Journey Beyond brings the Indian Pacific rail journey to RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 in a show garden crossing Australian outback and wine country.
One of the world's great rail journeys — 4,352 kilometres of outback, wine country and vast arid plain, takes root in London this May in a garden built to make you book the trip.
Photography, The Indian Pacific Journey featuring garden designer Max Parker-Smith.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show has always been about more than gardens. Since its first edition in 1913, when it was known simply as the Great Spring Show and took place in a single tent on the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, it has grown into one of the world’s most prestigious horticultural events and, rather more quietly, one of its most effective stages for storytelling. Renowned garden designers connect to charitable and cultural causes each year, curating gardens that reflect current trends and highlight key issues shaping the world of horticulture. This year, one of the most compelling entries does something rather different: it tells the story of a train journey.Journey Beyond, the South Australian Tourism Commission and Tourism Western Australia have partnered to bring a small show garden to Chelsea from 19 to 23 May 2026, designed by award-winning gardener Max Parker-Smith. The garden celebrates the Indian Pacific, the transcontinental rail journey that crosses 4,352 kilometres between Adelaide and Perth over two nights, and in doing so makes a quietly persuasive case for Australia as a travel destination to a room that is, by its nature, already receptive to beauty and designed experience.
Max Parker-Smith commented, "I see ‘Journey Beyond the Tracks: From Adelaide to Perth’ garden as a compelling platform to celebrate the diverse landscapes of South Australia and Western Australia. By incorporating distinctive materials and the warm, earthy hues of the outback, alongside a thoughtfully curated selection of native inspired planting, the garden aims to evoke the spirit and identity of both states. Inspired by the iconic rail journey that links Adelaide and Perth over two nights, this design reflects the ever-changing scenery — from world-renowned wine regions to vast arid plains. It’s a moving tapestry of contrasts, and I feel privileged to bring this unique journey to life through landscape.”
A Garden That Moves
The design is rooted in contrast, which is to say it is rooted in the journey itself. At the heart of the garden sits a central structure that echoes the form and interior of an Indian Pacific train carriage, with each side of it representing a different landscape encountered along the route. One side captures the expansive shrub plains of the Western Australian outback: tiered sand beds, resilient native plantings and the warm ochres and terracotta’s of the arid interior. The other reflects Adelaide’s identity as a National Park City, with trees, natural water corridors and layered vegetation that speak to the city’s green urban vision and its position as the first city in the world to receive that designation.
The materials throughout are as considered as the planting: reclaimed timber, ochre-toned eco-concrete, natural stone and low-carbon metals, chosen not just for their aesthetic resonance with the Australian landscape but for their environmental credentials. Parker-Smith drew direct inspiration from travelling on board the Indian Pacific himself, finding in the journey’s ever-changing scenery, from world-renowned wine regions to vast arid plains, what he describes as a moving tapestry of contrasts.
The result is a garden that functions simultaneously as landscape design, travel editorial and sustainability statement. That it will be seen by over 140,000 visitors across five days, with BBC coverage reaching an average audience of over 22 million people, is not lost on the partners behind it.
The Journey Itself
Indian Pacific at the Chelsea Flower Show | A Garden Inspired by the Journey | Journey Beyond
The Indian Pacific is among the last of the world’s truly epic overland train journeys: two nights and nearly two days crossing the continent from the cultural and culinary capital of Adelaide to the port city of Perth on Australia’s western coast. It passes through the Nullarbor Plain, one of the world’s largest flat expanses of semi-arid scrubland, where the train runs in a straight line for 478 kilometres without a single curve, the longest straight stretch of railway track on earth. Off-train experiences along the route include the outback town of Cook and a signature dinner under the stars at Rawlinna, on the fringe of one of Australia’s largest sheep stations.Journey Beyond CEO Chris Tallent describes it as having no better way to experience the spectacular landscapes of Australia. This year marks 55 years of transcontinental journeys on the Indian Pacific, and the Chelsea Garden serves as its international coming-out party to a UK audience for whom Australia, despite its distance, remains one of the most aspirational long-haul destinations.
Two Cities Worth the Journey
Photography left, Rail Gold Premium Cabin, Fuller 1. Right, Indian Pacific Experience, Rawlinna.
The garden is as much about Adelaide and Perth as it is about the tracks between them. Adelaide, the National Park City, is a place that has consistently outpaced its reputation: a city surrounded by world-class wine regions in the Barossa, Clare and McLaren Vale, with Kangaroo Island and the Flinders Ranges within reach, and an urban core that has invested deeply in parks, river systems and cultural life. Its food scene has earned international attention without the corresponding crowds, which remains one of its most compelling qualities.
Perth, meanwhile, holds a geographical distinction worth noting it is the closest Australian city to the UK and the only one with a direct flight connection, making the Indian Pacific a natural way to combine both cities in a single journey without doubling back. The city sits on the Indian Ocean with a coastline that stretches for hundreds of kilometres, a thriving arts scene and a wine region, the Swan Valley and Margaret River, that produces bottles commanding serious attention globally.
Emma Terry, CEO of the South Australian Tourism Commission, notes that British visitors travel, on average, across at least two states or territories when they visit Australia. The Indian Pacific makes that combination not just logical but extraordinary.
After Chelsea
What happens to the garden once Chelsea closes is a story worth telling. All plants will be replanted by The Royal Parks in Kensington Gardens, joining what is arguably the most famous collection of urban parkland in the world. The hard structural elements will travel to Longleat in Wiltshire, where they will be used to create an Australian garden space alongside the estate’s existing Koala Creek experience, which has housed southern koalas from South Australia since 2019 and welcomed Europe’s first southern koala joey in 2022. The garden’s materials will, in other words, continue telling the story of Australia long after the show closes.
At The Fluxx, we find this kind of thinking rare and worth noting: a show garden designed from the outset to have a life beyond its five days, in partnerships that extend its cultural reach in genuinely meaningful directions. It is the kind of detail that separates an exhibit from an idea.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show runs from 19 to 23 May 2026 at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London.
For more information about the Indian Pacific and Journey Beyond visit journeybeyond.com.au. For tickets to RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 visit
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