Rotherham dad and son land their second big break with the RHS

A Rotherham garden landscaping father and son have landed their dream job – building a garden at one of the world’s most famous gardening events, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Lee and Lewis Nuttall, of CGM Landscapes Yorkshire, are having to pinch themselves, though, because this is the second time a chance to work at an RHS Flower Show has fallen into their laps.

The pair thought they’d been handed the chance of a lifetime when they were asked to build a garden for the RHS’s first-ever show at Rotherham stately home Wentworth Woodhouse in 2025.

A local landscaper was needed for the build of a South Korean entry and Lee’s company not only had the right experience, it was in nearby Thorpe Hesley.

That hugely challenging Hyundai E&C and Sungkyunkwan University gardenbuild earned a Silver-Gilt medal.

But that wasn’t the only win… it got Lee and Lewis’s talents spotted by one of the UK’s top landscape gardeners who was at the show.

Renowned gardener and regular RHS Flower Show judge Dan Flynn was so impressed, he offered them their second big break – building a garden for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026.

The show at Royal Hospital Chelsea runs from May 19-23 and Lee and Lewis are now on site, working with Dan on the Asthma + Lung UK Breathing Space Garden, one of only 13 on the show’s Main Avenue.

Sponsored by grant-giving charity Project Giving Back, the garden is inspired by the work of Asthma + Lung UK and the lived experiences of people living with lung conditions.

After thousands of visitors have admired it, the garden will have a permanent home at Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust’s Breathing Space lung rehabilitation centre on Badsley Moor Lane. Lee (62) and Lewis (35) will be involved in its creation and volunteers will be trained to maintain it.

“When the RHS Wentworth Woodhouse request came in we thought that was our one opportunity of a lifetime,” said Lee. “But incredibly, it led to an even bigger opportunity, thanks to Dan.

“We are thanking our lucky stars. We are just normal blokes; things like this don’t usually happen to us. RHS Chelsea is the pinnacle of garden design and construction and what makes this even more brilliant is the fact that the garden we are building will come to the Rotherham Breathing Space centre which helped my dad Ken,who developed COPD-related breathing problems before he died aged 68.”

The Asthma + Lung UK Breathing Space Garden has been designed by landscape gardener Angus Thompson to raise awareness of the invisible impact of breathlessness.

It features therapeutic planting and a floating platform where people can carry out breath-focused practices. Coal dust sweepings from the UK’s last decommissioned coal-fired power station, Radcliffe Power Station, have been recycled into a resin plinth supporting an ‘abstracted lungs’ sculpture by acclaimed artist Oliver Barratt.

In Rotherham, it will be scaled up in size and will replace an overgrown garden at the Breathing Space rehabilitation centre, which was set up with the Coalfields Regeneration Trust and Asthma + Lung UK. 

Rotherham is one of the UK’s worst-affected areas for lung-related hospital admissions and many of the asthma, COPD and asbestosis sufferers it supports worked in the pits and heavy industry.

Lee himself worked in the metals sector from leaving Wingfield Comprehensive at 16. 

He served an apprenticeship with a Sheffield metal finishing company and at 21 set up his own company, Best Plate Metal Finishing Ltd. He sold the business nine years later with an order book for 40 per cent of the UK’s decorative gold plating requirements.

Lee then turned his interest in gardening into his next business venture, training in horticulture at night school.

Dan Flynn grew up in Stocksbridge and Everton, Doncaster, and is the son of a former editor of the Sheffield Star.

“I really wanted to find a South Yorkshire company to work with me on the Breathing Space Garden for the RHS Chelsea Show,” he explained. “There is a north-south divide in top-level landscape gardening. Few northern companies get to work at the Chelsea Show and I wanted to change that, particularly as this garden is going to have a permanent home in Rotherham.

“I saw CGM Landscapes’ build at RHS Wentworth Woodhouse, thought they had done a fantastic job and asked them to work with me. Bringing them to Chelsea will extend their skills and they will take all that knowledge back to South Yorkshire.”

Lee has also called on his local contacts to support the RHS Chelsea garden. In addition to trees coming in from Belgium and boulders arriving from the USA, the Breathing Space Garden will also include 26 tonnes of rocks from Cadeby Stone near Doncaster, rusted, curved steel features from Barkway Sheet Metals in Rotherham and building materials from Jewsons Rotherham.

Said Dan:

“The support from the South Yorkshire business community has been incredible. They are helping to fill this garden with care, support and kindness. As a Yorkshireman I feel very proud.”

Sarah Sleet, Chief Executive at Asthma + Lung UK, said: “For the nearly 12 million people in the UK living with lung conditions, every breath can feel uncertain. We hope this garden inspires reflection on how vital it is to breathe freely and encourages support for projects that green our polluted cities and promote clean air for all.

“We’d like visitors to the garden at RHS Chelsea to think about their own breathing, experience a moment of calm and remember that one in five people in the UK will develop a lung condition in their lifetime.”

 The Asthma + Lung UK Breathing Space Garden will come to Rotherham on Sunday May 24 and construction will take three weeks.

Bob Kirton, Managing Director at The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, said: 

“Breathing Space is all about creating a calm, supportive environment for people with respiratory conditions. The Chelsea Flower Show garden will enhance that vision and be a truly uplifting space for our patients and community when it comes to Rotherham.”