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An ambitious alpine garden will be on display
What really goes into building a Show Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show? With just a few weeks to go, award-winning garden designers John Warland and Tom Bannister are preparing for this year's world-famous event with The British Red Cross 'Here for Humanity' Garden – and it's their most ambitious garden yet.
'The Chelsea Flower Show is the most exciting week of the year; you have a group of people working together who are all equally inspired and passionate about a subject,' Tom says. 'You can’t experience it anywhere else other than in Chelsea. You are together for 12 hours a day and everyone on each garden is helping each other – there’s this sense of camaraderie; you are all rowing in the same direction.'
Held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the prestigious gardening event is described by John as 'the crème de la crème; the Champions League of horticulturalists'.
The British Red Cross 'Here for Humanity' Garden will present a contemporary twist on an alpine garden (alpines are compact, hardy plants, perfectly suited to rockeries, patio pots and troughs). The garden will feature rare alpine species that come from areas where the Red Cross has recently provided disaster relief, including Morocco, Turkey and the UK. It's inspired by Henri Dunant – the Swiss visionary founder of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement – and the countless volunteers who have helped those in crisis.
John and Tom take us behind the scenes on their journey to their RHS Chelsea 2025 garden.
This isn't the first time that Tom Bannister (left) and John Warland (right) have taken on the daunting task of creating a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show – but for 2025, they'll be doing something they have never attempted before: creating a Show Garden with niche alpine plants for The British Red Cross 'Here for Humanity' Garden.
They have plenty of experience under their belts — John already has six RHS gold medals, while last year, Tom received a gold medal and was awarded best in class at Chelsea for The Ecotherapy Garden in the Container Garden category.
The British Red Cross 'Here for Humanity' Garden will feature alpines from Afghanistan, Türkiye, Morocco, and the UK, representing the Red Cross' humanitarian work around the world. The alpines represent the ability of humanity to survive and thrive in even the most extreme conditions.
'We're dealing with very special plants in very low numbers,' John explains. 'It’s rare and interesting, but it's also the reason why people don’t attempt gardens like this!'
The challenge is partly what attracted the designers to the project. 'It's exploratory; we are doing something that has not been seen before,' continues John. 'It's actually quite hard to look after alpines as they have such specific needs. Nursery growers across the UK have alpines that could be 10 years old but are no bigger than a postage stamp.'
John says choosing alpines has been incredibly challenging: 'Usually you'd expect something on a smaller scale – using alpines to create a Show Garden is very ambitious!'
Building The British Red Cross 'Here for Humanity' Garden marks the first time John and Tom are working together – and they have very distinctive styles. 'I've always enjoyed the look of John’s gardens; his design eye and the level of detail,' remarks Tom. 'It’s like a songwriting partnership; one person comes up with the lyrics, and the other tries to put a tune to it. You will definitely see both of us in that garden.
'It's such a short window to get things done, and we were unfamiliar with each other. We have to have difficult conversations very quickly and not be upset with each other – humour helps us a lot.'
The garden design takes inspiration from Giants Causeway, Northern Ireland's iconic World Heritage Site, which is formed of tens of thousands of hexagonal basalt columns. 'John had this strong vision of the garden, and he asked me if I’d be interested in getting involved,' Tom reveals.
The Chelsea garden will showcase large, stone, column-like planters that mimic traditional trough alpine displays.
The interlocking hexagonal columnar stone jointing – unique in size but all fitting together seamlessly – references over 190 national societies of the Red Cross.
Its modular design also means the garden can live on after Chelsea. Post-show, it will be relocated to the grounds of Maudsley Hospital South London, providing a space for patients, carers and staff to relax and enjoy the healing power of nature.
To prepare for Chelsea, Tom and John visited the Alpine House at Kew's Royal Botanic Gardens. 'Kew Gardens is the centre of the horticultural universe. If we can bring some of that into the British Red Cross garden, we are on our way to doing a good job,' says Tom.
'A "true alpine" lives above the tree line and below the permanent snow line of the glacier of mountains like Mont Blanc,' explains John. 'Because of climate change, the tree line rises, and this can be described as an escalator to extinction.'
As a result, he says seed banks like the Millenium Seed Bank in Sussex, and the Svalbard Global Seed ‘Doomsday’ Vault in Norway are crucial for the future: 'In the event of cataclysmic natural or man-made disaster, the seed banks in Kew or Svalbard could be tapped into to find the flora which would allow humanity to survive.'
'I always design gardens thinking, would my 13-year-old nephew be excited about this?' reveals John. 'There's always a risk with these things; with the alpines, the construction, and the weather. The worst thing for me would be to design a garden which people just walk past without stopping.'
John encourages everyone to give alpines a go in their own gardens this spring: 'There is an alpine plant for everyone out there – London Pride, which we have in the garden, is very easy to grow. The secret is drainage – no soggy bottoms!'
RHS Chelsea 2025 is around the corner, taking place from 20th to 24th May. 'It's a real pressure cooker – it gets more and more intense the closer we get,' John says. 'The whole industry is judging you as well.'
Tom adds: 'It's one of the rare horticultural events when the clock stops ticking; it cannot go over by a day or even an hour. The show must always go on.'
The building conditions have presented a challenge, though. 'It’s not the ideal work environment; it's noisy, it's dusty and you get sunburned,' they explain. Yet, both would do it all over again. 'No matter how hard it gets, you give it a week, and someone asks, "Do you want to do it again next year?",' John laughs.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show returns from 20th-24th May 2025. Visit rhs.org.uk for more information and ticket availability.
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