The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is back underway, and with it has come a full slate of brilliantly conceived gardens in various categories, from the highlight Show and Sanctuary Gardens to compact Balcony gardens and the All About Plants category, which can be awarded medals in one of four levels: gold, silver-gilt, silver and bronze, as well as a Best In Show award. Here’s how the prizes are doled out, and what each level of medal means.
The Chelsea Flower Show medals
Unusually, the Flower Show awards gardens in one of four categories – gold, silver-gilt, silver and bronze. Gold, silver and bronze are familiar to anyone who has ever watched the Olympics (or, frankly, taken part in any other sort of competition). Silver-gilt is an extra class of medal in between silver and gold that gives the Flower Show panel an extra way to recognise gardens in certain specific categories. Confusingly, bronze winners do not actually win a physical medal, but winners in the other three classes do.
The jury
The Royal Horticultural Society’s panel of judges is headed up in 2022 by James Alexander-Sinclair, who is also a garden designer and television presenter. The RHS describes the panel as “highly experienced experts from across the horticultural industry. They are trained by the RHS in how to judge using the RHS criteria but are independent of the RHS.” The panel consists of three “assessing judges” and four “regular judges”, as well as an independent monitor to make sure all gardens are judged consistently. The assessing judges visit each garden twice, including once when the garden is presented by its designer, while the regular judges only join the assessors for the second visit, when all seven vote on what medal to award (or not).
How are gardens judged?
Designers who submit a garden to any RHS competition are asked to include a design brief in advance setting out their aims, including the a description of the garden, its purpose, its function and an overview of the key plants and features. The judges then assess how well executed the garden is against this brief. They use criteria spanning five different categories: ambition, overall impression, design, construction and planting.
Does every garden win a medal?
No. Lots of medals are given out, but there’s no guarantee of a medal. There’s also no prize money at Chelsea Flower Show – only the prestige of the medals.
Is a silver gilt medal better than silver?
Yes – silver gilt sits between gold and silver. An example of a silver gilt medal-winning garden at Chelsea might be one that lives up to gold standard in its planting and construction but somehow diverges significantly from the brief submitted in advance by its designer (though designers are allowed to explain any changes made during the process during the assessing judges’ first visit to their garden).
