Since its inception 110 years ago the Chelsea Flower Show has been tailored for serious minded gardeners and society figures wanting to take part in the social season.
So hostile were organisers to children that those under five are barred and babes in arms are “allowed but discouraged”. But The Royal Horticultural Society has decided to break with tradition next year with its “No Adults Allowed” garden, its first designed by and for children.
Pupils at Sulivan Primary School in Fulham briefed a professional landscaper to create a garden with a slide that transports people beneath a pond into an underground den filled with hammocks.
Parents thinking that this will be a perfect day out for their offspring may wish to start saving now: tickets for the show cost £90 and there are no concessions for children.
The pupils who announced the garden as part of the society’s autumn briefing said that they had presented their designs to Harry Holding, who won a medal at Chelsea last year.
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One of the girls said that the class of ten-year-old children were allowed to design whatever they wished “and Harry would find a way to put it into the garden”.
Another said: “I think that the best thing about doing this is when we were writing things down on paper it’s actually going to go into the garden. We’re not just drawing — we’re doing something real.”
Asked how they were going to keep adults out, they suggested “a big sign saying ‘Warning’ even though there won’t be anything in there that’s dangerous”.
“We could have an archway with a big spider web to catch [tall people].”
Holding said that the children had come up with “mad and wacky ideas” that he had to translate into a workable garden with an “Alice in Wonderland feel”.
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“There are carnivorous plants, which is a big hit. You arrive at this natural den. The way you get into the den is by sliding down into the water, into this subterranean space looking out over the water.”
The slide in the garden, which will be taken away after the show and reconstructed at the school, will cut through the water into a den fitted with platforms, which will have windows looking out under the water and into soil containing burrowing animals. Children who enter will leave through a secret hatch.
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Holding said that some ideas “weren’t going to make the cut”, including a crocodile-infested underground lake into which visitors would fall through hidden trapdoors.
“We found out we could only dig 1.5 metres,” he said.
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Other ideas that he had to drop included hollow tree stumps that featured slides as a way of reaching an underground garden and “lots of rivers and bridges”.
“It’s quite a challenging brief. The whole category is joy but it also wants to be serious — children do need access to nature.”
Clare Matterson, the director-general of the RHS, admitted that the idea was a risk.
“Slightly dangerously, we said to the children: you need to name your garden, and they have. Whether we’ll actually be allowed into the garden, we’ll have to see. It’s going to take some serious negotiating.”
The children said that adults would be allowed to see the garden from a distance.
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“I think you’re going to be able to peek over the wall,” one said.
