Visit our garden

Demonstrating the impact our work has on beating cancer

The theme

This year our garden at the Chelsea Flower Show was created by award-winning designer Robert Myers.

The garden celebrated the impact our work has on our vision "Together we will beat cancer". 

The breadth of Cancer Research UK's work has made a substantial impact on the survival and quality of life of cancer patients throughout the UK and across the world.

• Cancer survival rates have doubled in the last thirty years. Our work has been at the heart of that progress.
• More than seven out of ten children with cancer are now successfully treated.
• Thanks to our work campaigning for smokefree laws, our public places are healthier and thousands of people have given up smoking.

We recently unveiled ten goals that we hope to achieve by 2020. They include:

• Enabling people to understand the lifestyle choices they can make to reduce their risk of cancer.
• Ensuring cancer is diagnosed earlier, at a stage when it can be successfully treated and developing better treatments with fewer side effects.

The design

The garden was created as an elegant ornamental space, designed using a combination of free-form walls, water, stone and plants. 

The main focus was a large reflecting pool towards the rear of the garden. An abstract sculpture by Simon Thomas at the centre impacted into the pool of water to send static waves across the garden, illustrating how our work achieves widespread impact for everyone affected by cancer.

The garden was designed and constructed with environmental impact in mind. After the show, almost every element of the garden was recycled or reused. The seats were relocated to a permanent home and the sculpture will be auctioned.

The plants

Scattered throughout the garden was a selection of mature tree ferns of various sizes that create a canopy of dappled shade. Beneath the trees there was an evergreen spine of herbaceous plants such as the Ilex crenata known as Stokes demonstrating clipped, mounded, sculptural planting. 

Splashes of grey, green, black and silver foliage were complimented by white, blue and pale yellow flowers adding colour, texture and shape to the garden. See the full plant list for this year's garden.

Recreate our garden at home

Recreate the Cancer Research UK garden and give you home impact with the Robert Myers take-away plan (PDF, 300KB).