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Jo Thompson, the only woman to have designed a show garden on the main avenue at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, has said there are significant barriers preventing women from thriving at the event.
The celebrated garden designer, who swore she would never do Chelsea again after her 10th show in 2019, pointed to the scarcity of sponsorship, lack of female toilets, young children being banned from the show, and antiquated attitudes as reasons for the gender gap in designers.
Of the six large show gardens presented at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, five of the spaces are designed by men. In the small show garden category, three gardens are designed by women, while seven of the spaces on display have been planned and executed by male designers.
Speaking to Alice Vincent during a live podcast recording of Why Women Grow at the Royal Horticultural Society event on Monday (19 May), Thompson said: “There are plenty of women who would like to design in the gardens and I would love more sponsors to support that idea.”
Vincent noted that membership of the Society of Garden Designers is evenly split between 50 per cent men and women. “It shouldn’t be me and then five other men [here],” she said. “That’s wrong.”
When asked how the Royal Horticultural Society can make Chelsea more welcoming to female designers, Vincent said: “On a practical level, it would be great if there were women’s loos on the first day of build. I don’t want to have to walk past a queue of men using the urinals.”
The garden designer added she’s had to harden her demeanour while working with male contractors to be taken seriously: “You can’t be pathetic,” she said. “It’s easy to stand there and say ‘oh that’s okay, we’ll do it your way because that’s easier’ because that’s what the expectation is. I’ve found in the past that if I want something my way I’m either ‘bossy’ – or even worse words beginning with ‘B’.”
“You have to stick to your convictions,” she added. “And that requires an ore of steel.”
Vincent said the event also poses barriers to mothers. For safety, children under five aren’t allowed into the event and, while babes in arms are “permitted, but discouraged” by the Royal Horticultural Society, prams, pushchairs and buggies are entirely banned from the show ground.
“I was lucky enough to have a supportive family who did look after my children when I first started doing Chelsea,” Vincent reflected. “But if you don’t have that support, it’s almost impossible.”
This year, Vincent’s show garden is inspired by the work of the south east social enterprise The Glasshouse who offer horticultural training to women based in UK prisons.
The garden, which features an elliptical pavilion with opaque screens and a “surprise river” water feature, will be donated to the women’s prison HMP Downview in Banstead, Surrey, when the show closes on 24 May.
“There is a complete lack of privacy in prison…a complete deprivation of nature,” Vincent said of the inspiration behind her design. “Simple things that we take for granted. So, I went home and created this place that the women asked for, which was a private space but also a space that opened up into a garden that they could look at.”
English (US) ·