The Chelsea Flower Show is looking for new charity sponsors after a mystery philanthropic couple who spent more than £23 million on the show gardens ended their support.
Project Giving Back was set up by two anonymous donors in 2022 and has since paid for 63 gardens in the world’s most ambitious gardening programme, held each summer in the Royal Hospital Gardens in south-west London.
This year’s show will be the final fundraiser and the charity is setting up a farewell garden to celebrate its work and say goodbye to Chelsea.
In previous years, corporate sponsors would spend up to £1m on the garden. The Daily Telegraph, for example, paid handsomely for Chelsea Garden every year until 2016. However, the number of corporate sponsors has dwindled since the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic.
Supported by Project Giving Back grants, 63 charities stepped in to fill the gap, using the show gardens to celebrate their causes. This year there are Asthma & Lung UK, Children’s Society, Eden Project and Parkinson’s UK.
The program has focused on eco-friendly gardening in recent years, with bee- and butterfly-friendly flowers taking center stage and an emphasis on growing native plants.
Much of this was driven by Project Giving Back, whose Rewilding Garden caused some controversy in the gardening world due to its deliberately nonsensical appearance, winning Best in Show in 2022, a three-time winner for charity-sponsored gardens.
The Flower Show, run by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), has long enjoyed the huge presence of investment firm M&G as headline sponsor for 11 years until 2020. This year, Range Rover took lead sponsorship from Somerset Hotel The Newt.
But to fill the void left by Project Giving Back, RHS is looking for new voluntary funding for 2027.
A spokesman said: “Throughout its 100-year history, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show has always attracted sponsors and charities to benefit from the international stage and high-profile stage of the world’s most famous gardening event. Over the past five years and following the pandemic, Project Giving Back has played an important role in supporting the small and manual.
“RHS Chelsea has always attracted show gardens associated with charity work and remains the Royal Horticultural Society’s biggest fundraiser, enabling millions of people across the UK to get involved in gardening.”
Hattie Ghaui, CEO of Project Giving Back, said: “This is our last year of funding Gardens for Good Causes through an application for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. We originally set it up as a three-year project and extended it for a further two years based on the positive impact and feedback we’ve had.”
She added that the charity will be discontinued after the show, but will share its experiences with others: “We believe we have created an inspiring blueprint that other sponsors can follow.”
The charity’s final garden will be designed by James Basson of Provence-based Scape Design. It has towering red sandstone cliffs, colored with natural ocher pigment and gently weathered over time, sitting amidst pine forests.
It will be a spectacular sight and will contain plants suited to the warm climates of southern France, leading to weather vandalism in UK summer gardens in the future.
Basson’s final Chelsea garden was designed for M&G Investments in 2017. Inspired by a deserted Maltese quarry, the garden features limestone pillars covered with wild shrubs. It won Best in Show, which was aimed at Project Giving Back as it left Chelsea.
The charity said the work shows that “when thoughtfully designed and generously supported, gardens can continue to inspire, heal and give back, long after the show has ended”.
