Gardens packed with innovative ideas to reduce water use take centre stage at RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival this July as the UK expects another summer of heatwaves.

Visitors arriving at the festival © RHS / Georgi Mabee

Featuring drought tolerant planting schemes and landscaping techniques for managing water use, designs at the festival this year, which runs from 4 to 9 July, demonstrate how gardeners can adapt their planting and landscaping practices to help make their own green spaces more climate resilient.

Previously know as the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival is the world’s largest flower festival, which takes place in London each July in the historic grounds of one of Britain’s most magnificent palaces. The festival is organised by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), which is the UK’s largest gardening charity.

RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2022 © RHS / Neil Hepworth

The Inghams Working With Nature Garden designed by Joshua Parker and Matthew Butler features resilient planting for wet and dry periods and utilises a shallow creek to collect water runoff and divert it into plant packed sunken swales to reduce reliance on mains water.

Nurturing Nature in the City © Caroline and Peter Clayton

Drought tolerant planting schemes also feature in Caroline and Peter Clayton’s Nurturing Nature in the City and Queenie Chan’s The Lunar Garden, whilst Inspired Earth Design have taken inspiration from the varied landscapes of America to include a desert themed area using dry, arid planting in America’s Wild presented by Trailfinders and Visit the USA.

A show garden inspired by the courtyard gardens of Charleston, South Carolina © Sadie May Stowell

The Wildlife Trusts: Renters’ Retreat garden is teeming with ideas of how those who rent properties can use their outside spaces to help tackle the nature and climate emergency. A flat pack inspired design that can be taken down and rebuilt easily utilises hügelkultur to create moisture holding beds that reduce watering needs. The garden also highlights the responsibility of landlords to provide rainwater harvesting systems to help reduce mains water use.

Helena Pettit, RHS Director of Gardens & Shows said: “Climatic extremes are becoming increasingly common in the UK and our green spaces will need to adapt to weather them. The gardens at RHS Hampton Court provide plenty of inspiration for visitors to try at home to help make their own gardens more resilient.”

Hurtigruten The Relation-Ship Garden © RHS /Max Parker-Smith

Other highlight of this year’s festival include a budget friendly garden which offers creative, cost-effective tips and ideas. Designed by Mark Lane, the RHS and BBC Morning Live Budget Friendly Garden will show ways to use household goods and equipment in the garden and includes the use of cheap and readily available drought-tolerant plants, as well as recycled materials such as scaffold boards, plant pots and pallets.  
 
Popular UK plantswoman and TV personality Carol Klein, who has been named RHS Iconic Horticultural Hero 2023, has created a garden which is a celebration of plants, inspired by nature and packed full of take-home ideas to inspire everyone to garden and have a go at propagating their own plants. Divided into six main habitats: wetland, woodland, hedgerow, meadow, moor and mountain and seaside, the garden will showcase some of the plants which thrive in these different settings.

RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2022 © RHS / Georgi Mabee

The Festival of Roses Marquee is full of some of the UK’s best rose growers including Peter Beales, Harkness, Fryer’s and Eastcroft Roses with a special Rose Garden by David Austin Roses.
 
The RHS Flower School with Flowers from the Farm returns to champion beautiful British Blooms with Floristry workshops and demonstrations from celebrity florists Simon Lycett and Shane Connolly, plus a mini flower farm is also being created giving visitors a taste of the flower farming process from ‘Plot to Vase’.  

RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2022 © RHS / Georgi Mabee

In the Plant Zone, there are thousands of plants to purchase from drought tolerant perennials and grasses to Dahlias, Gladioli and Summer Flowering Bulbs grown by 90 of the UK’s best growers in the Floral Marquee and Plant Village. 

If you or your group would like to enjoy a visit to the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival in 2024 as part of a garden tour of the United Kingdom, please do contact our friendly team today.