The 2025 RHS Show season officially began yesterday with the start of RHS Malvern Spring Festival at Three Counties Showground in Malvern, Worcestershire (8-11 May). With eight outdoor show gardens, alongside two brand-new feature gardens, plus the introduction of the very first RHS-judged indoor plant gardens at RHS Malvern, this year’s festival is a spectacular horticultural showcase and takes Plants and People as its focus.
Gold medal-winner, Biosis: Mode of Life by Frantisek Zika, Jenny Rafferty and Jim Goodman of Shropshire-based Humble-Bee Gardeners was named Best Outdoor Show Garden. It also won the RHS Environmental Innovation Award and Best Construction Award for an Outdoor Show Garden.
The design of this water-wise, rural garden makes the most of captured rainfall filtered through a blackthorn tower into a wildlife pond. It blurs the wild and tamed, with a mix of medicinal and edible plants and recycled materials, to increase biodiversity. Designer Frantisek Zika said: “The idea of the garden is to showcase to the public how you can reuse materials and make them look pretty. Around 90 to 95% of what’s in the garden is re-used scrap and leftovers. Gardens account for five per cent of the land mass and if we can rebuild half a per cent we can make enormous corridors for the wildlife and, by using re-used materials, there’s no CO2 impact. We hope this garden will be an inspiration to others.”
Gold medals in the Outdoor Garden category also went to The Rain Garden by John Howlett and Garden of the Wind by Yun Sumni & Lu Wenjuan. The former is a peaceful retreat, drawing inspiration from the tranquillity and beauty of traditional Japanese gardens, featuring a monochromatic colour palette, the calming sounds of water and the soft, rustling of grasses and birch trees. After the festival, the garden will be relocated to Coppermill School in Walthamstow.
Garden of the Wind offers visitors the opportunity to experience the wind from various perspectives; they can listen to the rustling of leaves, observe the dynamic movements of plants and enjoy artistic drawing that capture the movement of the wind.
Within the new Indoor Garden category, Best Indoor Plant Garden was awarded to Gold medal-winner, A Reflection of Nature by GrowTropicals, Claire Lowrie of The Jungle Haven and Ben Newell of Worcester Terrariums. It brings together rare and unusual plants, terrariums and indoor plant care in a design which displays a reflection between an outdoor tropical space and indoor living area, where the various growth habits of plants are mirrored. Founder of Grow Tropicals Jacob James said: “The installation was inspired by conversations with customers about the best places to position house plants. Understanding how plants grow in nature can inform us how they grow in your house. We’re doing this using a split screen showing how plants grow in nature and how to grow them in the house.”
Neo Flora by Forest Interior & Outdoor Living Gardens, and Contemporary Living: A Modern Retreat by Botanical Interior Designan were also awarded gold medals.
For more information or to book tickets, visit rhsmalvern.co.uk.
