A collaboration between Babylonstoren and sister estate, The Newt in United Kingdom, brings the little-known ‘Succulent Karoo’ to London’s lushest stage. Beguiling and quietly radical, it’s as much a design triumph as it is a vision of how gardens might endure in a drier, more unpredictable world.
There is a rare kind of alchemy that happens when visionary teams -rooted in both the soil and the soul - join forces. Such is the case with South African heritage and horticultural haven Babylonstoren and their sister estate, The Newt in Somerset. Their soon to be revealed show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show promises to be not just a celebration of design, but an invocation of one of the world’s most extraordinary biomes: the Succulent Karoo.
When the team began planning this year’s Chelsea garden, they had one thing in mind: to surprise. Not with opulence or novelty, but with something truly rare - a garden that speaks softly but powerfully about survival, adaptation, and beauty in unexpected places. That place is the Karoo, a semi-arid region in South Africa that forms part of the Succulent Karoo biome, one of the world’s richest reservoirs of plant life.
Unlike rainforests or alpine meadows, this is a landscape defined by scarcity. Rain falls rarely and unpredictably. Summers burn. And yet, from these harsh conditions emerges one of the highest concentrations of succulent plant species on the planet. To understand it properly, I travelled there earlier this year with master botanists Ernst van Jaarsveld and Cornell Beukes. We drove for hours through an austere terrain, often silent except for the sound of wind, stopping to kneel beside plants that at first looked like stones until they revealed themselves as small, otherworldly succulents.
A Conophytum, no bigger thana thumbnail, grows very slowly and depending on the species, a 50-year-old plant might not get bigger than a walnut. A gnarled Tylecodon, storing its water reserves in a swollen base. The extraordinary Haworthias, with their tough leaves and deep capacity for water storage, able to withstand the long wait between rains. This is a landscape that rewards slowness, attentiveness. Nothing shouts for attention. But once you begin to notice, it’s astonishing.
Landscape architect at The Newt, Katie Lewis, designed the garden. Rather than recreate a lush paradise, she and the Babylonstoren team bring something far more nuanced: a careful study of a fragile biome, designed to honour its quiet intricacies and unassuming resilience. There’s also an urgent message beneath the surface. The Succulent Karoo is under threat - from climate change, mining and a growing illegal plant trade that has seen hundreds of thousands of rare specimens removed from their native habitat. Only 10% of the biome is currently protected.
This garden is a gesture toward greater awareness. A moment to stop and pay attention. And perhaps, more than that, it’s a glimpse into the future. In a world increasingly marked by climate unpredictability, these tenacious plants - masters of adaptation, water storage, and efficiency - might well become our guides.
The Succulent Karoo could be a seedbank for tomorrow, a whisper of how gardens may look in decades to come: leaner, slower, tougher but no less beautiful. So come for the spectacle, yes. But stay for the stillness. This garden isn’t just a breath of fresh air - it’s a wind from another world. The Succulent Karoo at Chelsea is an homage to resilience, a call to conservation, and perhaps, quietly, a vision of our botanical future
