RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019 winner: Camfed garden by girls' education charity supported by Duchess of Sussex wins gold medal

Duchesses reign at Chelsea Flower Show with Camfed garden taking medal.
1/56

A garden from an African women’s education charity “passionately” supported by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex has won gold at the Chelsea Flower Show.

The CAMFED garden, recreating a rural Zimbabwean classroom surrounded by crops such as beans and sweet potatoes in a landscape of red soil, was awarded a coveted gold medal in the “Space to Grow” category by judges from the Royal Horticultural Society.

Former telecoms executive Miranda Curtis, who chairs Camfed’s board of trustees, said she was “over the moon”.

“I didn’t think in a million years we would get gold with such a small budget and a first-time designer at Chelsea,” she said.

Harry and Meghan were not directly involved in the design of the garden by London-based landscaper Jilayne Rickards but Ms Curtis, who personally underwrote the £150,000 cost of the garden, said the royal couple were “very supportive and very engaged” with the charity.

She said the duchess had recorded a video message for a gala fundraising event in New York a fortnight ago “despite being just about to have her baby”.

Best in Show: Andy Sturgeon in the M&G Garden, which scooped top prize

The overall top award for a show garden went for the third time to Brighton-based designer Andy Sturgeon, who also has an office in Soho.

His “Best in Show” garden for financial group M&G Investments, which is the lead sponsor of the event, celebrates nature’s ability to recover after environmental devastation.

Gold medal winners 2019

SHOW GARDENS

The M&G Garden

The Morgan Stanley Garden

The Welcome to Yorkshire Garden

The Resilience Garden

SPACE TO GROW GARDENS

Kampo No Niwa

Viking Cruises: The Art of Viking Garden

The Montessori Centenary Children's Garden

The CAMFED Garden: Giving Girls in Africa A Space to Grow

Facebook: Beyond The Screen

ARTISAN GARDENS

The High Maintenance Garden For Motor Neurone Disease Association

Green Switch

Family Monsters Garden

Visit rhs.org.uk for full details.

It includes 15 tonnes of burnt oak timber sculptures representing a ravaged landscape gradually being reclaimed by plants such as orchids and ferns.

Meanwhile on the showground’s main avenue, huge queues built up to view the garden that Meghan's sister-in-law the Duchess of Cambridge helped design.

Within minutes of the opening at 8am, hundreds of members of the RHS began lining up to view the Back to Nature garden which was the show’s “feature garden” and not assessed by judges.

Dawn Ray, 55, who lives near Reading and is a regular visitor to the annual show, said: “I’ve never seen a queue like this here before, it must be because of who it is.

“I’ve been waiting for 10 minutes already but I thought I had better queue now before it gets worse later on. I was really interested to see what all the hype was about.”

News of the duchess’s involvement in the garden, inspired by childhood memories of playing in a woodland glade, sent ticket sales surging.

A set of images of her visiting the garden with Prince William and their children Prince George, five, Princess Charlotte, four, and one-year-old Prince Louis were released by Kensington Palace earlier this week.