Tom Stuart-Smith: The blueprint of a Chelsea Flower Show garden - Episode 274
5/14/202621 min
In this episode of ‘grow, cook, eat, arrange’, Sarah Raven welcomes renowned garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith to uncover his visionary new garden for Tate Britain and how he’s reimagining it for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
They explore his bold, foliage-rich planting, ingenious water features, and a remarkable new memorial garden at Badminton that promises to be one of the RHS’s most ambitious show gardens yet.
In this episode, discover:
- How Tom Stuart-Smith is transforming a neglected, concrete-dominated acre at Tate Britain into a biodiverse, exotic garden
- The creative and practical challenge of turning that large-scale design into a Chelsea Flower Show garden where every element is destined to be reused at Tate
- The bold, foliage-led planting palette Tom has chosen – from cycads and Persian lilac to euphorbias, aspidistras and shade-loving exotics
- How water, sculpture and planting come together, including a finely engineered water feature and a Barbara Hepworth sculpture from a national collection
Episode Cover Photo Credit: Eva Nemeth.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSarah Raven· Host0:00
This podcast is brought to you by sarahraven.com, which is home to everything you need for a truly beautiful and productive garden. You'll also find great and essential gardening kit and stylish, lovely things to have in your house to bring the outside indoors, all inspired by the garden and the house being tied together. There's also plenty of garden inspiration, how-to videos, and specialist growing guides. So head over to sarahraven.com today to discover even more. [upbeat music] Welcome to Grow Cook Eat Arrange, the podcast of me, Sarah Raven. And today I am joined by an old friend who I was brought up with, the really internationally famous and genius garden designer, Tom Stuart-Smith.
Tom Stuart-Smith· Guest0:53
Oh, don't lay it on too thick, Sarah [laughs]. [laughs] Or I'll play the same tricks on you [laughs].
Sarah Raven· Host1:00
[laughs] I can lay it on very thick. [laughs] So the reason that Tom is here today is that we're going to hear all about his garden at Chelsea, so this is gonna come out over Chelsea time. And I literally know nothing, and so I'm gonna rely on Tom to tell us all about it, why he's done it, what the themes are, where it's gonna go, all that kind of stuff, Tom, if that's all right.
Tom Stuart-Smith· Guest1:25
Great. Yeah.
Sarah Raven· Host1:26
Good. So off we shoot. What's the theme?
Tom Stuart-Smith· Guest1:29
Well, the garden