The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and BBC One’s The One Show are joining forces to launch My Chelsea Garden, a competition encouraging amateur gardeners across the nation to share images of their green spaces and growing efforts at home in search of the very best.
As part of the competition, the RHS and The One Show also want to know how people’s gardens are helping them at this time.
One winner from each category will receive four tickets for RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2021 and a special RHS Award commending their garden.
Competition judges are One Show Presenter Alex Jones, Monty Don, RHS Head of Shows judging, James Alexander Sinclair and Sue Biggs, RHS Director General.
The RHS and The One Show hope that people will also flood their social media feeds with positive images of plants and beautiful gardens to help ease anxiety and provide some respite in these challenging times, using the hashtag #mychelseagarden.
The RHS believes that there are thousands more people taking up gardening during lockdown and its advice pages have had 12m views since lockdown started.
The One Show presenter, Alex Jones says: “From window boxes and balconies to the more traditional outside space, I can’t wait to hear how growing and planting has been helping people get through this extraordinary time and am excited to see the results of everyone’s creative efforts.”
Sue Biggs, RHS Director General, says: “Plants, gardening, the natural world has never been so important to us. At the RHS we are acutely aware of the benefits that gardening and nurturing plants can have on our mental health and wellbeing.
“This competition with The One Show is a great way to encourage people to garden and grow and also reward some tremendous efforts and amazing indoor and outdoor gardens across the UK.”
People can enter the competition by visiting bbc.co.uk/theoneshow where you will also find the terms and privacy notice. They’ll be asked to submit one current picture of their garden in one of the four categories and say in up to 250 words how the garden they have submitted is helping them at this moment in time. The competition will open at 7pm on Friday 1 May 2020 and close at midnight on Monday 18 May 2020.