Show Gardens - Jo Thompson Landscape & Garden Design

The Archers 75th Anniversary Garden RHS Badminton Flower Show

admin — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 08:00:13 +0000

The Archers 75th Anniversary Garden

RHS Badminton Flower Show 2026

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of The Archers, Jo Thompson is designing a special feature garden inspired by Bridge Farm for the RHS Badminton Flower Show, taking place from 8–12 July 2026.

The Archers 75th Anniversary Garden will celebrate the long and rich tradition of The Archers, while also reflecting the changes in land use and farming methods over the past 75 years.

The garden will bring to life one of the programme’s most important locations, Bridge Farm, reimagined as a pioneering, productive, sustainable and welcoming space. Family-centred and optimistic in spirit, it will reflect Bridge Farm’s commitment to organic farming and will celebrate the joy of intergenerational gardening as a place for all ages to enjoy.

Following The Archers 2025 storyline in which a sewage spill flooded Bridge Farm and
caused significant damage to the family business, the garden is conceived as a hopeful front garden, lovingly rebuilt after the spill. To closely align with the on-air drama, throughout 2026 there will be references in the programme to the replanting of the garden at Bridge Farm, some of which will be reflected in the garden shown at RHS Badminton. The 12m x 18m RHS feature garden (not judged) will include Bridge Farm’s visitor entrance and notice board with bunting and pots; orchard fruit trees growing within a wildflower meadow; a cheese-making area; a potting bench with branded Bridge Farm vegetable boxes; and a wildlife pond.

“This year The Archers is celebrating a truly incredible milestone – still one of the BBC’s most popular programmes, for the past 75 years it has been reflecting rural life in the UK. The RHS garden will be a wonderful opportunity for fans to see Bridge Farm brought to life as never before – we can’t wait.”
Jeremy Howe, Editor, The Archers

“I’ve been a long-time Archers fan, so creating a Bridge Farm garden to mark the programme’s 75th anniversary has been an absolute joy. The Archers world feels incredibly familiar to so many people, and everyone has their own idea of what Bridge Farm looks like – which has made it both exciting and a little daunting, in the best possible way.”
Jo Thompson

Jo Thompson announces the Archers 75th Anniversary Garden at RHS Badminton Flower Show.

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The Glasshouse Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025

admin — Tue, 20 May 2025 10:20:39 +0000

The Glasshouse Garden

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025
Gold Medal winner

Designed by Jo Thompson, the only female designer of a large show garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025, The Glasshouse Garden was a bold, immersive space celebrating feminine strength, second chances, and the healing power of nature. The garden was unveiled at the show, where it was awarded a Gold Medal in recognition of its exceptional design and execution.

The design was inspired by the women of The Glasshouse, a pioneering social enterprise supporting women leaving prison through horticultural training, resettlement support and employment. With a 0% reoffending rate, The Glasshouse programme transforms lives, offering a positive and purposeful future for women in custody, their families and wider society.

The garden’s colour palette was inspired by the idea of “strong beauty”, blending deep reds, pinks and crimsons with soft peach and apricot hues. Roses took centre stage, including varieties such as ‘Tuscany Superb’, ‘Wild Rover’ and ‘Emma Bridgewater’. River birch (Betula nigra) and Zelkova serrata formed a light, delicate canopy, with the peeling bark of Betula nigra, in warm peachy tones, echoing and complementing the pavilion’s softly tinted panels.

“The planting combinations in the garden of Jo Thompson are divine.”
Clare Foster, Gardens Editor, House and Garden

At the heart of the design was a translucent elliptical pavilion, created in collaboration with Hollaway Studio, formed from recycled acrylic in a soft, four-colour botanical tint. This elegant structure sat amongst the rich, layered planting and offered a safe space for reflection, connection and support. A flowing stone rill wove through the garden, ending in a tranquil pool.

“The Glasshouse Garden at Chelsea Flower Show is a masterclass in bold, meaningful colour,”
Homes & Gardens

Following the show, the garden was relocated to HMP Downview, a women’s closed prison in Surrey, where it now provides a permanent space for horticultural training and rehabilitation, supporting women as they plan for release through The Glasshouse programme.

“Romantic, classic, elegant”
Adam Frost, BBC Chelsea

“No garden has more beautiful planting this year than Jo Thompson’s creation, where a plethora of roses create a wonderful mix of sight and scent.”
Country Life

Watch ‘The Story of The Glasshouse Garden‘.
A behind the scenes look at the making of this RHS Chelsea Gold Medal Winning Garden.

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RHS Rosemoor – Winter Garden

admin — Fri, 09 May 2025 15:17:30 +0000

RHS Rosemoor

The Winter Garden

RHS Garden Rosemoor’s newly expanded Winter Garden is a major new landscape designed by award-winning garden designer Jo Thompson. The project marks one of the most significant developments at Rosemoor in recent years, redefining this part of the garden as a destination for winter interest, structure and naturalistic planting design.

Planting is both naturalistic and romantic, with a focus on texture, silhouette and subtle winter colour. Mature trees, including birch, Japanese maples, Catalpa and the rare Fraxinus profunda, provide instant height and atmosphere. Drifts of grasses and herbaceous perennials weave between them, their soft movement animated by low winter light. Dogwoods, willows, daphnes and Hydrangea paniculata offer structure, scent and seasonal highlights, while the birch glade forms a quiet tapestry of whites, bronzes and pinks from cultivars such as Betula ermanii ‘Daleside’ and Betula utilis subsp. albosinensis ‘China Rose’ and ‘Nepalese Orange’.

Jo Thompson’s design brings renewed structure and flow to the Winter Garden, creating a landscape that reveals itself gradually as you move through it. Vistas are opened, clearings framed and paths positioned to capture the low winter sun, illuminating bark, stems and frosted seedheads at key moments.

Sustainability is embedded throughout the scheme. Approximately 170 tonnes of concrete from former garden features were excavated, crushed on site and reused as hardcore within the new design. The expanded planting palette: 96 trees, 234 grasses, 260 shrubs, 1,120 herbaceous plants and 1,612 bulbs has been composed for long-term resilience, ecological value and year-round interest.

The Winter Garden offers a sequence of atmospheric spaces where structure, bark and silhouettes take centre stage. As frost, low sun and winter shadow shift across the planting, visitors will experience the quiet drama and beauty that define Jo Thompson’s approach to winter landscape design.

Photography by: Jason Ingram, Guy Harrop and Mark Bolton.

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‘I Live with Nature’ Show Garden

admin — Wed, 15 May 2024 08:58:04 +0000

'I Live with Nature' Show Garden
GBA Shenzhen Flower Show 2024

Awarded the Grand Gold Award at the GBA Shenzhen Flower Show 2024, the highest award available at the horticultural show, the I Live with Nature garden is a celebration of the wonder of nature in an urban setting and included a series of layered, experiential spaces, undulating pathways and natural ponds.

The garden explored the harmony which can be created between built form and the natural world, including the beautiful brick pavilion at its centre. The walls of the pavilion both lean into the central space and also out over the planting and into the garden which surrounds it, creating moments of marvel and wonder. The increasing gaps towards the top of the structure create openings so the planting can be viewed from the inside. The pavilion speaks of the balance between urban life and nature and its blurring boundaries if we ‘lean into nature’.

The brick pavilion was created using Augmented Reality (AR) technology, thanks to a collaboration with Princeton University’s Form Finding Lab and researchers from the University of Bergamo and Pegaso University. To construct the pavilion an AR headset was used by a skilled mason, helping to guide the placement of each brick. The technology allowed for a better accuracy of the positioning of the bricks so the gravity-defying geometries and leans could be achieved. The construction was completed in real time, eliminating time inefficiencies and error and therefore any material waste. AR is an exciting merging of traditional bricklaying methods with new technology and a more sustainable way to build.

“I am so excited to have used this impressive new technology to create our I Live with Nature garden. Having seen this technique used to create a vaulted arch for the Venice architecture biennale, I was eager to use it for the first time in a horticultural show garden. For construction in Shenzhen we used the technology completely remotely, which means we were able to design and construct the garden in the space of two and a half months.”

Jo Thompson

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The Wildlife Garden RHS Hampton Court 2023

admin — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 17:06:15 +0000

The Wildlife Garden RHS Hampton Court 2023

The RHS invited Jo and team to create a wildlife sanctuary for RHS Hampton Court. The garden was inspired by the idea of an ‘accidental’ landscape and is imagined as an urban corridor reclaimed by nature. The garden shows how wildlife can naturally thrive in what are often thought of as unexpected, unlikely and forgotten places: the landscapes in-between.

The garden is bounded by a hawthorn hedge – a star species for wildlife. Hawthorn’s spring blossom provides food for pollinators, while its spiky branches act as an ideal nesting spot for birds. Its bright red berries are an important food source in the winter months. Other plants include Angelica sylvestris ‘Vicar’s Mead’, Gleditsia triacanthos ‘Sunburst’, Campanula lactiflora ‘Loddon Anna’ and Achillea millefolium.

Photography: Anna Omiotek-Tott

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BBC Springwatch Garden, RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2019

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 15:59:17 +0000

BBC Springwatch Garden, RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2019

Wildlife Garden

Jo’s BBC Springwatch Garden at Hampton Court shows how small changes can have a big impact and provide vital support for wildlife.

Recent research shows that private gardens in Britain cover an area bigger than all of the country’s nature reserves combined and could offer crucial resources for wildlife.

Working with wildlife gardener Kate Bradbury, Jo’s garden showed visitors how they can re-wild their gardens and take steps to halt the decline of the UK’s wildlife population, using a range of practical design elements.

Key to the design is wildlife corridors which allow insects, birds and mammals to travel from garden to garden in search of food and shelter to help our ever-fragile species survive and thrive.

Not only does the lack of hard division between the gardens promote the idea of pathways for wildlife but also promotes the notion of working together for our environment and wildlife.

“I want to encourage people to come together in their communities to chat about their gardens, discuss how they can potentially work together and foster a sense of community in people, as well as supporting wildlife. Gardening is a great way to open a conversation with your neighbours and having good relationships and getting outdoors can boost our health and wellbeing – a win-win as far I am concerned.”

The first garden, owned by an older garden lover who isn’t able to garden as much as they used to, offers a cottage feel with untamed and wilder planting full of nettles providing the perfect habitat for wildlife. There are also log piles for beetles and a nestled bench to sit and watch the birds at the bird feeder and bath.

The second garden is a lawn with daisies and clover, which forms the central garden, ideal for families. Curved bends create a natural feel and a dry-stone bench left without a coating will encourage bugs to live and nest amongst its gaps.

Meanwhile, behind the seating area there is a curved palisade inspired by Kate Bradbury’s own summerhouse and a pond trickles as a stream through into the next neighbour’s garden.

Belonging to a younger couple, the third garden features formal perennial planting rising from wildflower turf. Formal topiary punctuates the space as a smart Belgian paver terrace sits into a gentle slope at the end providing an area to relax, while smart timber insect hotels are situated along its border.

Photography by Rachel Warne.

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The Wedgwood Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 15:41:22 +0000

The Wedgwood Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019

Jo Thompson’s garden for Wedgwood; a breathtaking blend of industrialism and romanticism.

Etruria, built in 1769, was the pioneering Staffordshire village that Josiah Wedgwood built for his workers ten years after the founding of The Wedgwood business, which was known as ‘the factory on the garden’ as it has plentiful green space alongside a canal.

Water was fundamental to the functionality of Wedgwood’s production and transformation to an international industry. The Wedgwood Garden references this with a watercourse that flows through multiple levels, unifying and delineating differing areas, with a trickling stream connecting key elements and echoing the canals and watercourses of Staffordshire.

Jo was inspired by classical architecture whilst living in Rome. Standing proudly above the garden and beautifully framing the space, are interlinked arched pavilions that echo the foundations of the past while delivering a fresh new approach. The pavilions related ever-changing framed views providing different perspectives of the creative landscape.

The variety of angles is brought together by repeated use of materials in the garden, with subtly contrasting surfaces and textures. They are used alongside delicate decorative metalwork and artfully placed sculptures highlighting key junctions and motifs.

Planting

A dynamic, natural and untamed scheme, with mass plantings that are both textural and structural. The planting palette features soft lemons, creams and peach with accents of fresh green, zingy lime and rich, deep claret.

Photography by Clive Nichols. Videos by James Bloomfield Videography.

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The Wedgwood Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 23:21:36 +0000

The Wedgwood Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018

A garden pavilion

Gold medal. A striking space for a strong, successful woman for the Wedgwood Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018.

Nature, flowers and horticulture have always been at the heart of Wedgwood’s design work and this has been Jo’s source of inspiration for the garden. Stone, streams and majestic weeping willows all work together to create a peaceful, relaxing entertaining area.

The centrepiece of the garden is the exquisite and complex, sculptural pavilion which represents the curves of femininity and innovation at the same time. It sweeps through and over the garden, with an almost imperceptible lightness.

Inspiration for the pavilion was drawn from renowned sculptor Barbara Hepworth’s delicate Winged Figure, crafted in 1961 for the flagship John Lewis store in Oxford Street. The sweeping lines of Hepworth’s String Figure, described in art literature as ‘rejecting the weight and solidity of male forebears’, are also referenced in the weightlessness of the bronze structure.
The curved structure was a collaborative project with ‘The Seduction of Curves’ author Allan McRobie and the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

Below the sculpture sits a pond with York stone stepping stones, leading to a terrace with stone seat and coffee table, hewn from the same boulder . From here the whole garden can be admired: there is a view through to a delicate stream which appears to come from a spring in one of the vast York stone boulders at the other end of the garden.

Photography by Jo Thompson and Marianne Majerus.

BBC TWO - The Wedgwood Garden, designed by Jo Thompson

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Chelsea Barracks Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 23:20:38 +0000

Chelsea Barracks Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

A public garden

Gold medal-winning show garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Meticulously researching this garden on behalf of the client, our discovery that one of London’s lost rivers ran under this part of Chelsea, inspired the dramatic yet restful water feature in the form of a majestic water wall flowing into an undulating rill which then flows through the garden. Combining perfectly with exquisite planting and bespoke seating areas, the communal garden provides a relaxing and beautiful recreational space.

This garden was relocated to the Royal British Legion Industries village, where it provides a welcoming communal space for residents and visitors. Thought-provoking sculptures were commissioned from Barbara Myers. The benches were our third collaboration with Gareth Neal.

Photography by Rachel Warne.

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Natural Swimming Pool, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 20:37:30 +0000

Natural Swimming Pool, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

A writer’s retreat

This romantic garden is a quintessentially British restorative retreat, where its owner can unwind, away from the hustle and bustle of city living.

The 2015 M&G Garden featured a two-storey oak framed building inspired by the garden retreats of, amongst others, Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, Dylan Thomas and Roald Dahl. A large natural swimming pond was edged with water-loving plants, and surrounded by a woodland of river birches and acers. This is all nestled within planting beds of tumbling roses and peonies in a palette of greens, punctuated by soft pinks, lavender blues and creams, with a touch of orange. A bespoke sculpture of Purbeck stone was created for the garden by Tom Stogdon.

The relaxing atmosphere was enhanced by seating from Gareth Neal, floral designs styled by Flora Starkey and styling by Kendra Wilson.

Partially covered by trees and lush planting, the M&G Garden design for 2015 drew on local influences: from the vernacular architecture features synonymous with the Sussex and Kent countryside where Jo currently lives, to the use of Purbeck stone at the far end of the swimming pond owing to her childhood in Dorset.

Style – Traditional British
Location – London, UK
Size – 220 sq m

Photography by Katy Donaldson.

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Show Gardens - Jo Thompson Landscape & Garden Design

The Archers 75th Anniversary Garden RHS Badminton Flower Show

The Archers 75th Anniversary Garden

RHS Badminton Flower Show 2026

The Glasshouse Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025

The Glasshouse Garden

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025 Gold Medal winner

RHS Rosemoor – Winter Garden

RHS Rosemoor

The Winter Garden

‘I Live with Nature’ Show Garden

'I Live with Nature' Show Garden GBA Shenzhen Flower Show 2024

The Wildlife Garden RHS Hampton Court 2023

The Wildlife Garden RHS Hampton Court 2023

BBC Springwatch Garden, RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2019

BBC Springwatch Garden, RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2019

Wildlife Garden

Photography by Rachel Warne.

The Wedgwood Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019

The Wedgwood Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019

Jo Thompson’s garden for Wedgwood; a breathtaking blend of industrialism and romanticism.

Planting

Photography by Clive Nichols. Videos by James Bloomfield Videography.

The Wedgwood Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018

The Wedgwood Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018

A garden pavilion

Photography by Jo Thompson and Marianne Majerus.

BBC TWO - The Wedgwood Garden, designed by Jo Thompson

Chelsea Barracks Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Chelsea Barracks Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016

A public garden

Gold medal-winning show garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Photography by Rachel Warne.

Natural Swimming Pool, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Natural Swimming Pool, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

A writer’s retreat

This romantic garden is a quintessentially British restorative retreat, where its owner can unwind, away from the hustle and bustle of city living.

Photography by Katy Donaldson.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025
Gold Medal winner

'I Live with Nature' Show Garden
GBA Shenzhen Flower Show 2024