Every year at about this time, gardeners, horticulturists, and just plain old plant lovers turn their eyes to London’s Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show, arguably the premier flower and gardening show in the world. Since 1912, the exhibition has presented avant-garde garden designs by the world’s leading gardeners and landscape architects alongside the floral masterpieces by prestigious plant growers and producers. 

For a dozen years, Gladwell & Patterson Gallery, whose history dates back to 1752, has contributed to the show with with a beloved exhibition of floral still lifes and rolling landscapes at the fair, offering visitors a chance to take a bit of nature home with them. 

Gladwell & Patterson’s Chelsea Flower Show exhibition is currently installed in its gallery garden and outdoor stables. This year, of course, things are happening a bit differently. “May 2020 sees us not at the Royal Hospital Chelsea exhibiting at the world’s finest flower show but, as with all of you, firmly at home,” the gallery said in a statement. 

This year, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show has gone virtual, and—hoping to make the most of an unusual situation—Gladwell & Patterson Gallery decided to take an art-meets-life approach, bringing its planned exhibition into the gallery’s outpost in West Deeping in Lincolnshire.   

The installation of Gladwell & Pattersons RHSC Chelsea Flower Show.

Online, visitors can explore a cross-the-centuries review of floral still lifes and landscapes, including French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist landscapes, 20th-century European landscapes, along with works by contemporary British landscape painters all rustically arranged in the courtyard—the effect sometimes harkens to the en plein air manner in which many of the works were first conceived. 

Gustave Louiseau, Le Chemin en Bord de Rivière (circa 1899–1900). Courtesy of Gladwell & Patterson.

The crowning jewel (or should we say ribbon-winning rose) of the show is a moody Post-Impressionist landscape by French painter Gustave Loiseau. Influenced by Claude Monet, Loiseau was a champion of painting the landscape out-of-doors and embraced the use of bold colors.

Peter Van Breda, Early Spring, Parliament Hill, London. Courtesy of Gladwell & Patterson.

If your tastes are more contemporary, there may still be something for you, including a number of works by Pieter Wagemans, a contemporary Belgian painter who specializes in delicate floral still lifes, along with works by contemporary British painters Stewart Lees, Peter van Breda, and Martin Taylor. And, as the gallery owners say, “Get in touch if you see something which interests your green fingers!” 

Explore more of Gladwell & Patterson’s Chelsea Flower Show here.