Leon Kluge and Team South Africa once again achieved success at the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, taking home a gold medal for their display.

• South African landscape designer Leon Kluge and Team South Africa won gold at the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show for their “Life After Fire” display showcasing flowers that bloom after Cape wildfires.
• The exhibit featured around 20 000 Protea stems, highlighting the resilience and regeneration of South Africa’s unique fynbos ecosystem.
• The award-winning display also earned the best title in the Great Pavilion and will later be rebuilt in Stanford, giving South Africans a chance to experience it locally.

Award-winning landscape designer Leon Kluge and Team South Africa have yet again done incredibly well at the 2026 Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Chelsea Flower Show in London, winning gold for their display.

This year’s display, titled “Life After Fire”, showcased the diversity of South African flowers that appear after the Cape region wildfires. The garden was made up of approximately 20 000 Protea-cut flower stems and thousands of burned Protea branches, organised to create a post-fire landscape displaying bulbs and orchids from all regions of the country.

Kluge said it was not an easy task to put the stand together, given the recent extreme weather conditions in South Africa, which initially brought about doubt on whether they could still participate in the show.

“It was a lot of hard work putting this stand together, a rollercoaster to be honest, because we had so many floods in South Africa, lots of rain, snow on the farms where we needed to harvest all of these flowers, and at some point we didn’t know whether we’re actually going to get to Chelsea,” Kluge said in an Instagram video.

Known as the “Olympics of Gardening”, because it represents horticultural competition at a high level, the RHS Chelsea Show showcases innovative garden designs, impressive floral displays, and allows the opportunity to shop for various garden items.

READ | Fynbos and Fires: SA’s golden Chelsea Flower Show team teases this year’s concept

Kluge said, despite the difficulty presented by the massive destruction that took place in the Cape in the past year, his team was still able to push through and create awareness about these plants as they had intended.

“It is a celebration of our flowers in South Africa. It’s a celebration of our fire-driven ecosystem, which is so special, and it’s depicted here after the massive destructions, which we had in the Cape this past year, of showing people how important it is to maintain our flora to have a healthy ecosystem.”

In April, before they left for the show, Kluge and his team unveiled in Cape Town what they would showcase in London, marking South Africa’s 50th appearance at the prestigious show.

The aim this year was to put on an outstanding show of South African plants, while educating visitors about the unique fynbos landscape ecosystem.

This year’s exhibit also emphasised the impressive regeneration of the fynbos biome after a fire.

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This achievement comes after last year’s win, when Kluge and his team won gold for their entry, which was inspired by the meeting of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, as well as all the flora in between.

Photographer Sven Musica explained how the team won this year:

Musica said the display would be rebuilt in Stanford, the Western Cape, in September, giving South Africans a two-week opportunity to experience it locally.