan McMahon, the Seawilding garden designer. "I have since learned about the vital role it plays in our marine ecosystem." By including this vital marine plant, the gardening team hopes to highlight the increasing importance of marine restoration and the need to improve biodiversity for future preservation.

The mix of hardy plants and ragged hard landscaping created a distinctly native garden that felt beautifully imperfect, providing inspirational budget garden ideas aplenty.

Of course, this is just a fraction of the beautiful botanical displays. It feels almost impossible to curate a list of 'favourites', but these were the ones that spoke to me most, by highlighting the importance environmental factors play in shaping our outdoor spaces and how we can adapt to stay ahead.

If you're feeling nostalgic, you can take a look back at my RHS Chelsea Flower Show highlights from 2024 to see how the landscapes are already changing.

Another personal highlight, aside from the incredible array of floral-inspired outfits, was being amongst the RHS visitors and hearing them talk so passionately about the planting schemes and use of materials within the show gardens.

This may be a show with plenty of esteemed attendees, including royalty and celebrities, but it really is a source of great inspiration for all who love their gardens. I highly recommend signing up to visit next year, it's always such a delight.