The Hospice UK Garden of Compassion at RHS Chelsea 2025

The Hospice UK Garden of Compassion

Designed by multi award-winning designer Tom Hoblyn, the garden will celebrate the important role played by hospice gardens in end of life care across the UK.

Patients at the end of life often express a wish to enjoy the outdoors in their final weeks and following the show, the Hospice UK Garden of Compassion will be relocated to St Cuthbert’s Hospice in Durham.

Tom's inspiration: the Mediterranean landscape

Tom has taken inspiration for the garden from his plant hunting trips in the mountains of Mallorca, where the ancient Olive Houses are built around monumental boulders, embracing nature’s raw beauty and rooting themselves firmly in the rocky landscape.

While Tom’s naturalistic design may challenge the traditional notion of a hospice garden, the design has been carefully curated. Tom worked closely with hospice occupational therapists, to ensure accessibility for all and easy access for both a wheelchair and a hospital bed.

A wild and sensory exploration

The garden’s wide and gently sloping paths allow for a tranquil navigation through each distinct space, encouraging a deeply sensory exploration and connection.

The garden offers a choice of communal and secluded spaces, providing hospice patients, their families and staff, with opportunities for gathering, quiet solitude, or remembrance.

Plants never seen at RHS Chelsea before

Tom’s design offers year-round interest, showcasing specimen trees such as Arbutus andrachne – Grecian strawberry tree and Pinus pinea – stone pine, and an array of colourful and fragrant, climate-tolerant plants, including some species never seen at RHS Chelsea before.

Tom has grown a selection of the specialist plants himself, some from seed he collected on his planting hunting expeditions to the Mediterranean. These include the annual yellow umbel Malabaila aurea.

Pictured: Hunnemannia fumariifolia

a series of sculpted Roman cement free water bowls that provide a gentle sound of flowing water

Artisan crafted features

Striking hand-crafted garden features have been commissioned from UK artisans using textural, reclaimed and sustainable materials, sourced from within a 50-mile radius of St Cuthbert’s Hospice in Durham.

These include a series of sculpted Roman cement free water bowls that provide a gentle sound of flowing water. The water bowls are beautifully decorated with polished Oyster shells, recycled from fisheries on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in Northumberland.

A sinuous focal point is provided by five steam-bent oak benches, which meander like a stream along through the length of the garden.

The hugely tactile and ergonomic “together benches” are crafted from a fallen oak, which has been given new life to offer patients, their families and hospice staff a place in which to sit and find moments of togetherness, solace, comfort and respite from the challenges they face.

Rooting the space in the landscape

The garden’s monumental boulders root the garden in the local landscape, echoing the role played by the UK’s hospices, who embed themselves so compassionately into their communities.

The boulders have been sustainably sourced from Raby Castle Estate in County Durham, as has the dry-stone walling that edges the space.