‘Forest bathing’ garden wins Chelsea Best in Show for first-time competitor

A “forest bathing” garden has won the RHS Chelsea Best in Show for a first-time competitor.

The Japanese practice of forest bathing, or shinrin yoku, encourages people to focus on the sights and sounds of the woodland as well as their breathing to help de-stress.

Ula Maria won the highest prize at the Chelsea Flower Show on Tuesday for her forest-bathing-inspired garden for the charity Muscular Dystrophy UK.

The garden includes 40 birch trees, inspired by the patterns of muscles under a microscope, to create a grove.

It is underplanted with woodland-edge style plants such as melica altissima Alba grass, with just a few pops of colour from mayflower and iris.

The winning garden reflects a broader trend at this year’s show for gardens that focus on the restful impact of greenery rather than vibrant colours.

The garden is one of 15 at this year’s show that is supported by Project Giving Back, set up by two anonymous RHS members to financially back charities to appear at the event.

Ms Maria, 31, told The Telegraph last week that gardeners were “leaning more towards trying to understand how gardens can benefit us, and look into the calming and therapeutic effects of gardens”.

She added: “What we find is that being in those soothing atmospheres such as a forest, just makes you feel calmer.

“Forest bathing helps reduce the heart rate and calms our nervous system. Trees release essential oils, which have phytoncides, which again, help with physical wellbeing.

“So I just think if we can achieve a really calm, green colour palette, it just naturally makes us feel more calm and relaxed in the gardens.”

The designer has credited her love of gardening to her childhood in rural Lithuania.

“I used to spend every summer being immersed in the garden, so I feel this innate connection to nature,” she told the BBC. “I was fortunate enough to grow up in a landscape surrounded by meadows.”

In 2017, Ms Maria was named the RHS Young Designer of the Year in 2017 at the Tatton Park flower show for her “Studio Unwired” garden.

On receiving the RHS Chelsea Best in Show, Maria said: “It’s incredible, I can’t believe it, it’s amazing. I’m so proud!”

RHS Chair of Show Garden Judges Liz Nicholson said: “Ula’s design is a wonderful slice of forest edge brought to the heart of the RHS Chelsea showground.

“It is immersive, relaxing and calming. Its use of flint, which is a difficult material to work with, is notable, creating possibly the biggest insect habitat I’ve ever seen.

“Coupled with faultless planting to make an innovative, artistic, and precise garden, it is a clear winner.”

Rainwater-harvesting pavilion

Meanwhile, the best Sanctuary Garden was awarded to Burma Skincare Initiative Spirit of Partnership Garden, designed by Helen Olney in her first ever garden design away from her usual day job as creative director of BBC Sounds.

The last time a first-time winner won Best in Show was in 2022 when Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt won for their controversial Rewilding Britain garden, which used native plants to create an imagined landscape in south-west England after the reintroduction of beavers.

Ms Maria was up against competition from her own mentor, veteran Chelsea winner Tom Stuart-Smith, whose National Garden Scheme design also used woodland planting and had been tipped for the top prize.

Mr Stuart-Smith was awarded a gold medal for the garden, which included a timber hut and a neutral colour palette and also highlighted woodland style planting.

Among the other gold winners were the WaterAid garden by Tom Massey, which incorporated a rainwater-harvesting pavilion, and Robert Myers’ garden which recreates a wall from the churchyard at St James’s Piccadilly.

More than 150,000 visitors are expected to attend the Chelsea Flower Show this year before it ends on Friday. Attendees on Tuesday were forced to open their umbrellas as a two-day downpour began.