RHS Chelsea Flower Show - the Bat Conservation Trust’s Nocturnal Garden
Melanie Hick will design the Nocturnal Garden for the Bat Conservation Trust for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026, sponsored by Project Giving Back.
“Bats are biodiversity. I love bats and I really want to open people’s minds to thinking about how our gardens can benefit bats. In the day it’s a beautiful garden we would like to sit in. But at night, it comes into its second act, when the bats are swooping for their prey.
I think we’re often familiar with planting for pollinators, but these cute and sometimes weird species can be overlooked when we think about what to plant.”
Naturalistic planting for bats
The naturalistic planting will show how a contemporary garden can be a powerhouse of food for bats at night.
The garden shows that long after we have tucked ourselves up at the night, the gardens we tend can support bats, when the right plants are chosen.
Download the plant list and plant your own bat-friendly garden at home or in your local community. Many of the plants are commonly considered weeds, and most are very easy to grow. You may even find you have plenty of them.
The Inspiration
Inspired by a bat’s wing and the dark hue of its body, the garden has beautiful naturalistic planting that you can emulate at home, along with sweeping curves of a black planter that could be used in a public space.
A large bat sculpture by emerging British artist Tach Pollard appears over the space, as a benign and loving maternal forest spirit of all bats.
A reflective black scrying pool reflects the sky and the bright future fo bats in the UK.
Sustainably-sourced timber is used through on the rear fence which will be made into bat boxes for roosts when the garden is relocated.
Clydach Community Gardens in Swansea will be the new home of the Nocturnal Garden and will support bats in the area, and help people learn about the value of gardening for bats.
The Mythology of the Bat Spirit
Dark Amber, the sculpture by Tach Pollard, guards the garden. Available for sale. POA.
When we head inside at night after a beautiful day in our garden ending night-scented stock, tendrils of ivy and May’s hawthorn blooms, a kind and loving spirit emerges.
If you have keen eyes, and patience you may glimpse it. The mother bat.
If you look up from the TV’s blue glow, and train your curious eyes to the night you may see here, expertly swooping for her prey.
She will be there there if you plant your garden right, with the plants she needs to feed tiny moths she eats.
The great mother bat, her soft dark wings twist and pull against the air. Her soft sounds to her young whisper that dinner is on its ways.
By being here in your garden, she give your garden a second act, a second life, while you are tucked up indoors.
The great mother bat rests its soft body in the trees above your garden, and loos kindly on the plants you have taken care to plant for her. . You know she is roosting, living and feeding here. You know the places she can live are diminishing.
So in planting your beautiful garden with the plants she needs, you give life to this benign spirit.
A soft song is heard on the breeze, the baby bats call to her, and she to they. Tenderly she comes to them with everything they need to thrive, and teaches them to fly around you like toddlers of the air.
At one with the dusk, she is not afraid of the dark. She is the dark, kind and warm, the spirit of the Nocturnal Garden.
