RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025 · Gold Medal
Room to Breathe.
A hospital garden for the Tuberous Sclerosis Association, co-designed with Catherine Gibbon — and a Gold Medal at the 2025 RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
Why this garden
It began with a hospital corridor and nowhere to go.
My son Alex has Tuberous Sclerosis Complex, and at four years old he had brain surgery. The thing I remember as clearly as anything clinical is how little there was outside — nowhere to stand in the fresh air, gather yourself and go back in. When you are the parent or the carer, the hours between the appointments are the hardest part, and hospitals rarely give you anywhere to put them.
Catherine Gibbon and I had already worked together on rejuvenating gardens at Amersham Hospital, so we knew what a small, well-considered outdoor space does for the people using it. Room to Breathe took that idea to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show: a garden designed not for the patient in the bed, but for the people sitting beside it.
It was designed for the Tuberous Sclerosis Association — the charity that supports families living with TSC — and sponsored by Taylor Wessing. It was built by The Landscape Group, and in May 2025 it was awarded a Gold Medal in the Container Gardens category.
The design
Sanctuary, drawn at the scale of one person.
Everything in the garden answers the same brief: give a carer somewhere to breathe for ten minutes. What the RHS description of the garden sets out is exactly what we drew.
A cocoon to sit in
A cocoon-like feature chair — somewhere enclosing enough that you can stop performing for a moment and simply be on your own.
An angled path and a pergola
The route through the garden is angled rather than direct, and a pergola gives overhead shelter — so the space feels held rather than exposed.
Green as the default
Evergreens and textural foliage carry the garden for a long season, with shades of green doing the calming work rather than colour.
White to lift, burgundy for depth
White flowers illuminate the darker corners; burgundy foliage and flowers give the planting contrast and weight.
The record
The garden, on paper.
- Show
- RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025
- Award
- Gold Medal
- Category
- Container Gardens
- Designers
- Jen Donnelly and Catherine Gibbon
- Charity
- The Tuberous Sclerosis Association (TSA)
- Sponsor
- Taylor Wessing
- Built by
- The Landscape Group
- Afterwards
- Elements relocated to Amersham Hospital, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
Every detail above is taken from the RHS's own record of the garden. Read it on rhs.org.uk.
Where it lives now
The best part happened after the show closed.
Show gardens are famously temporary. This one wasn't: elements of Room to Breathe have been relocated to Amersham Hospital, part of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust — the hospital where Catherine and I had already been working on the gardens, and the reason the idea existed in the first place. Patients, staff and families use it now, which is a far better outcome than a medal.