In May of 2025, Mom’s Design Build had the honor of sending Senior Landscape Designer Becca Bastyr to one of the most celebrated horticultural events in the world: the Chelsea Flower Show, held at the historic Royal Hospital Chelsea in the heart of London, England.
For anyone in landscape design, gardening, or outdoor living, the Chelsea Flower Show is a global benchmark of creativity, craftsmanship, and plant-forward design. For Becca, it was a dream years in the making.
Becca has been an integral part of the Mom’s team for over 21 years. She came in with an architectural background but, as she explains, “I started from nothing, and learned most of everything I know on the job at Mom’s.” Over the years, she learned how to bring together structure and softness, architecture paired with gardens, flowers, and plants, becoming one of the most awarded landscape designers in the Midwest.
The Chelsea Flower Show Experience 101
When Becca found out that Mom’s was sending her to the Chelsea Flower Show, the news caught her completely off guard. “I was surprised and didn’t expect it, but I have always really wanted to go to England and experience the show.” She turned the trip into something even more meaningful by bringing her sister Emily along, making it a special sister adventure as well as a professional milestone.
The Chelsea Flower Show itself was nothing short of extraordinary, Becca shared. The event is designed as a series of large-scale outdoor showcase gardens, each created by world-renowned designers with their own distinct theme. These gardens are installed in just three weeks, often with budgets reaching hundreds of thousands of pounds. Fully grown trees are imported, plant palettes are meticulously curated, and every detail is intentional. Inside massive pavilions, growers display new and rare plant varieties, some of which Becca had never seen before. “There were a few plants I didn’t recognize,” she recalls. “There were so many more tropical plants than I was expecting to see.”
Visitors enter through two gates on the Royal Hospital Chelsea grounds, pass beneath a massive flower arch, and follow a dirt path that opens into the expansive show gardens. “Walking in was confusing and a bit overwhelming,” Becca says, “and there were so many people.” Amid the crowds, inspiration was everywhere. Towering delphiniums stretched six feet into the air, begonias were larger than life, and roses filled the pavilion with color and fragrance. “All the flowers in the pavilion took my breath away.”
The show wasn’t just about gardens, it was also a fashionable, celebratory event. Designers, visitors, and vendors alike dressed to impress, complete with champagne, live music, and incredible food. “People wore nice dresses and trousers, high heels, full makeup, pins and drank champagne,” Becca says. Over two days, she spent nearly 15 hours exploring the show, absorbing every detail.
Despite being a seasoned designer, she admits to feeling a moment of imposter syndrome. “Everything was so magnificent. This show was on my personal bucket list.”
As she moved from garden to garden, clear themes emerged. Many designs focused on environmental responsibility, featuring sustainable plants that require less water and spaces centered around growing food. Plants like allium and delphinium appeared again and again, while pergolas were used to give structure and shape to lush, layered plantings. Greenhouses were common, along with nods to historic irrigation systems from before the mechanical age.
Becca even stopped to visit the David Harber crew, whose work Mom’s has used on previous projects, connecting the experience directly back to home.
Beyond the Show
Outside of the show, London itself left a lasting impression. Becca stayed just four blocks from Buckingham Palace in Belgravia, a historic and elegant neighborhood she didn’t realize was quite so prestigious at the time. She explored the city through sightseeing at Buckingham Palace, wandering Notting Hill, and hopping on a tour bus to take in more of London’s architecture and neighborhoods. One detail that stood out was the scale of the trees woven throughout the city. The massive maples were, in her words, “so big and pretty,” seamlessly blending nature into the urban environment.
Becca’s Design Takeaways
The experience has already begun to shape how Becca thinks about design moving forward. She wants to help clients rediscover the beauty of planting and feel confident caring for their landscapes — or hiring the right help when needed. She hopes to implement more hedges for privacy, introduce sculptural shapes within greenery, and incorporate romantic elements like wisteria-covered arches.
She also notes that plant-heavy designs require significantly more time and creativity. “Plant heavy designs actually take me about 3x the amount of time as opposed to an architecturally heavy design,” she explains, but the challenge is what excites her most.
For Becca, some of the most inspiring spaces in London weren’t grand estates, but smaller, thoughtfully scaled gardens. “You don’t have to have a big yard to have a really charming space that’s scaled to the human,” she says. Compared to the large, open homes common in the U.S., London’s cottage-style homes felt cozy, lived-in, and deeply connected to outdoor spaces. Those environments encourage people to spend more time outside and connect more naturally with one another.
A Case for Plant-Forward Design
Yet in the United States, she’s noticed a growing hesitation toward plant-heavy landscapes. “Plants are a big part of what makes an outdoor space beautiful, even though a number of people in Minnesota don’t feel they have the capacity to care for them.” That mindset has pushed many designs toward modern, minimal planting schemes with fewer varieties and less perceived maintenance. But Becca believes that approach misses something essential.
Through her travels and experiences, one thing has become clear to her. “The more I have seen and travelled, the more I have understood that beautiful plants are essential to a truly magical outdoor space.”
Becca’s take: Short term effort for long-term, sustainable beauty
“Mature gardens, when designed well, often thrive with surprisingly little effort. In my opinion, an immature garden is more work to take care of than a mature garden, and after they grow in for a few years, they flourish on their own with simple maintenance like fertilizer in the spring and occasional weeding,” Becca explains.
Coming Home Inspired
Being supported by Mom’s Design Build in this way meant more to Becca than she expected. “It was unexpected and it feels fantastic that they even thought to send me. It was very thoughtful.” The Chelsea Flower Show was not just a trip — it was a moment of growth, reflection, and renewed inspiration.
Becca returned with a deeper appreciation for plants, gardens, and the power of thoughtful landscape design, ready to bring that global influence back into her work.
Becca Bastyr is a deeply valued member of the Mom’s team, and we’re incredibly grateful for her humor, intelligence, hard work, deep understanding and love for design, and for all the award-winning spaces she’s brought to life over the past 21+ years!
Cheers!
