Floristry and Florals at Chelsea Flower Show 2025
- Su Whale
- May 23
- 3 min read
‘Colour our World’ Doncaster College
Floristry and floral installations seem to have taken more than just a toehold at Chelsea which is very encouraging. Even better is the inclusion of a floristry college each year, giving students the opportunity to explore and expand their design and organisational skills in an unrivalled location.
Congratulations to Doncaster College and tutor Jade Loftus for pulling off an ambitious design that needed to fill a scarily large 5m x 5m space. Featuring free standing willow globes, it was designed to show how floristry can be a creative portal to a world of possibility. Colour and texture were cleverly used to draw the eye through and around the design.
Although the finished exhibit wasn’t eligible for judging, it certainly seemed to tick all the right boxes for the Chelsea visitors.
Creative Spaces
There were only three entrants for Creative Spaces this year, but what the category lacked in numbers, it made up for in in substance.
The Ambassadors Award went to Emily Thompson Flowers from New York, with ‘Remnants,’ a creative take on the life, decay and renewal that surrounds a fallen pine tree.
‘Tabula Rosa’ by Singapore and Paris based company, This Humid House, was almost futuristic in its interpretation of the expansion of tropical climates and AI, while London based florists Wagner Kreusch and Frida Kim gave us ‘Humus’ a two tier construction of birch trees, towering over the heads of the visitors, below which was a visual interpretation of the plants roots and vascular system.
The Chelsea Punk
Floral brilliance in every sense of the word was delivered by the very inventive Ricky Paul Flowers whose smaller version of a Vivienne Westwood inspired punk (its big brother was on the King’s Road) made its anarchic presence felt in the Great Pavilion.
Ebb and Bloom: Textures of Wellbeing Denise Jones Floral Design.
NAFAS Wins Gold
Images – choose from Laurens NAFAS folder – images 3178 & 4890 feature Denise.
A well-deserved Gold Medal for florist and NAFAS member Denise Jones whose immersive and sensory floral sculpture of wave-like willow structures explored the link between floristry, sea swimming and mental well-being.
RHS letters
Chelsea wouldn’t be complete without the giant letters RHS letters which pop up at every show. ‘Filled in’ by a different florist each time, the honour fell this year to Doncaster based Acacia Creative Studios. They lit up the show with a bold and eye-catching array of tropical flowers, cleverly graded in an ombre effect.
The same bold approach by Acacia was used in these two large stone urns which held a profusion of Protea, peony, Anthurium and gingers. A colourful departure from the usual emphasis on British grown flowers.
Orchidelirium Hamish Powell
A hanging installation by floral innovator and artist Hamish Powell whose floristry journey began with a microbiology degree and a thesis on orchid production. Suspended over the RHS Orchid Zone, Hamish’s mechanics proved not to be as sturdy as his construction which had to be removed after the first day due to safely reasons. Proving the point that florists need to be engineers as well as designers!
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Su Whale is a florist and freelance writer with over twenty-five years' experience in the floristry industry. She is the author and publisher of three best-selling books: Cut Flowers, 4th edition (2020) Cut Foliage, 2nd Edition, (2021) and Houseplants (2019), all bookshelf essentials for the professional florist.
