Meet the designers
Meet the designers
Background information on each of the show garden designers, including previous Chelsea wins and their design trademarks.
Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins
Perfume Garden
Chelsea track record: Show garden Urban Oasis (2007) won Gold and Patrick Collins' show garden, The Knightsbridge Urban Renaissance (2004) won Silver-Gilt.
Design trademarks: Laurie is an award-winning architect, known for his exciting, often zoomorphic, designs. His driving force is the avoidance of bland architectural solutions and his projects are often environmentally innovative. Patrick Collins' design style is contemporary, with crisp lines and geometric elegance. His planting is often lush and extensive with a strong evergreen structure. In this year's garden every plant he has used has a function in the creation of scent.
Ian Dexter
The Marshalls Living Street
Chelsea track record: His first show garden, The Marshalls Garden that Kids Really Want, (2008) won Silver.
Design trademarks: Ian says, "I aim to produce outstanding, yet practical gardens that capture the aspirations and lifestyles of our clients. My design solutions should establish a harmonious relationship with the surrounding architecture and landscape to create individual gardens of consistent beauty and integrity." Ian's gardens are realistic and attainable, demonstrating lots of design ideas for gardeners to try themselves.
Nigel Dunnett and Adrian Hallam
Future Nature
Chelsea track record: This is the designers’ first show garden.
Design trademarks: This team aim to raise public awareness of the problems we are likely to face in the not too distant future. The garden, designed around the principles of ‘artful rainwater management’, displays strategies to adapt gardening to an era of climate change. The exuberant, naturalistic planting is carefully chosen for the benefit of people, wildlife and the wider environment and is particularly suitable for urban areas. Adrian and Nigel hope that it will be seen as a realistic and achievable garden, full of ideas that will inspire visitors.
Adam Frost
The QVC Garden
Chelsea track record: Small garden Realistic Retreat (2007) won Gold and urban garden A Welcome Sight (2008) won Gold and Best in Show.
Design trademarks: Adam says, "What I love more than anything about my work is the way it allows me to bring together my passion for plants with my love of design to create special places for people to enjoy". His style is romantic and traditional, his planting feels naturalistic and he always tries to use native or UK-grown plants with natural materials. Adam likes to feel that those who look at his gardens will take home fresh ideas - he doesn’t want them to be admired as an untouchable artwork.
Luciano Guibbilei
Laurent-Perrier Garden
Chelsea track record: First time exhibiting at Chelsea.
Design trademarks: Luciano's work is characterised by simple, clean symmetrical lines. He uses trees and hedges clipped into strong, geometric forms to achieve an uncluttered, modern and sophisticated look, particularly suited to urban gardens. He rarely uses flowers but is beginning to include them in a controlled way. Luciano compares designing gardens to composing music – all of the elements that make up a garden are equally important and must be in tune with each other to create an atmosphere.
Tom Hoblyn
The Foreign and Colonial Investments Garden
Chelsea track record: First full-sized show garden. Won Gold for urban garden Tempest in a Teapot (2008).
Design trademarks: Tom's design style is the result of years spent studying many different plant habitats. He likes his gardens to fit into their surroundings and plants to sit comfortably in their gardens. He believes this approach leads to a more harmonious effect and results in gardens needing minimal maintenance. Tom is also an enthusiastic champion of using reclaimed and natural materials as much as possible, especially in urban situations.
Robert Myers
The Cancer Research UK Garden
Chelsea track record: Four show gardens, all of which were awarded Gold.
Design trademarks: Robert designs in an elegant, timeless manner, inspired by the characteristics of materials and plants, of history and place. His work explores the relationship between the formal and informal, and draws inspiration from both the architectural and natural world. This year his design is more playful and illusory, with free-form walls and sculpture. A departure from the formal style of his earlier gardens.
Ulf Nordfjell
The Daily Telegraph Garden
Chelsea track record: Gold for A Tribute to Linnaeus (2007) show garden.
Design trademarks: Ulf's designs are strongly influenced by the landscape of Sweden, his homeland. His planting is restrained, naturalistic - in the spirit of nature rather than mimicking it. Sweden is suggested by the designer's use of beautiful natural materials, including timber and granite. They are strong, elegant and sustainable and that is how Ulf wants his designs to be, whether in a public space or a private garden.
Tony Smith
The Quilted Velvet Garden
Chelsea track record: First show garden, although Tony exhibited a horticultural art installation in 2008.
Design trademarks: Tony describes himself as a conceptual artist and, as a keen gardener since an early age, he uses the medium of horticulture to create his installations. His 'gardens' will always divide opinion and become talking points and this year is no exception – his use of massed bedding plants alongside spiky yuccas will raise a few eyebrows.
Paul Stone
The Key
Chelsea track record: Paul has won many medals as a small garden designer since 1999, including Gold for Steptoe's Front Garden (2005) and Gold for Best Sunflower Street Garden (2004). This is his first large show garden.
Design trademarks: Paul’s gardens are always strongly themed and usually have a nostalgic feel. "This one is completely different. It's risky – it feels like a step into the unknown" he says. The design is allegorical, telling the story of life's struggles and eventual resolution in a contemporary, and almost urban, style. Paul has a passionate belief in the values of sustainability and recycling and this shows in his choice of materials and plants. The scale and ambition of this garden represents his greatest challenge yet, relying as it does on a novice team of prison inmates and homeless people from all over the country growing thousands of plants from seed. Paul is undaunted, he says, "I love the whole process of the show gardens, it’s like performing in a big production. Goodness knows, we’ve got a really big cast and the exciting thing is that most of them will never have done anything like this before."
Martin Walker and Leeds City Council
The HESCO Garden
Chelsea track record: This is the seventh time at the show for Leeds and they have always been awarded a medal.
Design trademarks: The show gardens created by the Leeds team always have a strong connection to their area and are transferred to one of the City Parks after Chelsea. This year, the design of their garden was inspired by the terrible flooding of the last two summers, in which Sheffield and Hull were particularly badly hit. The designers' interpretation of an American-style Rain Garden demonstrates how gardeners can manage excess water during heavy rain. Gorgeous, lush, romantic planting is the Leeds trademark style. The team grow most of the show garden plants in their own parks and nurseries and see Chelsea as a chance to demonstrate their horticultural skills.
James Wong and David Cubero
The Canary Islands Spa Garden
Chelsea track record: This is their first Chelsea show garden.
Design trademarks: As designers, David and James aim to challenge people's perceptions of how a garden should look; no neat lawns and herbaceous borders for them! David, a native of the Canaries, wants to draw people’s attention to the wild volcanic landscape and bizarre indigenous plants of his homeland, many of which are endangered in the wild. They hope that gardeners and visitors to Chelsea will be inspired to look at the landscape that surrounds them and discover their own unique style.
Kay Yamada
Echoes of Japan in an English Garden
Chelsea track record: Show garden Reflections on a Tateshina Meadow (2002) was awarded Silver-Gilt, while Lace and Tapestry (2003) won Silver.
Design trademarks: Kay is a horticulturist, well known in Japan for her books, TV show and her gardens, all in the traditional English Garden style. Her designs are pretty, flowery and feminine with lawns, meadows and roses. This year, Kay's show garden design is a fusion of English informality and Japanese plants. She has given us a fascinating, modern interpretation of ancient Japanese garden elements set in lush planting.
Also at Chelsea
Chelsea Coverage
People's Choice Award 2011
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The RHS People's Choice Award. Find out more.
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Visit the to read and comment on their posts.
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Carol Klein shows how you can get expert help with your horticultural questions. Watch the video.
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