The renowned flower grower won his 35th gold medal at the prestigious flower show last year, along with an award for the best exhibition in the Grand Pavilion.
The 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show opens on Tuesday, and Mr Evison said it will take five people seven days to put Guernsey Clematis’s 140sq. metre display together. It features more than 2,500 clematis.
‘It’s very much a Guernsey theme again.
‘We will be displaying clematis alongside Guernsey tomato varieties from the late 1800s, all on a tomato grading machine that must be 80 years old.’
This year’s display also includes traditionally-made wicker tomato baskets and crab pots made by local artisan Claire Gaudion.
‘We’ve just finished painting a fisherman’s hut too,’ he said. ‘When we finished it looked a bit pristine so we have painted on some seagull droppings on the roof.’
Guernsey Clematis is displaying three new varieties at Chelsea, and one has impeccable Guernsey credentials with the name inspired by the Book of Ebenezer Le Page, the quintessential Guernsey novel by G B Edwards.
‘His main character is a tomato grower and fisherman, who lived his whole life in the Vale, the parish where our Guernsey Clematis Nursery is situated,’ he said. ‘In the novel, Ebenezer’s love of his life is Liza Queripel, so we have combined a little of Ebenezer and Liza to name this clematis “Eliza”.’
The other two new flowers have charitable connections.
The first Clematis, named Queen’s Nurse, has been helped to raise funds and awareness for the Queen’s Nursing Institute and the second ‘Ithemba’ has been named by a children’s hospital trust in South Africa.
‘Ithemba means hope in the Zulu language,’ he said. ‘I visited the hospital in 2020 and was blown away by what I saw, they have 250,000 children in their care every year.’
Just back from China, where clematis grow in the wild, Mr Evison has no intention of stopping.
In his long career he has developed over 200 varieties of the flower, with each new type take between eight to 10 years to develop, cross-pollinating carefully-selected plants with the traits to produce something never seen before.
‘We have plants we are selecting now that we will hopefully be taking to Chelsea for the first time when I am 92,’ he said.
Don’t miss next week’s Guernsey Press for a chance to win a Clematis Bluebird Pendant with 18-inch silver chain, designed by jeweller Catherine Best in collaboration with Raymond Evison, to celebrate Chelsea Flower show being this week and Mr Evison exhibiting for over 60 years. See Monday’s paper for full details.
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