Award-winning garden designer Sturgeon calls time on Chelsea
Three-time Best in Show champion says young designers should now be given their chance to shine
‘It’s not necessarily about age, but new designers with fresh ideas. They’re there, they just need a chance’
AWARD-winning gardener Andy Sturgeon has revealed this year will be his last Chelsea Flower Show as he called for fresh blood to take over.
The three-time winner of the Best Show Garden award has told The Daily Telegraph that his time at RHS Chelsea “is done” and that young gardeners with no track record should be given a chance at the show.
As he prepares to open his last Chelsea garden next week, he said: “In many ways, I owe my career to this. But I think my time is probably done. I don’t know what more I can get out of it.” The designer has made his final garden for the mental health charity Mind, saying he only agreed to take part in the show because he could choose the charity himself. He said that Mind was an obvious choice because his late partner, Sarah Didinal, who died of sudden heart failure in 2009, had been a supporter of the charity.
His Chelsea garden this year has been described as “a sanctuary, a place to sit, share and listen”, and will include birch trees and meadow-like spaces.
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, has been chosen as the site for the eventual permanent home for his Mind garden, which he has designed under the sponsor Project Giving Back.
“That legacy is really important to me. To put all this effort in and not chuck the design in the bin. To actually use it for the benefit of many,” Sturgeon said. “The charity will use it for therapy and functions, and these trees will be seen by the wider neighbourhood.”
Sturgeon has designed 10 gardens in total for Chelsea, winning eight RHS gold medals since his first show in 2001, as well as Best Show Garden in 2010, 2016 (for The Telegraph) and in 2019.
He said he hopes to win another medal this year, adding: “There’s no point in doing this if you’re going to be happy with silver, that literally means you’ve not done it as well as you should have done.”
Sarah Eberle, a fellow Best Show Garden champion, will also be competing this year, but Sturgeon said he and his contemporaries feel they have “been there and done that” now.
The gardener said he thinks the time has come for fresh blood to take over at Chelsea Flower Show, adding: “There are young people coming through who need to take over. There’s been a problem in the past that sponsors haven’t wanted to take a risk with a designer who doesn’t have a track record.”
He continued: “It’s not necessarily about age, but new designers with fresh ideas. They’re out there, they just need a chance.”
Sturgeon hopes that next year he can just watch the flowers bloom in spring, rather than worry about designing his next show garden.
“It sucks quite a bit of time out of your being. Even now I’m worried about minutiae in a way you wouldn’t if it was a real project,” he said.
His recent projects have included designing three roof gardens on top of Battersea Power Station, and a “calm and contemporary” roof garden for Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Sturgeon will also design a “Horatio’s Garden” for a spinal unit in Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast. His website says the garden “will provide muchneeded sanctuary for patients and visitors at the spinal injury and amputee rehabilitation units”.
Sturgeon was named by House & Garden magazine as one of the top 10 landscape designers in Britain. He has also won three awards from the UK’S Society of Garden Designers.
His Mind garden is hoped be shown to the Queen at the show’s opening next week. A final decision about the monarch’s attendance at Chelsea will be made on Monday but the Earl and Countess of Wessex and Princess Beatrice will be among the royals who put in an appearance.
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