The world’s top garden designers will be celebrating 100 years of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2013 with a mixture of old and new, demonstrating the glories of the past and the gardens of the future.

Award-winning Chelsea stalwart Roger Platts, who is designing the M&G show garden, Windows Through Time, is aiming to capture the design trends and themes of RHS Chelsea Flower Shows past and present, showing how British garden design has evolved while reflecting many recurring themes that have stood the test of time.

“I believe that the three major reasons driving the development in garden design are ever-changing architecture, climate change and lifestyle changes,” says Platts.

Low maintenance and the need for neatness will always be a factor in gardens for the future, he predicts, especially in urban environments.

“The terms ‘disease free’ and ‘easy to grow’ and ‘uncomplicated’ is as much as I can predict for future gardens. It is impossible to know what other factors will dictate how gardens will look in the future.”

So, how much have our gardens changed in the last century?

  • In 1913, pots would have been made from clay. This then developed to plastic with a recent trend towards biodegradable materials.
  • Heating and propagation for glasshouses and growing frames relied on solid fuel and manure. Nowadays, electricity and bio fuels are used.
  • A hundred years ago, most fertiliser was organic. Over the years, chemicals were developed for use in fertilising. There is now a trend to returning to organic fertilisers.
  • Plant varieties we grew in 1913 are similar to what we grow now but with a wider range today due to sophisticated plant breeding and selection methods.
  • Lawn mowers were in their infancy 100 years ago. Technology has resulted in garden machinery becoming more widely affordable. The basic principles of cutting grass using a cylinder mower have changed little over the century. Robotic mowers may be the way forward for lazy gardeners.
  • Today we grow our own food at home more as a hobby than a necessity, whereas 100 years ago before supermarkets, refrigerators and fast transport, food was grown as a basic need.

Platts’s 2013 Chelsea garden will embrace both new and traditional garden features, from modern sculpture to planting, threaded with historical shrubs popular in the 1900s.