LONDON — Sarah Eberle won the Best in Show prize at the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London for a garden designed for the Campaign to Protect Rural England. The garden features a giant, sleeping woman carved from a fallen tree, still pools, and soft fronds of grass and wildflowers.
The garden was designed to represent the often overlooked countryside at the edge of towns and cities, which the Campaign to Protect Rural England describes as vital green spaces that connect people to nature. The judging panel described the garden as "mesmerising."
"Sarah's garden combines elements of myth and remarkable theatre. The planting speaks to an exceptionally rare sense of atmosphere, created through a clear connection to the urban and the countryside. Unexpected beauty is found in the concrete drain repurposed from an agricultural accessory into a mesmerising water feature using common duckweed," said Chris Bailes, chair of the judging panel.
Eberle is the Royal Horticultural Society's most decorated gardener, with 14 RHS Chelsea gold medals and four Best In category wins, the most of any designer at the show. She is one of only three women to have won Best in Show at the Chelsea Flower Show as a solo designer in its 100-year history.
"I am thrilled to bits to receive Garden of the Year. This garden's mission is very personal to me. I am a country girl through and through so I embody the same message and beliefs that the Campaign to Protect Rural England and this garden holds," Eberle said. Eberle has also said that she thinks more women don't do Chelsea because they have a better life balance, that it takes over your life if you're not careful, and that garden designing is not the only profession where men outnumber women at the top.
Writer Clare Coulson has questioned the representation of women among designers in a podcast interview. "Every year I am completely perplexed by the lack of female designers at Chelsea, at least on the more 'showy' main avenue gardens. It's a conversation I have a lot with designers and gardeners. Last year Jo Thompson's garden was the only Main Avenue garden designed by a woman," Coulson said. "This year, of nine main avenue show gardens, there are two female designers. Even a garden designed to foreground specifically female cancers is designed by a man."