All the Chelsea Flower Show 2025 gardens to see in May

While so many gardens at Chelsea can centre on evoking the senses and achieving something transportive as a result, The Sensory Retreat does the opposite – deliberately aimed at neurodivergent people, it explores the power of indoor plants in enhancing mood and reducing stress. The design features five sensory zones, each focused on a different experiential mode: smell, touch, taste, sight and regulation. These allow visitors to experience first-hand how plants create a calming and more supportive space, with key plants including lavender, lamb’s ear, chocolate mint, fountain grass and Boston fern.

The SongBird Survival Garden

Three things are essential to a songbird’s life: shelter, water and food. The SongBird Survival Garden is inspired by these three elements, and a bird’s movement and perspective when foraging for the latter two in between points of safety and shelter. Designed for children, the garden is intended to be a playful and immersive space in which people can connect with the lives of songbirds. At the centre of the garden sits a birdhouse in reclaimed materials, including six hand-crafted metalwork motifs of threatened UK songbirds, while the planting and a circular pond provide material for nesting and space for bathing.

The TerrariROOM

Forgive the questionable capitalisation: as the name makes very clear, the TerrariROOM is a terrarium you can step into, inviting visitors “to experience a living ecosystem from the inside”. The space has plants arranged for easy care around the windowsills, as well as a lush carpet of blue star ferns around a studio under kokedama suspended from trees above.

The Wildlife Trusts’ British Rainforest Garden

Once upon a time, wild and wet woodlands swathed the west coast of Britain and Ireland, and the Wildlife Trusts’ British Rainforest Garden aims to tap into how this must have once felt. Just as inspired by the enchanted forests of Arthurian legend, it posits a domestic garden on the the edge of “a beautiful British rainforest”. A raised walkway leads between the lichen-spotted boughs of trees and mounds of mosses beside a waterfall, all under dappled sunlight. While temperate rainforest once covered a full one-fifth of the British Isles, they now make up about one per cent of the land. “Restoring them,” the Wildlife Trusts say, “will create beautiful places for people to enjoy, help wildlife recover and tackle climate change.”