King’s Birthday Honours: RHS star Sarah Eberle awarded MBE

Sarah Eberle says she is “deeply honoured and quietly humbled” to be recognised for her services to horticulture.

The Witney-based garden designer, one of the most decorated in RHS history, has spent more than 50 years in the industry.

News of the honour broke while she was at this year’s show.

She said: “It was completely out of the blue and a real excitement. When I do Chelsea I’m not focused on anything else, so when the email came in I had to look again to check I wasn’t imagining it.”

Eberle, famed for her bold, immersive show gardens, says she feels like she has “never worked a day”.

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“I love imparting my passion and helping people, almost showing off,” she said.

In an exclusive interview with the Oxford Mail, she laughed about her relationship with the outdoors, which has not been without challenges.

Even severe allergies, including a spell in hospital after pollen lodged in her lungs at Chelsea, have not kept her away from the showground. “It doesn’t stop me,” she said.

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Eberle went straight into landscape architecture after school, studying environmental subjects at A-level before training for five years at what is now the University of Greenwich.

After early corporate work in urban landscapes, she set up on her own in the South and “fell into garden design” because it gave her the creative freedom she craved.

Over the decades she has worked with everyone from Oxfordshire families to royalty and celebrities, including a commission in Monaco in 2011.

She jokes that gardening is “seriously addictive and can be seriously expensive”, but insists it remains one of the few passions with no social boundaries.

She says she has been “fortunate to work with extraordinary people who share a belief in the power of plants and places to connect us, restore us, and tell stories over time”.

Eberle hopes the honour will spotlight the role horticulture can play in tackling climate change and biodiversity loss.

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She said: “I take this as encouragement to continue — observing closely, working thoughtfully, and helping to create gardens that feel both rooted and resonant for those who experience them.

She wants more people to see planting as a powerful, everyday way to protect wildlife, care for their wellbeing and shape the landscapes future generations will inherit.

“Nature is so connected to mental health and wellbeing that I’m almost driven to show how gardens and landscape should be an intrinsic part of people’s worlds,” she added.