Meet the 7 Garden Tribes looming large at the Chelsea Flower Show

By Annabel Sampson

Dame Joan Collins at the Chelsea Flower Show

O’er hill and dale, the green-fingered plant masters come together to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year: the Chelsea Flower Show. Do you know your delphiniums from your daffodils? Your bonsai from your berberis? I’ll tell you some collectives who do – they’re the horticultural tribes, let loose from the greenhouse, who make their pilgrimage to the Chelsea Flower Show each year. Some down the road from Flood Street, in chic loafers and a linen jacket, others all the way from Yorkshire, flustered from the delayed train and with a reusable Waitrose carrier brimming with layers.

Tatler's social editor Davina Cadogan reports from the opening night of London's social season at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show

By Davina Cadogan

The Chelsea tribes are less garden gnome, more a David Williams-Ellis figurine at the pinnacle of the water cascade; less straight-up rose garden, more a transcendental minimalist scheme bordered with perennials and shrubs. When the sun shines, the Flower Show has more linen suits than a Mallorcan wedding. Add to that a National Garden Scheme tote bag and you’ve bloomed into a Chelsea cliché. Grab a glass of Pimms (or 2023's Babylonstoren vintage), this is just the Wimbledon warm-up. Meet the horticultural tribes looming large across Chelsea.

By Natasha Leake

By Laetitia de Belgique

By Hope Coke

Jerry Hall embodies the Cosmopolitan Chelsea Local garden tribe at the Flower Show

The Urban Londoner

In cord trousers and dark-rimmed specs, the urban Londoner is earnest – and the seeds of his passion for gardening took root in lockdown. It's his maiden Chelsea Flower Show excursion and he's navigating the site, weighing up the geography before settling on the Newt's Cyder stall as his natural habitat, enjoying the spectacle of the rows upon rows of apples (especially having once visited the Newt's Somerset HQ). The Urban Londoner might stop by the Freddie's Flower stand, since its founder is the godfather of his two-year-old, otherwise, he’ll be perusing the small balcony and container gardens for practical ‘at home’ ideas. Anything that is multi-functional, fragrant or edible is what he is in the market for.

By Isaac Bickerstaff

By Natasha Leake

By Laetitia de Belgique

By Hope Coke

The Horticultural Anorak

They live and die for their garden. In fact, it's a place they rarely – if reluctantly – ever leave, except for the annual Chelsea Flower Show (or a trip to Dobbies Garden Centre to stock up on soil). There's no time for Pimm's – they’ve got a checklist of who's displaying what and exactly where: Roualeyn Fuchsias in the Great Pavillion at 12:00pm; The Sadler's Wells East Garden at 12:45pm. The itinerary is day-long, buzzing around with a bee-like intensity. Spot them in practical footwear, a cagoule and a sunhat – breezily au fait with the gardening professionals at large. They can quote verbatim the best parts of Radio 4's Gardeners Question Time and, unsurprisingly, they’ve downloaded the RHS app. Not so much off-duty horsey – as off-duty green-fingered.

David Armstrong-Jones is trialling a more stylish take on the Horticultural Anorak Chelsea tribe

The Cosmopolitan Chelsea Local

The flower show is just a hop and a skip from home – which makes things pleasingly straightforward. Spot them in their pearl drop earrings, pastel-coloured pedal pushers, oversized sunnies and immaculate white trainers or a pristine Wimbledon-worthy dress and straw hat. They’ll be spending time at the Newt Hospitality Area by the Chelsea Embankment as well as mingling with the celebrity garden designers. After all, they might be in the market to landscape the garden of your Tuscan villa next.

The Garden Aesthete

By Natasha Leake

By Laetitia de Belgique

By Hope Coke

With his navy cotton Nehru jacket, hair combed in a side parting and a jaw line as chiselled as as a right-angled topiary hedge, the garden aesthete is unmissable. Once an architect, now a landscape designer, he has an eye for style that spans all disciplines and genres. This is the (lightly tanned) flower man – sharper than a dandy but with the same eye for style. He's alarmingly informed when it comes to latin plant types and reels them off liberally (and proudly). The garden aesthete is the hipster of the garden world – and he's found himself, literally, at Chelsea this year.

The King and Queen were joined by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent for a preview of the Chelsea Flower Show

By Natasha Leake

The Plant Bohemian

They live, they love and they garden – even weeding is carried out with a whimsical nonchalance. Their garden is a meadow of perennials and their god is Piet Oudolf. With a pashmina wrapped around their shoulders and a floaty ethereal dress – it's Florence and the Machine meets horticultural heroine Vita Sackville-West. You can't miss her.

Helena Bonham Carter - who is pictured here at the Lulu Guinness lunch to celebrate the opening of this year's Chelsea Flower Show - belongs to the plant bohemian horticultural tribe

The Mother of the Bride

Armed with an iPhone and espadrilles this woman seeks one thing: #weddinginspo. Her daughter is out of the country – at a wedding in Paxos – so she is taking on the Flower Show solo. Flowers in the hair? Check. Confetti options? Check. Clever use of moss? Check. She's been tasked with introducing herself to this year's Royal Arch designer, Lucy Vail (who has been billed as ‘the new Willow Crossley’), with a sheet of bullet-pointed questions. With a fabric cutting of the agreed colour palette and a monochrome photograph of the wedding of Nancy Beaton and Houston Smiley (in which Constance Spry-designed flowers were beautifully wound round the bride's dress), this MOB has a lot to get through. Spot her with a furrowed brow and walking at rocket speed,in a striped shirt, plump hairband and large over-the-shoulder taking photos of absolutely everything.

It is all coming up roses for Kate Middleton, who took part in the first Children's Picnic at the Chelsea Flower Show

By Stephanie Bridger-Linning

The Flower Show Tragedy

By Natasha Leake

By Laetitia de Belgique

By Hope Coke

Florals for the Flower Show? Groundbreaking – and omnipresent. The Chelsea punters are not afraid to embrace chintz. The more Laura Ashley, Cath Kidston and hyper-patterned prints, the better, they seem to resolve. Everyone loves a theme: but the RHS never mandated flowers at the Flower Show. That was entirely dreamt up by the public. Although, if Dame Joan Collins does it, of course we bow to her.