Space, proportion, colour and zoning: there are more similarities between interior and garden design than you might think. So it’s surprising to see how tricky it can be to apply terms that are well-worn inside the house outside it. Take maximalism and minimalism: easily recognised in a room, but harder to pin down in a living, growing environment. Fortunately, two Gold-winning Chelsea Flower Show designers from opposite schools of thought were happy to expound the benefits of paring back or amping up a green space.
The maximalist
To say Jo Thompson is a Chelsea regular would be an understatement: the garden designer and writer has created 10 gardens at the Flower Show, half of them winning Gold medals for her boundary-pushing use of colour and planting. At last year’s show, she was often found nestled among the deep-pink roses, poppies and foxgloves of her ‘Glasshouse Garden’, in a beautiful, art deco-inspired conservatory. That design, she explains, started like many others: ‘Everything begins with the planting. We looked to the trees and the beech domes for the architectural structure.’
Forget ‘massive terraces of hard landscaping’; you’re more likely to be taken down Thompson’s garden paths by the plants themselves. ‘I always want to draw people through the garden, and I think part of the magic is to leave those little hints so that there’s something to explore.’ Maximalism in the garden, she says, should be ‘constant kicks, constant highs, constant stimulation’, a product of ‘the foliage, flowers, textures and light working together’. This ethos applies even in winter. ‘A garden will change all day long, all year round.’
The benefits are surprisingly pragmatic, she says, comparing a maximalist garden to an artfully lived-in, cosy living room: ‘It’s like having a sofa with 20 cushions on it. You wouldn’t notice if one wasn’t plumped. There’s room to hide as a lazy gardener.’ But the non-human world benefits, too: ‘A dense concentration of plants means you will be creating habitats and supporting wildlife.’
While Thompson’s gardens seem elegantly undone, she insists that maximalist designs fall apart when people overlook the need to plan. ‘There needs to be structure, and the key is to not let it show. Get your trees and evergreen shrubs in; those underpinnings are really important.’ An unabashed rose fan, Thompson says they’re the ultimate maximalist plant. ‘They sprawl, they work at every layer and they’re great for wildlife.’ In typically outré style, she has a blackbird nesting in one of hers: ‘She sits there quite happily while we’re all having lunch outside.’ jothompson-garden-design.co.uk
The minimalist
Angus Thompson laughs, a little sheepishly, then admits that he was quite pleased when we told him some people would consider him a minimalist. This year, Thompson will be returning to Chelsea with a rare sight: rectangular slabs of carbon-neutral concrete in ‘lovely interplay’, he explains, ‘with naturalistic woodland-edge planting’. It’s a tension that the award-winning gardener finds endlessly exciting.
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While other 2026 show gardens seek to recreate East Asian woodlands or British wetlands, he believes a garden should be celebrated as ‘a hinterland between architecture and nature. I don’t try to replicate nature, because I wouldn’t be able to. Gardens are a zone of their own; it’s a human space that can showcase nature’. In classically minimalist fashion, he argues that the most powerful plants for a pared-back look are those beneath our feet: ‘Ground covers can be great foils for the more attention-grabbing planting above.’ In particular, he favours ‘Asarum europaeum, or wild ginger, which has that lovely, waxy heart-shaped leaf’. Having spent the past two decades searching for that certain ‘rightness’ his most successful gardens hold, he believes it is their deceptive simplicity. ‘It looks so logical that people think it took you five minutes.’
‘I’m drawn to the idea of the eraser being a very powerful design tool. I really believe in distilling something down to its simplest form. You’re asking, “Is this still beautiful when you take away all the unnecessary elements?” And if it’s a really good proposal, it will be. There is a purity, a calmness and almost a modesty about a well-designed space that doesn’t tell you what you’re meant to do in any given area.’ It’s this serenity that is the greatest offering of a minimalist garden, Angus believes. But minimalist design can also truly honour natural elements, ‘whether that’s a gnarly multi-stem tree or a beautiful backdrop. If you have a mass of sculptural planting, it ceases to sing because it hasn’t got something to play against. Paring back allows your choices to be elevated.’ angusthompsondesign.com
