The traditional floral displays that made the Chelsea Flower Show famous the world over were pushed aside yesterday by a Martian vista of packed earth, rocks and concrete.

The decision by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) judges to hand the Best in Show award to an “astronaut’s allotment” on Mars angered some at Chelsea. The concrete and rock garden, created by Sarah Eberle, was designed to keep an astronaut happy during a stay on Mars and was regarded as an unlikely winner because it lacked aesthetic appeal.

Bob Sweet, the show’s organiser, said that “without a doubt” some of the designers would be infuriated at the decision to award it a gold medal and the Best in Show honour. Called 600 Days with Bradstone but more popularly referred to as “Life on Mars”, it was built at a cost of £250,000 and contains only a handful of flowers.

Ulf Nordfjell, the designer of A Tribute to Linnaeus, had been the favourite to win and appeared shellshocked yesterday after learning that the Martian landscape had won. His garden, representative of spring in Sweden, marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Carl Linnaeus, who devised the Latin name system to identify plants and animals.

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Anthony Samuelson’s roof garden, Patio Povera, was also awarded a gold medal. It is filled with discarded objects including television aerials and tool boxes.

Lisa Huntington, a garden designer and an RHS judge, though not on the show garden judging panel, said of the winning garden: “It was very brave and it’s not to everybody’s taste but Chelsea needs change and innovation. It’s theatre – and we need theatre.”

Roger Smith, who designed the silver medal-winning Marshalls Sustainability Garden, described it as stunning and praised Ms Eberle’s skill, but added: “It maybe doesn’t appeal so much to the public.”

Ms Eberle created the Martian garden in conjunction with the European Space Agency and the Science Museum in London. It is intended to represent what an astronaut on a 600-day tour of Mars could grow in a biosphere. By growing plants useful for health, nutrition and the pleasure of gardening, the allotment would also help to keep an astronaut mentally balanced.

Everything in the garden was built or grown on the basis of what could be replicated on Mars and forms part of the research by the European Space Agency into the requirements of a mission to Mars.Ms Eberle said: “I’ve lived this for eight years. It was quite overwhelming to win Best in Show. It’s the pinnacle, a bit like winning Olympic gold if you are an athlete.”

Growing fair

–– More than 157,000 people will visit the 85th show before it closes on Saturday
–– The 600 exhibitors include 20 show gardens, 26 small gardens and more than 100 floral displays
–– More than 300 new plants have been introduced at the event in the past five years
–– 8,000 bottles of champagne, 20,000 glasses of Pimm’s and 35,000 sandwiches will be sold

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