An Australian garden on English soil
A top London garden designer takes inspiration from Adelaide’s green spaces to create an ambitious show garden for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, on May 19 to 23.
Held in London over five days in May, the Chelsea Flower Show attracts more than 140,000 visitors – often including royalty and celebrities – with television coverage that reaches more than 20 million people worldwide.
The show is a mecca for garden designers who, in a short amount of time, create cutting-edge “movie set” gardens that appear as if they have been growing for decades, only to be removed a week later.
For this year’s event, London garden designer Max Parker-Smith has taken up the challenge of creating an Australian garden on English soil, inspired by the landscapes of the Adelaide to Perth leg of the Indian Pacific rail journey.
SALIFE caught up with Max in late 2025 when he visited Adelaide to research his project Journey Beyond the Tracks: From Adelaide to Perth, which has been commissioned by Journey Beyond and tourism bodies in SA and WA.
Having won the tender for the project with his design, Max was flown to Adelaide to soak up the essence of South Australian gardens, environments and urban greenery, before embarking on the Indian Pacific journey itself. While here, he also visited the Adelaide Botanic Garden, Jurlique Farm and The Cedars.
“I did a tour of The Cedars and saw locations that Hans Heysen’s paintings were based on,” Max says. “You really get to experience first-hand what he was trying to portray. Being in the location naturally gives any artist added depth to whatever they’re trying to create. Like Hans, I’m here to make my work the best it can be.”
Max has been inspired by gardens since a young age, but a career in horticulture wasn’t on the radar until his early 20s when he embarked on a working holiday in Australia. Max worked on small farms and gardens that ignited his passion for green spaces. That journey informed a career change.
“My career change was hugely inspired in Australia. It solidified my interest in forming a career path in horticulture, building gardens, so I then went home and studied garden design,” says Max, who now creates and maintains high-end gardens around London.
This year will be his fourth year involved with the Chelsea Flower Show. In 2025, he worked on a large feature garden for the event – “a masterpiece” of 400 square metres – which put him on the radar of the show’s organisers.
“A private garden that I design might only be enjoyed by a family of five, while tens of thousands of visitors will come through Chelsea Flower Show gates and experience it, which is amazing,” he says.
For his 10-by-12-metre garden Journey Beyond the Tracks, Max has chosen to focus on two specific environments from the Adelaide to Perth rail journey. “First, there are the urban environments of Adelaide and Perth and their strive for urban greening to create a healthy environment to live in,” he says.
“Then there is the Kwongan sand plains of WA, which has a fascinating palette of plants, mainly in the Proteaceae family. They thrive in very low nutrient substrates, basically sand, which is very different to what I’m used to in the UK.”
Dividing the contrasting urban and outback environments is a central structure, its shape inspired by the Indian Pacific train. Details from the journey are incorporated throughout the garden.
“I want people to instantly know that this is a piece of Australia, so I am incorporating materials that capture the rawness of the outback. The warm hues of the beautiful red soil, boulders that nod to the various rock formations, and Corten steel which is a trademark of Australian garden design and architecture.”
After a year of planning and research, Max will have just three weeks to build the garden on-site. He anticipates he’ll need to work 12 hours each day to bring it to life. “There’s a complete buzz during the build and everyone’s running on adrenaline. It’s all meant to look so seamless and so easy, but it’s such a challenge,” he says.
“It’s like building a movie set that is only up for five days, and then you take it down for it to be relocated. The plants are moved elsewhere so they are not wasted.”
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Max will include plants from South Australia and Western Australia. They must be of show-garden standard, and he must source them from European nurseries, an added challenge.
Max is contacting nurseries in Spain, Portugal and Italy to seek out plants such as acacia stenophylla and eucalyptus.
“I did a huge amount of research and I’ve spoken to various specialists in Australian native plants, which has been very useful. This trip has strengthened the design,” he says.
“I’m very surprised by Adelaide. It’s fantastic to have a city that has such a wonderful pace – a strong balance between work and play, and with such fantastic access to parklands.
“In the design I hope to capture the efforts Adelaide is making to create a very strong sustainable and healthy environment. There are natural corridors around the city for biodiversity. It has made me realise how integral green spaces are to a healthy working and living environment.”
Like a landscape artist who visits a location rather than painting from a photograph, Max says his research trip gave him an invaluable insight that he hopes to portray through his ambitious garden.
“It’s the small, finer details, which you don’t even know exist unless you’ve been to a place. Experiencing it and translating that into a garden or design project is an integral part of the process. It’s all about feeding my imagination by being in the place.”
This article first appeared in the May 2026 issue of SALIFE magazine.
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