Alistair Hardaker | Image: Tate Britain Garden design for Chelsea 2026. Courtesy Tom Stuart-Smith Studio
Tom Stuart-Smith designs show garden for Tate Britain featuring Barbara Hepworth sculpture, previewing new permanent garden opening 2027.
Tate will present its first show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2026. The Tate Britain Garden has been designed by Tom Stuart-Smith, who has won nine RHS Chelsea gold medals, and is funded by the Clore Duffield Foundation and Project Giving Back.
“Hepworth was very progressive in showing her work in a garden context and we are using very bold textures and forms as a counterpoint to the dark, smooth stone of the sculpture. I think she would approve,” said Stuart-Smith.
The garden will feature Dame Barbara Hepworth’s Bicentric Form 1949, marking the first time a work of art from the national collection has been exhibited within a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The limestone sculpture was the first Hepworth work acquired by Tate in 1949.
According to Tate, the show garden will preview elements of the forthcoming Clore Garden, a new green space at Tate Britain due to open in 2027. The designs have been inspired by Victor Pasmore’s The Green Earth 1979-80 in Tate’s collection.
The garden will include existing stone from the Millbank site cut and repurposed as paving, forming a curved path. A water channel will be inlaid within the path, with a rill and bowls 3D printed with designs inspired by mycorrhizal fungi. A central bench cast from reused materials including paving from Tate Britain and cockleshells from the Thames Estuary will provide seating.
The planting will include species adapted to warmer climates, including Mediterranean fig trees, Schefflera shweliensis, Feijoa sellowiana, Punica granatum, and Cycas revoluta. Species that flower and fruit at different times include Melia azedarach in late spring and Magnolia grandiflora in early autumn.
After the show, the garden will be transferred to Tate Britain on Millbank and incorporated into the Clore Garden project. Construction is due to begin in April 2026.
Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, said: “We are delighted to mark this special occasion with the display of one of our best-loved sculptures from the nation’s collection of British art and to share this early evocation of such a unique and bold reimagining of museum space.”
