Chelsea Flower Show: Women garden designers outnumber men for first time

For the first time in the Chelsea Flower Show’s century-long history, there will be more women garden designers competing than men.

Women will make up 58 per cent of the garden designers competing for a medal this year at the annual Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) event which has been running since 1912.

It’s believed to be the first time there has been a female majority since 2005, and most likely ever.

Last year women made up 45 per cent of garden designers and in 2013, just 27 per cent.

The uptake among women has been attributed to the new “balcony and container gardens” category, which has proved a popular choice for women since it launched in 2021 following the Covid pandemic.

This year, for the first time, all teams in this category are headed by women. Among the designers is a former lawyer who specialised in children’s cases and a former police worker.

The category requires smaller gardens and therefore lower costs, allowing young designers “a foot in the door” at an earlier stage in their career, RHS said.

Balcony gardens must measure five metres by two, while container gardens are four metres by three. The category is described as a chance for designers to “create a pocket-sized realistic garden”.

The gardens are focused on “how to bring urban areas to life, with practical solutions for workable outdoor areas”, the RHS website states.

Fiona Davison, of the RHS libraries, said: “The RHS is trying to break that [structural inequality] by giving a wider pool of people these stepping stones to build their reputation as garden designers”, The Times reports.

Helena Pettit, RHS director of shows and gardens, said: “There is much work to be done around increasing diversity in horticulture but it is an encouraging step forward to have a garden category at RHS Chelsea filled with so many women.”

Botany was considered an acceptable science for women to study until Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus’ identification of the “sexual system” of plants made some consider the subject unseemly as a pastime for young women, RHS said on its website.

Despite this, there are notable pioneering female scientists including Barbara McClintock, for her work on the discovery of jumping genes, Elsie Wakefield who wrote two field guides on British fungi, and Janaki Ammal who became the first woman in the US to earn a PhD in the field of botany.

Chelsea Flower Show runs from May 22 to May 27 in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and is attended by members of the Royal Family.