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The RHS and BBC Radio 2 Dog Garden

RHS Flower Shows · 2025

The RHS and BBC Radio 2 Dog Garden

Designed by Monty Don, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025

Monty Don’s first ever RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden: a relaxed, joyful space designed for dogs and the people who live with them. Form Plants supplied every plant, and Form founder Jamie Butterworth led the planting and project managed the build.

Project facts

Designer

Monty Don

Planting and build led by

Jamie Butterworth, Form Plants

Planting team

Form Plants with James & Co Landscapes

Hard landscaping

Paul Cameron Landscapes

Water features

Water Artisans

Partners

The RHS and BBC Radio 2, championed by Jo Whiley

Show

RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 2025

Planting

Around 80% of the garden

Legacy

Relocated to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, London

Form’s role

Plant supply for the whole garden, planting, build and project management

The project

The RHS and BBC Radio 2 Dog Garden celebrated two of the UK’s great loves, dogs and gardens. Designed by Monty Don and inspired by his own garden at Longmeadow and his dogs, Ned and Patti, it showed how a garden can be beautiful and still be a place where dogs are free to play, explore, cool off and rest.

Around 80% of the garden was planting, and it was proud, in Jamie’s words, to “wear its doggy heart on its doggy sleeve”. Its brick path was inscribed with the names of much-loved dogs belonging to RHS Ambassadors, Radio 2 presenters and friends of the garden.

Designed for dogs

  • Paths where dogs really run. Two narrow, intersecting brick paths follow the routes dogs naturally take, with hidden trails winding through deep borders.

  • A lawn made for rolling. A relaxed central lawn, deliberately a little worn and weedy, with daisies, dandelions and clover from RHS Garden Wisley woven into the turf to make it tougher and kinder to wildlife.

  • Shade and shelter. An old apple tree, field maple and hornbeam give dappled shade, and a doghouse with a well-loved sofa offers somewhere to curl up.

  • Water to drink and paddle in. A shallow stream for cooling off, a cattle trough that doubles as a water bowl, and a brass tap feeding a galvanised drinking bowl.

  • Tough, generous planting. Deep borders of resilient grasses and perennials, with tulips naturalised in long grass, a technique Monty uses at Longmeadow.

  • Pots with a story. Terracotta pots by Whichford Pottery, co-designed by Monty and Ned, complete with a paw print.

What Form did

Form Plants supplied the garden in its entirety, from the field maples, hornbeam and multi-stem Cornus kousa to more than 70 perennials, ferns and grasses.

Jamie Butterworth worked alongside Monty to bring his design to life, leading the planting and project managing the build, with the Form team and James & Co Landscapes planting the garden on site at Chelsea under his direction. Paul Cameron Landscapes were the landscape contractor, carrying out all the hard landscaping and building the doghouse, and Water Artisans created the stream, trough and all the water for the garden. At the end of the week, the RHS presented Monty and Jamie with a tongue-in-cheek “Best Dog Garden” trophy.

After the show

The RHS gifted the garden to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, where it was rebuilt at the London centre as a calm, sensory garden for rescue dogs to exercise, train and relax, and for the staff and volunteers who care for them. Plants that could be harmful to dogs were left out of the relocated garden.

Photograph coming soon

The RHS and BBC Radio 2 Dog Garden

Photograph coming soon

The RHS and BBC Radio 2 Dog Garden

The planting

A relaxed, layered mix of trees, hedging, shrubs and more than 70 perennials, ferns and grasses, all supplied by Form Plants.

Trees and multi-stems

  • Cornus kousa var. chinensis (Chinese dogwood)

  • Cornus kousa ‘Milky Way’ (kousa dogwood)

  • Acer campestre (field maple)

  • Carpinus betulus (hornbeam)

  • Corylus avellana ‘Atropurpurea’ (purple hazel)

  • Corylus avellana (common hazel)

Hedging

  • Carpinus betulus (hornbeam)

  • Fagus sylvatica ‘Atropurpurea’ (copper beech)

Shrubs and climbers

  • Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’ (yellow Banksian rose)

  • Viburnum carlcephalum (fragrant viburnum)

  • Viburnum opulus ‘Roseum’ (snowball bush)

  • Ligustrum vulgare (wild privet)

  • Hamamelis (witch hazel)

  • Prunus spinosa (blackthorn)

  • Rosa canina (dog rose)

Perennials, ferns and grasses

  • Agastache ‘Black Adder’ (giant hyssop)

  • Agastache foeniculum (anise hyssop)

  • Alchemilla erythropoda (lady’s mantle)

  • Amsonia ‘Blue Ice’ (bluestar)

  • Amsonia illustris (shining bluestar)

  • Amsonia tabernaemontana ‘Storm Cloud’ (bluestar)

  • Artemisia abrotanum (southernwood)

  • Artemisia ludoviciana ‘Valerie Finnis’ (white sage)

  • Aruncus dioicus ‘Horatio’ (goat’s beard)

  • Asarum europaeum (European wild ginger)

  • Asplenium trichomanes (maidenhair spleenwort)

  • Baptisia ‘Blueberry Sundae’ (false indigo)

  • Baptisia ‘Burgundy Blast’ (false indigo)

  • Baptisia ‘Twilite Prairieblues’ (false indigo)

  • Betonica officinalis ‘Hummelo’ (betony)

  • Blechnum penna-marina (alpine water fern)

  • Borago officinalis (borage)

  • Briza media (quaking grass)

  • Brunnera macrophylla ‘Betty Bowring’ (Siberian bugloss)

  • Bunium bulbocastanum (great pignut)

  • Calamagrostis canadensis (bluejoint grass)

  • Calamintha nepeta ‘Blue Cloud’ (calamint)

  • Campanula portenschlagiana (wall bellflower)

  • Catananche caerulea (Cupid’s dart)

  • Cenolophium denudatum (Baltic parsley)

  • Centranthus ruber ‘Albus’ (white valerian)

  • Centranthus ruber ‘Coccineus’ (red valerian)

  • Actaea simplex ‘Brunette’ (bugbane)

  • Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’ (plume thistle)

  • Cornus canadensis (bunchberry)

  • Darmera peltata (umbrella plant)

  • Daucus carota (wild carrot)

  • Deschampsia flexuosa (wavy hair grass)

  • Dipsacus fullonum (common teasel)

  • Epimedium grandiflorum ‘Lilafee’ (barrenwort)

  • Foeniculum vulgare (fennel)

  • Fragaria vesca (wild strawberry)

  • Galium odoratum (sweet woodruff)

  • Geranium ‘Orion’ (cranesbill)

  • Geranium ‘Rozanne’ (cranesbill)

  • Geranium phaeum ‘Samobor’ (dusky cranesbill)

  • Geranium pratense ‘Mrs Kendall Clark’ (meadow cranesbill)

  • Geranium robertianum (herb Robert)

  • Geum ‘Princess Juliana’ (avens)

  • Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ (avens)

  • Geum rivale ‘Mai Tai’ (water avens)

  • Hosta ‘Devon Green’ (plantain lily)

  • Iris sibirica ‘Caesar’s Brother’ (Siberian iris)

  • Lamium orvala (balm-leaved archangel)

  • Lamium orvala ‘Album’ (white balm-leaved archangel)

  • Linaria purpurea ‘Canon Went’ (purple toadflax)

  • Luzula nivea (snowy woodrush)

  • Lychnis coronaria ‘Gardeners’ World’ (rose campion)

  • Myrrhis odorata (sweet cicely)

  • Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’ (catmint)

  • Nepeta govaniana (yellow catmint)

  • Origanum ‘Rosenkuppel’ (ornamental oregano)

  • Pachysandra terminalis (Japanese spurge)

  • Phlomis russeliana (Turkish sage)

  • Phlomis tuberosa (tuberous Jerusalem sage)

  • Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’ (tuberous Jerusalem sage)

  • Plantago lanceolata (ribwort plantain)

  • Ranunculus repens (creeping buttercup)

  • Rodgersia aesculifolia (fingerleaf rodgersia)

  • Salvia ‘Crystal Blue’ (sage)

  • Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ (woodland sage)

  • Salvia nemorosa ‘Schwellenburg’ (woodland sage)

  • Sanguisorba menziesii (burnet)

  • Saxifraga × urbium (London pride)

  • Scrophularia nodosa (common figwort)

  • Sesleria autumnalis (autumn moor grass)

  • Papaver ‘Laurens Grape’ (poppy)

Gallery

Photograph coming soon

Photograph coming soon

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