English Gardens and the Chelsea Flower Show – Wow!

Scotney Castle, in bloom in May of 2025

In late May we spent nine days in England – nine days that gave me enough ideas for several years. We took a guided tour of gardens near London and spent a day at the famous Chelsea Flower Show. I could fill a couple of blog posts with wordy descriptions of what we saw:  poppies as big as dinner plates, masses of purple phlox, vines of clematis coming into bloom. But I wouldn’t have the matching photos because we were too busy looking to take proper shots of everything. So this post will be a summary, with just a few pics, and maybe it will inspire you to take a trip of your own.

Where We Went

• Scotney Castle, a newish mansion (late 1800's) built near the ruins of an ancient castle; all surrounded by garden beds, water features, lush trees and shrubs. Scotney is now part of the National Trust.

• Sissinghurst, home of the writer and garden guru Vita Sackville-West. The grounds are a maze of “garden rooms” that can be viewed from above if you climb up the central tower.

• Great Dixter, a very different style of garden, with plants packed in and every bed stuffed so full of flowers that you could hardly see where you were. But there were also some open meadow areas with striking topiaries in abstract shapes.

• Hever Castle, childhood home of Anne Boleyn. A very large estate comprising many separate walled gardens, each with manicured lawns and flower beds, all beautifully arranged.

• Wisley, a garden of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS, a charitable organization that promotes gardening in the UK). At Wisley there’s a giant glass house for tropical and rare plants, including the strange turquoise bloom of the jade vine, Strongylodon macrobotrys.

• Kew Gardens, an amazing park, garden and research facility, where the plants are all labeled (in contrast to many of the gardens we saw) and all beautiful! I finally learned the named of some of the plants and trees we’d been seeing, including horse chestnut, a striking flowering tree.  There’s also an art gallery of paintings by an amazing woman, Marion North. Don’t miss it if you go to London.

• The Chelsea Flower Show, an annual event of the Royal Horticultural Society. It was overwhelming, but in a good way. We arrived at 8 am, left at 3 pm, but by then my brain was full. I don’t think I could have processed any more visual information!

Top row: the old castle at Scotney; an arch and view into gardens at Scotney

Middle row: Sissinghurst view from the tower; flowers and topiaries at Great Dixter

Bottom row: Great Dixter; Hever Castle

Giant waterlily pads at Kew Gardens

Plants to Remember

• Red poppies at many sites, honoring the lives lost in World War I and II. At the Tower of London the poppies were ceramic and they’re part of an annual display, but at many other gardens there were growing poppies, in bloom for traditional Remembrance events of May.

• Blue abutilon at Scotney Castle

• Rose ‘The Lady of Shallot,’ a David Austin rose that seemed to be blooming everywhere we went.

• White wisteria at Sissinghurst

• Laburnum, a small tree with beautiful yellow flowers, aka Golden Chain Tree; unfortunately it's highly poisonous.

• Delphinium everywhere (I’m always a little jealous since I have trouble growing it).

• Strongylodon macrobotrys – what a startling shade to see in a flower!

• Waterlily pads - so big a child could stand on them - in the lily house at Kew Gardens.

• Celosia at the Chelsea Flower Show made into a display of brilliantly colored plumes forming a headdress on a sculpted head.

• Rose ‘Queen of Sweden’ at the Chelsea Flower Show. Very tall, with strong, straight stems that seemed to have no thorns at all!

• Bindweed – sadly, they have problems with this just as we do here. There were signs about how they spend a lot of time weeding it out.

 Top row: red poppies; a display of Celosia at the Chelsea Flower Show; blue abutilon

Bottom row: laburnum (aka golden chain tree); rose Queen of Sweden; Strongylodon macrobotrys

In conclusion

We couldn’t bring home plants, but many of the things we saw there can be grown here in Northern California. Clematis, roses, azaleas, poppies, phlox, iris and geum. The high point for me was a garden called The Great Dixter. No wait – the high point was Sissinghurst. Or was it Kew Gardens? The high point was definitely one of those three, but maybe I’ll have to go back and see them again to decide for sure.

Fuchsias at the Chelsea Flower Show. Many plants went on sale on the last afternoon, when all the displays and show gardens had to be taken down and cleaned up.