Photographs by Sian Davey
In the middle of May, during the hot, dry spring, I visited the Chelsea Flower Show. It was a few days before it was due to open to the public, and many flowerbeds were under construction. Amid a sea of hi-vis vests and workboots, a large group of mostly women were tending to the Glasshouse Garden, one of the event’s prestigious show gardens. They were planting, digging, sweeping, trying to keep the sun off the roses, which were already threatening to bloom into their strong pinks and reds. There was a real worry they would be over before the crowds arrived to see them.
“This garden is our soul,” T, a qualified horticulturalist, told me, perched on a low wall in the shade. Led by the award-winning designer Jo Thompson, and created in collaboration with the architecture practice Hollaway Studio, the Glasshouse Garden represents second chances. This was the first time T had seen it, and the experience had been emotional. A number of women I met told me it had brought them to tears. Even Thompson had got emotional.
T was at Chelsea with the Glasshouse, a not-for-profit social enterprise that offers horticultural training to women leaving incarceration, as well as the potential for future employment within the organisation, which also grows and installs houseplants for retail and corporate clients. When we met, T was serving the last weeks of a prison sentence, released on a temporary licence. (I have used initials rather than names, to protect the womens’ identities.)
This was T’s second year at Chelsea. Last year, when the smaller Glasshouse Effect Studio won a gold medal for its houseplant display, she found the experience to be overwhelming. “I’ve never been anywhere or done anything like this in my life, so I was really nervous about it,” she told me. “I struggled with talking to people. I always used to like to be in the background. And then, after a bit, I was all right.”
Women in custody often speak of being deprived of nature. The exercise yards in a prison might be concrete, for example. “So when it’s hot like this, you don’t get to see any grass, you don’t get to see plants,” T said. It’s hard to notice the seasons when you can’t see anything that grows. “You don’t get to see the different colours and shades, or see leaves falling.” Some cell windows barely allow a glimpse of the sky, so it is not always easy to know what the weather is like. “You’re missing out on nature, and time’s just going by,” she said.
Imprisoned women often speak of being deprived of nature and its ability to soothe
Ri went through the Glasshouse programme when she was nearing the end of her own time in prison and now, post-release, she works for the organisation as their logistics officer. (She is happy for me to call her Ri.) She described what it is like to go into prison. “You have no choices. A lot of women have lost everything in their lives. Very few people would be interested in you, if you come out.”
When women begin their sentences, they typically do so in a closed prison. Ri talked of being outdoors for just 30 minutes a day, and only if there are enough prison staff on duty to facilitate it. She talked of sensory deprivation, the lack of green, the lack of scent.
“Everything you took for granted: walking past people’s gardens, walking past a hedgerow, looking out of a window of a bus and seeing a tree, seeing daisies, anything that’s growing – that’s suddenly gone.” Nature can be peaceful, she said, and in prison, peace is in short supply. “It’s noisy. The noise is the noise of mental health. That’s the only way I can describe it.”
It’s hard to notice the seasons when you can’t see anything that grows
When Ri went to prison, she asked her friends if they would look after her roses. It was a story she told Thompson in early discussions about this garden. “I cried, actually, when she said that she had incorporated so many roses into it,” Ri told me. Those roses that Ri left behind are still going strong, and she plans to buy a new one from the show garden to take home with her.
Ri explained that women in prison are largely invisible. “Or hidden,” she said. “Which is worse.” Being at Chelsea allows them to show people that they can be productive members of society if given a second chance with the right support. According to the Ministry of Justice, 69% of women entering prison have committed a non-violent offence; 76% of women have mental health issues; and 70% have experienced domestic violence. For Ri, the garden is an opportunity to show the complexities of women in custody. “Anybody who finds themselves in custody, part or all of their life is broken. So to have this, and them to be part of something beautiful, it matters. This garden has a soul.”
The Glasshouse was founded in 2020 by Kali Hamerton-Stove and Melissa Murdoch. Murdoch had visited HMP East Sutton Park, an open prison in Kent, in search of a philanthropic project, and noticed that it had disused glasshouses in the grounds. The pair researched what they might do with them. “The main challenge today, still, is that women come out of prison and they can’t find work,” Hamerton-Stove told me. When women cannot work, she went on, they are less likely to find a safe place to live, and more likely to move into unsafe or unstable housing, or become homeless. “And because of that, reoffending rates are high, and people are coming back into the system over and over.” The current reoffending rate for women leaving prison is around 58%. For the more than 30 women who have been through the Glasshouse programme, it is 0%.
The Glasshouse Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025. Image by Jason Ingram
At Chelsea, I grabbed a cup of tea with Thompson, the only female designer of a large show garden here in 2025, while she buzzed around the control hub, ensuring that the garden came to life. When first designing the garden, she began with her own ideas for what she wanted to create, she told me, and took them to the growing facility and the Glasshouse shop in Kent, where some of the women in East Sutton Park go out to work. “I’m not going to lie, I realised that I probably had some preconceptions. And when you hear people’s stories and their experiences, you see how a life story can so easily lead to prison,” she explained. Thompson ripped up her notes and started again, with the input of the women and their stories. “This is the first garden where I genuinely don’t care what medal it gets. I love it because it was made for them, and it represents them, and their input.”
The Glasshouse Garden won a gold medal, the festival’s highest honour. Six days after my visit, I watched the BBC’s coverage of Medals Day. Thompson was interviewed by the presenters and was asked about her process and use of colour. She said that it was “inspired by the women on the Glasshouse programme”, and that it was intended to be “calming”. But any more detail about the programme or the women enrolled in it was left on the cutting room floor. Having spoken to all of the women who helped to bring it to life, I was struck by the squeamishness of the coverage, which offered no explanation of the Glasshouse, or those women, or why the garden exists, or where it will go next.
In mid-July, it was still hot, but now blustery, and the Glasshouse garden was bedding in to its new home outside D-wing at HMP Downview in Surrey. The tightly packed splendour of the Chelsea show garden had transformed into something more loose and open, more summery, more in transition. It was surrounded by high razor wire and enclosed within a series of locked walkways and yards. The women I spoke to there mentioned that this was just grass before. “I used to mow it,” said R, who was part of the team helping the garden to bed in at its new location. “There was nothing here. It was a wasted space. And now, wow. Look at it. It’s beautiful.”
A, another member of the gardens team, said that if they can’t get to the garden one day, the staff will keep them updated about its progress. “I’ll ask about the pink flowers and they’ll tell me how they’re doing,” she said. “It makes you feel part of a wider team.”
This is the first garden where I genuinely don’t care what medal it gets. I love it because it was made for them
The Glasshouse does not run a work scheme from Downview, but it has close links to the prison, as both Downview and East Sutton Park (where the Glasshouse does operate) share the same governor. Show gardens are staggeringly expensive to design, build and display. This one was funded by the philanthropic organisation Project Giving Back, which supports gardens with a purpose. One of the conditions of the funding is that the gardens are relocated after Chelsea, which is how it ended up here.
Downview is not one of the prisons with largely concrete grounds that many of the women had talked about, but its existing flowerbeds are municipal and mostly behind high fences. The Chelsea garden is more cottage-like, softer, and it places greater demands on the horticultural skills of the women who will tend to it. The acrylic pavilion designed by Hollaway Studio, which looked so pretty at Chelsea, is beginning to find its new use as a therapeutic space that can be booked by the prisoners. When I visited I got chatting to E, who told me that in the evenings she likes to spend time under the crab apple tree, sitting on a boulder. A few nights ago, she listened to women meditating there with Tibetan prayer bowls.
Emily Backler, the head of horticulture and social impact for the Glasshouse, oversaw the garden’s transition. At Downview, the women greeted her warmly. Backler used to be a youth offending worker – “sort of like probation, for young people” – dealing with 15 to 20-year-old boys, many of whom were involved with gangs. “I loved the young people that I worked with,” she told me. “I didn’t really like the system as much.” Her colleagues were burning out and she didn’t want to join them, so she left the service and set up a gardening business. “Because my job was quite stressful, I’d always come in from work, go in the back garden, do a bit of weeding or planting or growing.”
While Backler loved working with plants, she missed her old life, and on hearing about the Glasshouse, with its intersection of gardening and social welfare, she contacted Hamerton-Stove. “I’ve got an understanding of the justice system, how things work, barriers people face. I can nurture the plants and the people at the same time,” she said.
Glasshouse gardener Emily Backler (left) with co-founder Kali Hamerton-Stove
Backler is clearly well-liked at Downview and had an obvious rapport with the women, including K, who had been instrumental in looking after the garden over the recent heatwaves. “I’ve been watering the plants for weeks, and I’ve brought them back to life,” K said. Like many of the women I spoke to, K has mental health issues and debilitating social anxiety. Gardening calmed her and kept her focused. “It is good to have a routine, something you always have to do. Before, I liked to do things alone, but now I love it with the girls. It is amazing how far I’ve come. It really has changed my life.”
Downview is a closed prison, which makes arrangements for release on temporary licence more difficult, though not impossible. When we met, K, who is in her mid-30s, had been at Downview for two years, but she was about to apply for transfer to an open prison, which meant she would be able to interview for, and potentially join, the Glasshouse scheme. “Open prison means I can go out and work properly,” she told me. “I can get paid properly, which means I can save and provide for my daughter when I get out. It’s a better life.” She went on, “Most of all, it keeps me sober. It’s brilliant for recovery.”
Amy Dixon has been the governor of Downview and East Sutton Park for just over three years. I sat down with her in the pavilion, the wind blowing through its open doors, as women milled around on the picnic tables outside. “Our goals are always around protecting the public, preventing escape and allowing rehabilitation to take effect,” she told me. “So that it reduces reoffending.” Most of the prisoners at Downview will be released, so the aim is for them to go out and live law-abiding lives, where they can become positive members of their communities. “Some of our women might not have had the experience of working before they come to prison, and we know that having a job and having that sense of purpose and that routine is really important, in terms of desistance and rehabilitation.”
Downview governor Amy Dixon says having a sense of purpose is important for rehabilitation
According to Dixon, at East Sutton Park the Glasshouse is one of the only schemes the women never complain about. “Being given this garden is a mark of hope for our staff and prisoners, that things can be better, that people believe in them and they believe in their potential and abilities,” she said. “Because once you get to prison, the reality is that you’ve probably been reminded many, many times that that’s not true, that you have no value, no purpose. I think this just gives them a bit of hope.” Given its successes, I asked if she thinks the programme should be rolled out to all women’s prisons, but she pointed out that all prisons are different, and some are, by necessity, much more restrictive in terms of access to the grounds and security. “So it might not be possible everywhere, but I think where you can do it, it would have a positive impact on rehabilitation and safety.”
At Chelsea, hope for the future was palpable. T told me about a Chinese evergreen she kept in her cell. It looked so healthy, she said, that the officers thought that it was made of rubber. She cared for it, tended to it, talked to it every day. Already, she had made plans for it, telling her 23-year-old daughter that when she comes to pick her up, she will be bringing the plant with her. “I call him Thomas,” T told me. “I’m taking Thomas out, and I can’t wait. My daughter is really proud of me.” Since T began working with the Glasshouse, her daughter has got some houseplants of her own, and she asks T for advice on how to look after them. The future looks more hopeful now. “I didn’t have that before. I can’t wait, now, to be released, and to carry on with my life.” (She was released four weeks after we met.)
Every woman I spoke to, whether at Chelsea or HMP Downview, described how the experience of working with soil had soothed them, how the act of tending to the garden and the plants had brought calm. “You could be alone with tears streaming down your face, but you’re not alone, because you’ve got the plants and they’re living,” Ri said, “And you’ve got something to nurture.” Having something to nurture, like the garden that is now at Downview, like Thomas, like Ri’s roses, is about more than putting your hands into the earth. It is about looking forward. “When you’re nurturing something, it means you’ve got to have faith in the future,” Ri said. “What’s the point in growing something, if you don’t believe in its growth?”
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