Nelly Hall, Owner & Brand Director, and Paul Hewitt (“Hewdog”), Customer Service Manager, of Alitex Glasshouses celebrate their twentieth Chelsea Flower Show together.
This year marks our twentieth RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 together – which feels slightly unbelievable when we stop and think about it. You would think that after all these years each Chelsea would be smooth and streamlined by now, but each year… well, each year seems to bring its own challenges, dramas and last-minute panics!
We’re back once again on Main Avenue, stand MA336, where we’ve been for many years now, so arriving on site genuinely feels a bit like heading home each spring.
Alitex Glasshouses has actually been exhibiting at Chelsea since 1965, with the business founded back in 1952. Nelly joined the company in 2003, while Hewdog arrived in 1979, so between us there are quite a few Chelsea stories tucked away.
In 2013, the centenary year of the Chelsea Flower Show 2013, one of the biggest talking points wasn’t a show garden or a celebrity appearance – it was the lifting of the infamous gnome ban. Opinions were split right down the middle, with many seeing it as either a bit of harmless fun or a step too far for the prestigious show.
Seven months before Chelsea, during a planning meeting, Hewdog casually joked about whether the team should dress up as gnomes for the event. The comment quickly passed and wasn’t mentioned again… or so everyone thought.
Clearly, though, the idea had planted a seed in Nelly’s mind.
Just two weeks before the show, Nelly arrived with full gnome costumes in hand. At a grand total cost of just £20, it would go on to become one of the best-value marketing investments ever made.
The team had assumed that, with the ban finally lifted, Chelsea would be packed with garden gnomes. In reality, they were the only ones. That unexpected exclusivity turned them into an overnight sensation.
The gnomes quickly became one of the most photographed and talked-about sights at Chelsea that year. They were featured on BBC Radio 2, appeared on South Today Weather, became the caption image on Have I Got News for You, and even made it onto Russell Howard’s Good News. International news outlets picked up the story, Sheffield radio interviewed them, and a Dutch film crew followed them up and down Main Avenue capturing the spectacle.
What began as a throwaway comment and a £20 costume purchase became one of the most memorable and light-hearted moments of Chelsea 2013 – proving that sometimes the smallest ideas can make the biggest impact.
Over the years we’ve worked with some wonderful garden designers. Earlier on we collaborated with old friends Taylor Tripp for quite a few years, and then later with the unflappable and wonderful Jake Curley, who designed several stands with us. But over the past four years our confidence has grown – or perhaps we’ve simply become slightly madder – and we’ve undertaken all the plant design, planning and often the growing ourselves.
Madness!
It has certainly given us huge respect for garden designers, and also for growers whose livelihood depends on getting everything right at exactly the right moment.
Our first real venture into full-on vegetable growing was in 2023, when we wanted to properly show what owning a greenhouse could do to extend your growing season. Inspired by Marian Boswall’s book The Sustainable Garden, we embarked on a home-grown, solar-powered stand complete with hazel wigwams made by members of our own team, all planted up by our head office team as well.
It felt like a real adventure.
I think the integrity of what we created alongside a fair bit of good luck on the growing front helped us win the Best Tradestand Award that year, which was incredibly special for everyone involved.
People often don’t realise just how much work goes into creating a Chelsea stand. We get a total of sixteen days to build everything from scratch. It starts with footings and brick bases for two greenhouses, fencing, flooring and hard landscaping, and sometimes even a supporting wall depending on the design.
Our installers then arrive to put up the greenhouses, followed by electrics and all the practical elements, and then finally comes the planting and dressing stage – definitely the most fun part.
We are incredibly lucky with the people we work alongside during build-up. There are rarely cross words on our stand, and somehow, no matter how tired everyone gets, there is always something to laugh about.
Our builder John Deacon has now done eighteen Chelsea builds with us and is an absolute diamond, the hardest grafter imaginable. This year he was joined by both of his sons, Jack and Fin, which made this Chelsea feel even more special somehow.
Then there’s Charlie, our electrician, who has been with us for at least twenty years now. His birthday always seems to fall during Chelsea build-up, so there is usually cake appearing on site at some point amongst the cables and toolboxes.
Weather, of course, can be our greatest challenge. Over the years we’ve had everything from torrential rain and flooded pathways to bone-dry heatwaves that leave everyone wilting by lunchtime. But that’s spring weather in the UK for you.
Despite the inevitable stresses, the atmosphere during build-up remains one of our favourite things about Chelsea. Across the showground there’s a real feeling of camaraderie and collaboration. Everyone is working flat out, usually covered in mud or dust, trying to create something beautiful.
By the second week, when traffic jams across the site begin to build and forklifts seem to appear from every direction, it can occasionally stretch patience a little, but somehow it always comes together in the end.
And standing on Main Avenue again this year, after twenty Chelsea’s together, we still get exactly the same feeling we did all those years ago:
Excitement, pride, nerves… and probably just a tiny bit of panic too.
