Best Sustainable Garden Designers in London: What to Look For
London is home to the world’s greatest flower show - the RHS Chelsea Flower show, and some of the world’s best sustainable garden designers.
There’s a bit of. shortcut to choosing who to work with on your ideal garden, and that comes in the form of the Chelsea Flower Show.
Each May the world’s most dedicated garden designers and builders come together to create an awe-inspiring display of horticultural excellence. This year I was thrilled to be selected from a very long list of applicant to be one of four All About Plants gardens sponsored by Project Giving Back.
What separates the best from the rest isn't a portfolio of pretty photos — it's proven project delivery skill, real horticultural knowledge, and the ability to deliver a garden that still looks and performs beautifully in a changing climate.
The People's Choice award (Chelsea, All About Plants) and a Silver Gilt medal (Hampton Court Get Started) go a long way to telling your my gardens are loved by visitors and the RHS judges. So here is what else to look for in choosing your garden designer:
What actually separates the best London garden designers
Independently judged, peer-reviewed design skill. Anyone can call themselves a garden designer, as we don’t have a chartered industry. Very few have had their design judged and awarded by the Royal Horticultural Society or voted for by the public at a major show. That's a level of excellence to look for.
Genuine horticultural and ecological knowledge, not just an eye for trends. The latest ideas will excite you, but the true horticultural knowledge comes in understanding how the plant choices made support which species and where. The Nocturnal Garden was stunning, but also every plant was chosen to support the insects that bats eat. You may want to support frogs, newts or birds for example.
A track record with real, current projects — private gardens across London and working with clients across the world can tell you that a designer is able to solve the inevitable unknown issues that crop up when building on land.
Formal training and professional accreditation — recognised qualifications and membership of bodies like the Society of Garden and Landscape Designers (SGLD) and BALI, which signal a designer who has been trained and vetted rather than self-taught with no oversight.
A design philosophy that goes beyond aesthetics — the best designers today are also thinking about climate resilience and biodiversity, not treating them as an afterthought. This means longevity for your investment and your property.
A mature, experienced project leader. I do think it helps that your garden designer understands owning and stewarding properties. My experience in Australia on multiple acres meant springs and bore holes for water supply, managing fire risk and in London, making the most of smaller spaces to create jewel-like courtyards.
RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026: People's Choice Award, the Nocturnal Garden
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is the most prestigious flower show in the world, and the People's Choice Award is voted for directly by the public — hundreds of thousands of visitors deciding, garden by garden, which design resonated most. In 2026, that award for Best "All About Plants" Garden went to Melanie Hick, for the Bat Conservation Trust's Nocturnal Garden.
The Nocturnal Garden was built entirely around supporting British bat species — a garden designed for a nocturnal, often-overlooked animal, brought vividly to life for a daytime audience. It's a strong illustration of Melanie's core design approach: wildlife and biodiversity treated as the creative brief itself, not a feature bolted on afterwards. The garden's reach went well beyond the showground, with coverage on BBC Two (including a segment with Monty Don), BBC Radio 4, Channel 4 News, The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, the Financial Times and Gardens Illustrated.
Winning a public vote at Chelsea is a meaningful signal for anyone choosing a designer: it means the design connected emotionally with a huge, varied audience.
RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2024: Silver Gilt Medal, the Climate-Forward Garden
Before Chelsea, Melanie's first Chelsea show garden was the Climate-Forward Garden at RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival in 2024, where she was awarded a Silver Gilt medal by RHS judges. Unlike the People's Choice award, RHS medals are awarded by professional horticultural judges assessing design quality, plant health, and how well the garden achieves its brief. A Silver Gilt is a serious professional endorsement, especially for a first show garden.
The Climate-Forward Garden was designed around the realities London gardens increasingly face: hotter, drier summers and the need for planting and materials that can handle climate extremes without constant intervention. It drew on Melanie's own experience of climate extremes growing up in Australia, translated into planting and hard landscaping suited to a changing London climate.
Together, the two awards show a consistent thread across Melanie's design career: gardens that are climate-resilient, wildlife-rich, and good enough to be recognised by both the public and RHS judges, not just one or the other.
A mature project leader who understands property, not just planting
A garden project doesn't happen in isolation — it happens on a property, with a budget, a timeline, contractors to manage and, usually, a family or business still living or working around the build.
Melanie Hick brings a career's worth of experience leading complex projects to that reality, having managed budgets, teams and stakeholders across a long career prior to garden design, including senior brand and marketing roles for global names like Net-a-Porter and MTV.
That maturity extends to a genuine, lived understanding of property itself. Having owned and lived in properties both in the UK and abroad, Melanie brings a practical, first-hand appreciation of what a garden needs to do for the people who actually own and use the space — not just how it should look on the day it's finished, but how it holds up, how it's maintained, and how it adds lasting value to a property over years, in different climates and different markets. That's a perspective a purely design-trained professional, without that background, simply doesn't have.
Why this matters when you're choosing a designer
A show garden is, in effect, an independently judged trial of a designer's ability to resolve a real brief beautifully. Melanie Hick has done this twice, with two different judging standards — professional RHS assessment and public vote — and been recognised both times. That's a stronger indicator of design quality than a portfolio alone, because it's been tested outside her own client relationships.
For a private London garden, that translates directly: the same climate-resilient plant knowledge from the Hampton Court garden, and the same wildlife-first design thinking from the Chelsea garden, are exactly what goes into Melanie's residential projects across Dulwich, Forest Hill, Sydenham, Harrow on the Hill and further afield into Wales.
Is Melanie Hick Garden Design right for you?
She's likely a strong fit if you want:
A garden that's genuinely climate-resilient and low-water, not just labelled "sustainable"
Real biodiversity and wildlife value built into the design, including Biodiversity Net Gain thinking for small sites
A designer with independently judged, award-winning design skill — not just a strong portfolio
Full-service delivery, from concept through technical drawings to tender management and build oversight
Formal training (Capel Manor College) and recognised professional standing (SGLD pre-registered, BALI registered)
A mature, experienced project leader who can manage budgets, contractors and timelines with confidence
First-hand understanding of property ownership here and abroad, and what a garden needs to deliver over the long term
Ready to talk through your garden?Book a call or email melanie@melaniehick.com.
