RHS partners Willsow and Moorcroft launch new products at RHS Chelsea Flower Show

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has announced plans for two major product launches at the 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Brand-new RHS licensee Willsow  will highlight its delightful range of RHS Plantable Seed Paper Calendars and Plantable Christmas Crackers, while established partner Moorcroft will present its newest range of RHS art pottery, called Roses for Henry Cranke Andrews.

Both licensees join an impressive line-up of RHS partners exhibiting at the world’s most famous flower show.

Willsow was the creator of the first-ever plantable children’s book, developed with special handmade paper, embedded with hundreds of real vegetable and herb seeds to allow children to plant the pages and grow. Willsow’s primary goal is to inspire as many people as possible to get outside and get growing; this created the ideal alignment for partnering with the RHS.

The RHS Plantable Calendars and Plantable Christmas Crackers range will contain a mixture of popular wildflower and cottage garden varieties suitable for both the avid and amateur gardener. The launch offering will consist of two Plantable Seed Paper Calendars (available in an A4 and A5 format) and a box of six Plantable Christmas Crackers.

Packaging and artwork for the range will utilise RHS-supplied artwork inspired by the RHS Lindley Collections, the world’s finest collection of botanical art. Each product will also contain sowing, planting and growing advice from RHS horticultural experts.

After launch the range will be available to consumers online via Willsow’s own e-commerce shop, along with notonthehighstreet.com and Amazon. Physical retail will include garden centres, gift shops, book stores and card retailers across the UK. It will also appear at a variety of trade and consumer shows including Christmas markets such as Chatsworth House Christmas Market, as well as Spring Fair, Autumn Fair, Harrogate Home & Gift and of course RHS Flower and Garden Shows.

Exciting additions to what is expected to be a very popular product line are planned for later this year, including a plantable notebook.

There is also a prevalent sustainability element to this agreement. All of Willsow’s products are produced in Leicester at the Willday family printing business, a print house that has been going strong for 80 years, using 100% recycled paper, with vegetable and eco-UV-based fully biodegradable inks. Willsow is on a mission to make print as sustainable as it can be while looking at creative, innovative and new ways to encourage people of all ages to start growing.

Also at RHS Chelsea, Moorcroft, a leading maker and supplier of art pottery and long-standing RHS partner, will be highlighting its latest range of collectable handmade art pottery.

The new Moorcroft RHS Roses for Henry Cranke Andrews collection has been inspired by a number of beautiful early nineteenth-century hand-coloured engravings of roses from the RHS Lindley Collections by the celebrated English botanist, botanical artist and engraver Henry Cranke Andrews.

The nine pieces, which include vases in a variety of sizes, a plaque and a coaster, will be a mixture of limited and numbered editions, with each one designed and signed on the base by designer Emma Bossons FRSA. It is, however, the prestige vase, Rose Legacy that is set to cause a stir at the opening of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024 with a demonstration of craftsmanship par excellence. Each of the seven roses in this prestige vase were illustrated by Andrews in his book ‘Roses: or a Monograph of the Genus Rosa’ Volume 1 or 2 (London, 1805-1828) and also appear in an individual design in the collection.

Around two hundred years since Andrews first created his masterpieces, Moorcroft pays tribute to this English botanist with its collection of rose designs, each created to continue his legacy and love of floral art. Moorcroft is proud that each piece of art pottery is still entirely handmade in the Arts and Crafts tradition and will be backstamped on the base with the RHS logo.

The collection will be available to order at the Moorcroft Heritage Visitor Centre, online at www.moorcroft.com and also at the RHS Flower and Garden Shows that Moorcroft will be attending (see more at www.moorcroft.com/events) and through all Moorcroft retailers both in the UK and abroad, including major stores, independents and china and glass retailers.

Of course, the world’s most famous flower show will also feature a number of RHS licensees and endorsements, many of which will, like Willsow and Moorcroft, show products employing designs inspired by the RHS Lindley Collections.

They include:

• Atlantic Mats: recycled, washable doormats
• Babylonstoren: one of the oldest Cape Dutch farms and supplier of the official Rosé of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024
• Burgon & Ball: quality gardening tools and gardening gifts
• Freckleface: home fragrances
• Gabriel Ash by The Juliana Group: timber greenhouses and cold frames
• Hartley Botanic: aluminium glasshouses and greenhouses
• Mr Fothergills Seeds: flower and vegetable seed ranges
• Plankbridge: multi-purpose living spaces based on Victorian shepherd’s huts
• Sofas & Stuff: beautiful bespoke furniture and fabrics
• The Original Muck Boot Company: gardening boots
• The Wildlife and Birdcare Nature Recovery Project (on the Original Muck Boot Company stand): wild bird, insect and hedgehog habitats.

Tom Willday, Founder, Willsow, says: “Like the RHS our aim is to educate children and adults alike that we can all do more for the environment – and to make it fun! We’re thrilled to be bringing our love of gardening and growing to this partnership with the UK’s favourite gardening charity.”

Elise Adams, Managing Director, Moorcroft, says: “These glorious engravings by Henry Cranke Andrews have been a marvellous inspiration for Emma Bossons to produce some wonderful pieces that will have enormous appeal to art pottery collectors. Our alliance with the RHS is a long-established partnership which continues to produce breathtakingly beautiful art pottery.”

Cathy Snow, RHS Licensing Manager, adds: “The Willsow range is not only fun and useful but supports our aim of encouraging everyone – of any age – to get into the garden to be in touch with nature again. Moorcroft, meanwhile, has once again brought its renowned heritage craft techniques to a beautiful and highly desirable art pottery range. These two launches will be a highlight of the 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show where so many of our partners will again remind people of the breadth, depth and excellence of our licensing programme.”