'It's perfect': The lush and charming RHS Garden of the Year at Chelsea Flower Show 2025
Kazuyuki Ishihara's 'Cha No Niwa – Japanese Tea Garden' has won the coveted RHS Chelsea Garden of the Year, the top award at the Chelsea Flower Show. And it's a worthy winner.

On the opening day of the 2025 Chelsea Flower Show, the Country Life team at SW3 sat down to discuss the best garden of the year. 'Oh, well, it has to be the Japanese Tea Garden,' were the first words out of the mouth of our garden editor, Tiffany Daneff.
It's not every year that we agree with the judges on our favourite garden at the world's greatest flower show. Quite the opposite, in fact: it's a semi-regular occurrence for our favourite designs to have been overlooked on the official criteria.
LISTEN: Tiffany Daneff on the Country Life Podcast from the Chelsea Flower Show
This time, we're all in agreement. Kazuyuki Ishihara's 'Cha No Niwa – Japanese Tea Garden' is like a slice of imperial Kyoto transplanted to leafy west London. There's a mix of elevations and depths, a mix of plants and trees — acers mingling with irises — and a blend of raked gravel, moss installation and craggy boulders, all framed by a traditional Japanese building at the rear.


Ishihara has created gardens at Chelsea several times in recent years, but so far they have always been among the smaller garden categories. In 2025 his sponsors — Ambius, Calmic Japan, HB-101 and Glion — have backed him to create one of the main show gardens at RHS Chelsea, and he has paid back their confidence in wonderful style with a design which makes use of Acer palmatum, Enkianthus perulatus, Iris, Sedum, Hornbeam and Pachysandra terminalis.
'It's perfect,' added Tiffany. 'Everywhere you stand, there's a perfect vignette; the view is framed.
'No matter which angle you look at it from, it feels as if it was meant to be seen from exactly where you are... If you're a photographer, it must be a complete heaven.'
Sign up for the Country Life Newsletter
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.


It's not just the overall view that makes this garden special, though. 'You've still got this amazing attention to detail, the little hillocks of moss for example, and even round the back, there are gate entrances. all covered with vegetation,' Tiffany said.
'There's not a moment in this garden that's not been beautifully thought about. It's got water, it's so peaceful and lush, and still has flashes of colour with the irises.
'And then there's the Zen garden feel with the gravel that has been raked into circles. It's a tour de force. It's beautiful.'
Ishihara himself started his working life as a flower seller before setting up his company in 1995, but his love affair with traditional Japanese gardens goes back further than that. 'Forty-five years ago, when I first practiced Ikebana, I was deeply moved by the world of forms created with just three branches,' he told the RHS.
'Since then, my design style has been about recreating those unforgettable, nostalgic landscapes that people around the world have seen at some point in their lives, within a garden.'
To celebrate Country Life's return to the Chelsea Flower Show, we're offering up to 40% off subscriptions to Country Life Magazine. It's our best offer ever; available until June 30.
Toby Keel is Country Life's Digital Director, and has been running the website and social media channels since 2016. A former sports journalist, he writes about property, cars, lifestyle, travel, nature.
-
Lawns, glorious lawns at this Grade II-listed home in Hampshire where a sustainable future meets a storied past
There are 'old rectorys', and then there's The Old Rectory.
-
Ferris Bueller's Ferrari and giraffes getting hit by lightning: Country Life Quiz of the Day, June 6, 2025
Friday's quiz has an intriguing question about the number of loos in Windsor Castle.
-
Alan Titchmarsh: I've tried every slug control known to man, and these are the only things that have ever worked for me
Alan Titchmarsh is as charming, warming and friendly a man as anyone you'll ever meet. Unless, of course, you're a slug... in which case you'll awaken his ruthless side.
-
One of the most spectacular rose gardens in England has come in to bloom two weeks early
It's time to head to Mottisfont — come for the roses, stay for the fascinating exhibition shedding new light on the history of this beautiful Hampshire house.
-
The first new botanical gardens to be created in the UK in almost 200 years is celebrating its 25th birthday
The National Botanic Garden of Wales helped put Carmarthenshire on the map and its Great Glasshouse, designed by modernist architect Sir Norman Foster, was once the largest single-span glasshouse in the world.
-
Chelsea Flower Show 2025: Take a peek behind-the-scenes of the Country Life stand
Discover how interior designer Isabella Worsley and landscape designer Hugo Elwes brought the Country Life Chelsea Flower Show stand to life.
-
'The few days on the show ground are exhilarating, but it’s the garden’s legacy that truly excites us': What happens to the gardens after Chelsea Flower Show
RHS Chelsea is now only a stop along the way, before the gardens end up somewhere where the trees, the structures and the idea have a further life.
-
Time for the 'Chelsea Chop': The garden job to do as the Chelsea Flower Show ends which will give you more, better, healthier flowers for the rest of the summer
The day the RHS Chelsea Flower Show ends isn't just a day in the gardener's calendar to start looking forward to next year — it's the ideal time for pruning and trimming, as John Hoyland explains.
-
'If I was a plant, I'd want to be seen at Chelsea': Country Life's Editor Mark Hedges on his favourite things from the 2025 Chelsea Flower Show
Country Life's Editor-in-Chief has been coming to the Chelsea Flower Show for years. Here are the things he's enjoyed most from the 2025 edition.
-
Country Life's entirely unofficial Chelsea Flower Show 2025 awards
The RHS's judges give out awards based on strict criteria rather than vibes — and while there's a place for the former, we think the latter is worthwhile too. With that in mind, Country Life's team at the Royal Hospital Chelsea have awarded their own alternative prizes from the 2025 RHS Chelsea Flower Show.