The Campaign to Protect Rural England won the top garden prize at Chelsea in 2026 with a garden of drystone walls, native planting and a fallen tree carved into a guardian.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England won Garden of the Year at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, where the show ran from Tuesday 19 to Saturday 23 May 2026. Sarah Eberle designed its garden.
Chelsea is the Royal Horticultural Society’s flagship show, formally the Great Spring Show, and its gardens are made to be moved. In 2026 they went to Sheffield, Leighton Buzzard, Kennington and Rotherham, where a lung rehabilitation centre received the Asthma and Lung UK Breathing Space Garden.
The winning garden, On the Edge, celebrated the edge lands around towns and cities. Drystone walls framed UK and Irish native planting, and a fallen tree was sculpted into a guardian figure representing Mother Nature.
Gold medals also went to Baz Grainger’s Killik & Co A Seed in Time Garden. Darren Hawkes’s Lady Garden Foundation Silent No More Garden, about the stigma around gynaecological cancers, took gold too.
In the Great Pavilion, Leon Kluge’s display of South African flora was Best Exhibit, and the hosta Red Ninja was Plant of the Year.
Visitors chose Parkinson’s UK’s garden by Arit Anderson as their favourite show garden, and Trussell’s Together Garden as their favourite small garden.