RHS Highlights New Partnerships and Style Guide at BLERHS Highlights New Partnerships and Style Guide at BLE

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has has a special launch planned for Brand Licensing Europe: a new style guide that adapts its design assets to the diverse needs of its new partners. 

The appeal of the RHS brand has always been strong, boosted by the U.K.’s favorite gardening charity and its high-profile gardens, flower shows, campaigns and horticultural research. Indeed, the RHS licensing campaign strongly supports the RHS vision of a world where gardening is embraced as a way of life. However, the past year has seen growth in established RHS categories like gardening, homeware and gifts and new categories, bringing the RHS brand to nursery products, outdoor furniture and even socks. 

Recent gardening partnerships include licensing the Wildlife and Birdcare Nature Recovery Project to produce a wooden habitat home collection for various garden wildlife. Willsow offers a range of RHS Plantable Calendars and Plantable Christmas Crackers. In addition, Crane Garden Buildings is to produce the RHS Garden Building Collection by Crane Garden Buildings, a range of leisure buildings, offices, outbuildings and garages. 

Recent RHS endorsements in this category include the VegTrug range of raised beds and products for home growing and AutoPot, a supplier of sustainable plant watering systems. 

Just a few recent licenses in other categories include Atlantic Mats for a range of doormats and runners, Bramblecrest for a collection of dining, lounging and reclining outdoor furniture and accessories, the third RHS collection of fabrics in partnership with Sofas & Stuff, leather handbags and accessories from Radley and the first RHS range of socks from SOCKSHOP in the U.K. 

Nursery products include a partnership with Roma Prams that will bring RHS strollers, travel systems, prams and children’s toys to independent retailers in early 2025. 

RHS 2024 categories have extended into homeware, Growing Gardeners, a new concept in family gardening from Burgon & Ball, arts and crafts, kitchen textiles, fabrics, food and drink, prams and more. 

A new style guide called RHS Flora and Her Friends is a response to requests from licensees and retailers for a simplified collection of botanical assets that will translate into product designs for the home, gifts and apparel product categories.  

Like all RHS style guides, Flora and Her Friends draws on inspiration supplied by the RHS Lindley Collections, the world’s finest collection of botanical art, but with an emphasis on ready-to-go patterns. 

The artwork comes from 19th-century plant watercolorist, Caroline Maria Applebee, Japanese works and additional drawings featuring birds, insects, flowers and foliage. The imagery has been reworked and a collection developed that provides instant designs for licensees to use – or they can choose from nearly 500 images in the new guide to create patterns. 

The RHS will also launch a collection of lighthearted and humorous artwork, underlining its commitment to constantly developing and improving service to its partners. 

“The ongoing success and increasing diversity of the RHS licensing program is a cause for celebration – but not relaxation,” says Cathy Snow, licensing manager, RHS. “Thus, our team will be out in force at BLE 2024 showing partners and potential partners how we are continually enhancing our support for our licensees. Keen to find out more about our design assets, partnerships and working with the U.K.’s favorite gardening charity? Join us at stand C273.”