About RHS Chelsea Flower Show

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show, is the place to see cutting-edge garden design, new plants and find ideas to take home.

It is an event which draws a truly global crowd and is the ‘haute-couture’ of the international gardening scene.

Specialist nurseries reveal new plants for the first time; the best designers from Japan to New York show off their astonishing creations; fashion brands and manufacturers launch their latest lines at the trade stands.

And yet it is so much more than that – it is a place to revel and celebrate, to sip Champagne, to enjoy the finest dining experience. There is nothing else quite like Chelsea.

The Chelsea Flower Show has been held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London every year since 1913, apart from gaps during the two World Wars and 2020.

Once Britain’s largest flower show – it has since been overtaken by RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival – it remains the most prestigious.

• The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is organised by the Royal Horticultural Society which was founded in 1804
• In 1927 there was a campaign to get the RHS to ban foreign exhibits from RHS Chelsea to reduce competition with British firms. The RHS refused saying, ‘horticulture knows nothing of nationality’

• In 1932 the rain at the Show was so severe that a summer house display fell to pieces. One very wet year an exhibitor named it ‘The Chelsea Shower Flow’
• The Great Pavilion is roughly 11,775 square metres or 2.90 acres, enough room to park 500 London buses
• Of the firms that exhibited at the first Show in 1913, three can still be seen at the Show today: McBean’s Orchids, Blackmore & Langdon and Kelways Plants