The annual event with the extraordinary gardens, open to the public on Tuesday, expects some 145,000 visitors by Saturday. King Charles III and Queen Camilla passed through on Monday, as did Princess Kate Middleton of Wales.

In 2013, women accounted for 27% of medal candidates. This percentage is this year 58%, and 100% in the category "balconies and pots", created in 2021 to allow the emergence of new talents through projects less expensive than the main sponsored gardens that make the reputation of the famous flower show.

"There is still a lot to do to increase diversity in horticulture, but it is an encouraging step to have a category in Chelsea with so many women," says Helena Pettit, director of gardens and shows for the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) which organises the event.

Especially since the only way to learn in the United Kingdom was to start as an apprentice in a garden at 12/14 years old, housed on site in unisex barracks, which prohibited any access of girls to the profession.

It was not until 1893 and the creation of an official diploma by the RHS that the profession opened up to young women, at a time when they were more numerous than men, and that it was therefore necessary to find a "respectable" profession for those from the middle class, explains Ms. Davison to AFP.

But when the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew allowed its first planters to wear knickerbockers like boys in the late 1890s, the shock was such that the experiment was quickly abandoned. And when a certain Olive Harrisson came out on top in horticultural exams a few years later, she was denied a scholarship to work in a garden, on the grounds that she was a woman.

Queen consort Camilla at the Chelsea Flower Show on May 22, 2023 in London © TOBY MELVILLE / POOL / AFP

"The boom of these women gardeners is not appreciated by men, but some manage to make careers," says Fiona Davison, author of a forthcoming book on avant-garde planters before the First World War.

Forgotten Pioneers

This year, the Chelsea Flower Show celebrates eight of these sometimes forgotten pioneers, around a floral installation inspired by yin and yang, "a nod to how women can embody softness and strength," explains to AFP its manager Pollyanna Wilkinson. The plantations are inspired by a traditional English cottage, and were all produced by women.

Among the pioneers honored were garden designer Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), novelist, poet and gardener Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), also a lover of Virginia Woolf, Indian scientist Janaki Ammal (1897-1984) and gardener Beth Chatto (1923-2018), a ten-time gold medallist at the Chelsea Flower Show but whom a judge once wanted to disqualify, explaining that her plants were all weeds.

Plants and flowers in the garden of Centrepoint, prepared for the Chelsea Flower Show, May 22, 2023 in London © Ben Stansall / AFP

"They often gardened to improve the world, to make a difference, with a social purpose," says Fiona Davison. "They gardened in cities, created public parks, worked in schools... They were looking for spaces to make a difference, because they had no political power."

Today Beth Chatto is more than ever a reference.

"She was ahead of her time, very aware of the plants in their environment," says Davison. "She had a more flexible vision of what a garden can be, was willing to use wild plants (...) She did it at Chelsea in the 1950s and 60s," at a time when magazines were advocating weedkillers and perfection.

"That was his philosophy, and that's the trend today, including at the Chelsea Flower Show."

© 2023 AFP