Meet the designers of Children With Cancer UK “A Place To Be...” Garden in the Show category at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025
Ros & Tom say: “The advantages of designing a garden at the show is that RHS Chelsea is the pinnacle of the horticultural year. It attracts the very best of garden designers and horticultural experts. To be part of it will enable us to showcase our design ideas and knowledge to a wide audience and be judged by experts. We will learn from others. By designing our garden, on the global stage of RHS Chelsea, Children with Cancer UK will gain much deserved recognition for its objectives and what is does for its beneficiaries. In addition, the children will have the legacy of our garden at Raines Retreat. We decided to get involved this year, as Tom had a great experience in 2024 of designing his balcony garden, and asked Ros to design the garden jointly, as together we have complementary skills and make a great team.”
See the Children With Cancer UK “A Place To Be.....” Garden
Tom Clarke
“My garden design journey is relatively short being 4 years, but during that time I have pushed myself and as a result have achieved great experience and some success, namely two RHS Show Gardens – RHS Tatton Park 2022, Young Designer of the Year Category and RHS Chelsea 2024, Balcony Garden for which I won The People’s Choice Award. As a designer, I love to combine the contemporary with more characterful elements to create an interesting juxtaposition. To create calming spaces but also to provide aspects which excite interest and conversations. The ability to reuse what may already be in the garden but to give them new life for purpose in an initiatively contemporary manner.”
Tom Clarke’s RHS Show Gardens
2022 RHS Flower Show Tatton Park – Paradise Found – Silver medal
2024 RHS Chelsea Fower Show – Children with Cancer UK ‘Raines Repurposed’ – Silver-gilt medal and People’s Choice Award
Ros Coutts Harwood
Ros retrained as a garden designer in 2011/2012 and started her own design business in 2017. Ros says, “For my seventh birthday my parents took me to Stourhead, Wiltshire to see the Rhododendrons. I saw someone gardening under a tree by the lake and said to my mother, ‘That’s what I want to do when I grow up.’ It was the romance of the classical design, the colours, the water – everything about it was magical. That was the start of my love affair with horticulture and design.” Ros’ style of garden design is to combine formal structure with sensitive planting to create a harmonious connection between space, architecture, people and nature.
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