Tate Shares Plans for First Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Tate today announces the full details of its first show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The Tate Britain Garden will present a bold new vision for how art, nature and community interact. Designed by nine-time RHS Chelsea gold medal winner Tom Stuart-Smith, the garden will highlight the role of museums in providing public spaces where contemplation and relaxation go hand in hand with creativity and learning. It is generously funded by the Clore Duffield Foundation and Project Giving Back, the grant-giving charity that funds gardens for good causes at RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

A restful space inspired by Tate’s significant art collection, The Tate Britain Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 offers a taster of the forthcoming Clore Garden, also designed by Stuart-Smith. A new green space for London due to open at Tate Britain next year, it has been made possible by generous funding from the Clore Duffield Foundation and with support from the Julia Rausing Trust. The designs for the garden have been inspired by Victor Pasmore’s The Green Earth 1979-80 in Tate’s Collection.

Sitting at the heart of The Tate Britain Garden will be Dame Barbara Hepworth’s Bicentric Form 1949, marking the first time a work of art from the national collection has been exhibited within a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. A significant limestone sculpture by one of Britain’s most admired modern artists, the sculpture was the first Hepworth work to be acquired by Tate, beginning a life-long relationship between artist and gallery, who now care for Hepworth’s studio and garden in St Ives. After the Show, Bicentric Form will join other world-class sculptures by modern and contemporary British artists from Tate’s Collection on display in the Clore Garden, offering the public the chance to discover these works outside the gallery in a fresh context.

The Tate Britain Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show will also bring to life some of the key design elements that visitors can look forward to enjoying in the Clore Garden. Existing stone from the Millbank site will be cut and repurposed as paving, forming a gently sloping, curved path through vibrant, biodiverse planting. Inlaid within the path will be a shining golden water channel, its soothing sounds bringing tranquillity to this haven of art and nature. This rill and bowls will be 3D printed with designs inspired by mycorrhizal fungi, which aids decomposition in a garden, and whose presence is a sign of biodiversity and garden health.

A central bench - cast from reused materials including paving from Tate Britain and locally sourced cockleshells, by-products from the Thames Estuary - will create a learning circle, providing a space for friends, families, community groups and schools to gather. Inviting conversation and connection, these elements come together to reimagine museum gardens as creative, social spaces. In the Clore Garden at Tate Britain, this learning circle will be reconceived to fit a class of school children, offering an outdoor learning space.

Taking cues from East Asian woodlands and resilient drought-tolerant plants adapted to warmer climates, the planting choices are informed by Tate’s commitment to championing sustainable practices; making choices which increase biodiversity in our urban environments, whilst looking to the future of Tate Britain’s Millbank site. Previewing plant species that will be seen in the Clore Garden, The Tate Britain Garden will showcase planting that thrives in central London’s now virtually frost-free environment and rising temperatures, such as Mediterranean fig trees and foliage like Schefflera shweliensis, native to the Eastern Himalayas. Shade at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show will be provided by 11 trees, including Feijoa sellowiana (pineapple guava), and Punica granatum (pomegranate), while Cycas revoluta (Japanese sago palm) will give shape and texture to the garden. Designed to create year-round interest, the planting will ensure seasonal visitors to Tate Britain always find something in bloom, including species that fruit and flower at different times – Melia azedarach (Persian lilacs) in late spring to Magnolia grandiflora (evergreen magnolias) in early autumn. In May, visitors to the Show can expect to see bursts of yellow from Roldana petasitis (velvet groundsel), contrasting with the glossy greens of Farfugium japonicum var. giganteum (leopard plant) and the burgundy of a Melianthus major flower (great honey flower).

After the show, the garden will be transferred to Tate Britain on Millbank and incorporated into the wider project, the construction of which is due to begin in April 2026, and open in 2027.

Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain, said: “Visitors come to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to see the latest and best in horticultural design, so it is wonderful to be able to offer garden lovers a taste of the exciting new Clore Garden at Tate Britain. We are delighted to mark this special occasion with the display of one of our best-loved sculptures from the nation’s collection of British art and to share this early evocation of such a unique and bold reimagining of museum space.”

Tom Stuart-Smith, Landscape Architect and designer of The Tate Britain Garden and Clore Garden, said:

“It is exciting to be able to make a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show incorporating such a significant work by one of this country’s most remarkable artists of the last 100 years. Hepworth was very progressive in showing her work in a garden context and we are using very bold textures and forms as a counterpoint to the dark, smooth stone of the sculpture. I think she would approve.”

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The RHS Chelsea Flower Show planting list includes:

Trees: Feijoa s ellowiana, Punica granatum, Ficus carica, Magnolia grandiflora, Melia azedarach, Lagestromia ’Natchez’, Albizia julibrissin, Elaeagnus angustifolia ’Caspica’.

Foliage: Farfugium japonicum, Cycas revoluta, Schefflera schweliensis, Roldana petasitis, Pseudopanax laetus (Neopanax), Melianthus major, Aspidistra elatior.

About the Clore Garden at Tate Britain
Realised in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and made possible by generous funding from the Clore Duffield Foundation and with support from the Julia Rausing Trust, the Clore Garden at Tate Britain, designed by Tom Stuart-Smith, will offer a beautiful and inviting new green space for London. A rich, varied environment carefully designed to complement and enhance the gallery’s neo-classical architecture, showcase sculpture from Tate’s Collection and withstand the UK’s changing climate, the Clore Garden will place nature, art and community at its centre. Expanding the possibilities of museum spaces as creative sites for learning and engagement, the Clore Garden will support wellbeing and offer space for new social connections. The plans include the building of a new single storey light-weight garden classroom designed by architecture studio Feilden Fowles, where regular workshops for school groups and adult learners will explore the connections between art and nature, fostering creativity and collaboration.

About Tate Britain
Tate Britain is home to the world’s greatest collection of British art. The gallery’s free displays feature over 800 works by over 350 artists, telling an expansive and diverse story which spans from the 1500s to the present day. Tate Britain welcomes over a million visitors each year to its ever-changing programme of exhibitions, commissions and events. It celebrates key figures in art history and provides a vital platform for the best artists working in Britain today, including through the Turner Prize, Art Now, and the Tate Britain Commission. For more information, visit tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain

About Tom Stuart-Smith Studio
Tom Stuart-Smith Studio is a landscape design practice established in 1998. Its work has ranged from large gardens and parks open to the public, to smaller private gardens in the UK and overseas. It has also designed eleven gardens for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, nine of which were awarded gold medals, and three won ‘Best in Show’ (two were not judged). For more information, visit tomstuartsmith.co.uk

About the Clore Duffield Foundation
The Clore Duffield Foundation, established by Sir Charles Clore in 1964, celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2024. Now chaired by Sir Charles Clore’s daughter, Dame Vivien Duffield, the Foundation supports UK charities working in the arts, education, social welfare and health. For more information, visit cloreduffield.org.uk

About Project Giving Back
Project Giving Back (PGB) is a unique grant-making charity that provides funding for gardens for good causes at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. PGB was launched in May 2021 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and its devastating effects on UK charitable fundraising - effects that have since been exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis.

PGB will fund 12 gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2026 (including its own Project Giving Back Garden) and intends to fund a total of 63 gardens inspired by a range of good causes from 2022 to 2026.

PGB aims to boost UK-based good causes by giving them an opportunity to raise awareness of their work at the high-profile RHS Chelsea Flower Show, as well as supporting the relocation of the gardens to permanent homes after the show where they can continue to benefit the charities and their communities.

Find out more at www.givingback.org.uk.

Crocus has a long history of working with Tom Stuart-Smith at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and the TATE garden will be their 11thcollaboration together. For over 20 years, Crocus has grown and built 38 show gardens, winning 35 Gold Medals and receiving 13 ‘Best in Shows’ awards. Founded in 2000, Crocus is the country’s most trusted online gardening brand with over 50,000 customers rating it as ‘Excellent’ on Trustpilot and the only online nursery with Plant Healthy accreditation. For more information, visit crocus.co.uk.