Away from the old guard and grandes dames of London’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which just saw some 150,000 visitors pass through its annual four-day event, young British gardening is enjoying a major growth spurt. A new class of impressive green thumbs is using social media to show off blooms, blossoms, and beds. Meet the leaders of this group, who are redefining the English country garden and beyond.

Hugo Bugg

Hugo Bugg.

Hugo Bugg caught the gardening bug—excuse the pun—young. “We moved to Devon [a rural country in southwest England] when I was about five years old and we had about three acres of complete wilderness,” he says. “I spent my whole childhood working with my dad clearing it.” Fast-forward a couple of decades: Bugg is cofounder of garden design studio Harris Bugg and, at 27, was the youngest winner of a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2014.

Bugg's work.

Highly in demand (the studio has just completed the Royal Botanical Gardens of Jordan), Bugg’s governing aesthetic changes with each project: “But we always ensure there’s a strong narrative to the gardens we do,” he says.

Arthur Parkinson

Arthur Parkinson.

The youngest ingénue on the scene is 25-year-old Arthur Parkinson . He is gardener in residence at the Emma Bridgewater pottery factory in ceramics capital Stoke on Trent. Parkinson has expertly softened the factory’s industrial landscape with all manner of gladioli, dahlias, annual cosmos, and bronze fennel, growing them in unique ways.

Parkinson's garden.

“I like to think I’ve made the galvanized bin famous,” he says. And his hens; they roam wildly in the garden and all over his Instagram, too. His book The Pottery Gardener: Flowers and Hens at the Emma Bridgewater Factory will be published later this year.

Flora Starkey

Flora Starkey.

It’s not just out in the yard that this movement is taking place, but in British floristry too. The appropriately named Flora Starkey worked in fashion for many years but, after having children, decided on floral design as a career as it involved less travel and offered a connection to nature.

An installation by Starkey.

Her delicate, romantic but gutsy style is knee-deep in history—think Dutch still life oil paintings and Victorian botany—and has fans in Givenchy and Louis Vuitton, who have used her in ad campaigns. “I like my displays to have a sense of place and to enhance their surroundings. The venue or setting will dictate so much of the direction,” she says.

Sophie Walker

Sophie Walker.

Sophie Walker ’s approach to gardening is highly considered—she compares it to the other high arts such as painting, poetry, and literature. “The aspiration of the garden was far beyond that of decoration: The garden was a place in which we could consider our place in the world around us,” she says.

Walker's work on display near a sculpture at the De Pont Museum Garden in Tilburg, Netherlands.

The youngest woman to ever show at the Chelsea Flower Show (in 2014), Walker has written extensively on the matter and most enjoys working with rare plants.

Charlie McCormick

Charlie McCormick.

“They are probably my thing,” Charlie McCormick says of dahlias, laughing. The Kiwi-born gardener lives with his husband, interior decorator Ben Pentreath, in Dorset on a three-acre plot that seemingly overflows with the blooms.

McCormick's Dorset garden.

These Technicolor dahlias (as well as tulips and irisies) have won him over 74,000 Instagram followers. He is clear about the positive effect social media has had on his generation. “Gardening is quite a solitary thing, and Instagram helps connect people with the same interests,” he explains.

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