The Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit helps gardeners choose the best plants for their gardens, with more than 75,000 plants available in the RHS Plant Finder it is exceedingly hard to choose the best plants for your garden. The RHS have made like an elite list of plants and shrubs which qualify to the following criteria:
The RHS appoint gardening experts to make up, what they call a RHS Forum, each forum of experts posess its own area of expertise. A plant put forward for an Award of Merit will be grown in one of the four RHS Gardens and the forum will visit the plant and judge the progress of the subject plant over the seasons and ensuring they qualify.
Once the forum has completed their tests and judging they will put the subject plant forward to the relevant RHS Plant Committee for final approval. When a plant is Awarded the Award of Merit it will be entered on the list, the current lists holds 7,500 plants, only 10% of the whole RHS plant finder. You can download the current lists below.
Plants on the Award of Merit list will be reviewed regurally and plants can be removed if they do not longer qualify.
If you wish to build your garden with plants given the Award of Merit you can download the lists , last updated Nov 2018
