Tate Unveils First RHS Chelsea Flower Show Garden, Featuring Hepworth Sculpture
The Facts
Tate has unveiled its first show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the Tate Britain Garden, designed by nine-time gold medal winner Tom Stuart-Smith. The garden features Dame Barbara Hepworth's limestone sculpture "Bicentric Form" (1949), marking the first time a work from the national collection has been exhibited within a Chelsea Flower Show garden. The garden is funded by the Clore Duffield Foundation and Project Giving Back, and offers a preview of the forthcoming Clore Garden at Tate Britain, also designed by Stuart-Smith and due to open in 2027. The design incorporates repurposed stone from the Millbank site, a 3D-printed water channel, and a learning circle bench cast from reused materials including paving from Tate Britain and cockleshells from the Thames Estuary.
The Signal
The garden signals a strategic move by Tate to extend its institutional presence into high-profile public horticultural events, leveraging the Chelsea Flower Show's broad audience to build anticipation for the permanent Clore Garden. For collectors and curators, the prominent placement of Hepworth's "Bicentric Form"—the first Hepworth work acquired by Tate—reinforces the artist's enduring market and institutional standing, while the garden's focus on climate-resilient planting and sustainable materials reflects a growing trend among museums to embed environmental stewardship into their programming and capital projects. The garden will be relocated to Tate Britain after the show and incorporated into the larger Clore Garden project.
- Artists: Victor Pasmore, Dame Barbara Hepworth, Ethel Sands, Derek Jarman
- People: Tom Stuart-Smith, Alex Farquharson, Dame Vivien Duffield
- Museums: Tate Britain
- Locations: London
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