Chelsea Flower Show

Along with many in the gardening industry this year, the closure of the RHS shows will be a significant loss to Gabriel Ash. The Chelsea Flower Show is always the first date marked on the calendar in the New Year and is one we work towards as the pinnacle in the gardening calendar.

We always design our show stands to display our wonderful cedar greenhouses at their best. Behind the scenes there is always a large amount of work that goes into our stand design. The Gabriel Ash Sales team look at the greenhouses we would like to display, then we hand this brief over to the talented team at Base Squared to sort out the creative design of the hard and soft landscaping. They then look to source the materials and planting to suit our theme and brief. 

The show season, and in particular Chelsea, is one of the best ways for our customers old and new to enjoy our handcrafted greenhouses in person. We often use the Chelsea Flower Show to launch new products, and this year we were particularly excited to be launching our new RHS Bridgewater range, to time with the opening of the new RHS Bridgewater Garden in Manchester.

The RHS Bridgewater greenhouse is the same footprint as many of our existing RHS greenhouses in the range, the difference is the height. We have added in another level of windows to raise the height of the greenhouse, this enables us to have doors in the side wall. This extra height gives increased growing room and an increased air volume which provides a more even temperature variation, which plants and people alike love.

The shows also allow us to give you, the visiting public, a chance to pick up one of our exclusive show offers. This terrible pandemic has made us all re-assess our own private spaces and led to an unprecedented interest in our own gardens and gardening. So with this in mind we have decided to still undertake our normal show season offers.

We have produced a small video to help you get a feel for our greenhouses and so you can see the team working from their home offices, its always nice to put names to faces. We hope you enjoy this and please feel free to call or email the team to discuss your own individual requirements.

The team at Gabriel Ash love the build up to the shows and the big reveal of all the wonderful show gardens and creations the talented designers come up with. One of our favourite and regular designers at the show is Chris Beardshaw. Back in 2016, Chris came along to see us on our stand and made the comment that the smell of the cedar reminded him of his grandfathers old greenhouse, this is a warm memory we hear a lot from visitors to the stand and we are sure those happy memories will inspire many future gardeners.

Chris Beardshaw visits us at the Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Our normal stand position at Chelsea Flower Show is on Royal Hospital Way. We get so used to having this as our new home for a week with views looking towards the Royal Hospital, the home of the Chelsea Pensioners, many of whom come to visit us on our stand and always generate a crowd. We are also privileged to be in and around many of the gardens and one of our favourite years was when the team at Radio 2 were invited to design a garden. Each of the DJ’s Chris Evans, Jo Whiley, Anneka Rice & Jeremy Vine worked with designers to create 4 gardens that were positioned opposite our stand. It was fascinating watching Chris broadcast to the nation from the show, and the keen gardener herself Jo Whiley being interviewed in front of our greenhouses.

Cast of Radio2 at the Chelsea Flower Show 2017

Jo Whiley at the Chelsea Flower Show 2017

The Show has faced many disruptions over the years including two gaps during the two World Wars and more recently in 2017 many of the large gardens were dropped due to Brexit. We are now fighting a new challenge with Covid-19 but we will be the first on the list when it returns next year. In the meantime we can all concentrate on creating our own little piece of Chelsea in our own back gardens.

Gabriel Ash Stand at the Chelsea Flower Show 2018

Greenhouses featured at the Gabriel Ash Stand at the 2018 show

Virtual Show Stand tour created by Base Squared: https://www.basesquared.co.uk
Videography created by Mark Spencer: https://www.mark-spencer.com