Instagram Analysis of Chelsea Flower Show 2021

We've analysed every single one of the thousands of photos that were uploaded to Instagram at Chelsea Flower Show 2021. Read on for our Top 5 observations from Chelsea Flower Show 2021 ranging from the Top 3 Most Instagrammed Flowers at the show, to why we think Pumpkins Out-Performed Chelsea Pensioners:

1. Plants are everywhere

Unsurprisingly, plants feature heavily in the Chelsea Flower Show Instagram feed- appearing in almost 78% of all Instagram photos uploaded from the show. That’s not surprising given that they’re detectable in the background of most shots.

In a large proportion of the images tagged as plants they weren’t the primary focus of the shot – but they’re undeniably the canvas that set the scene for the entire show.

2. People, not flowers, were the real draw of Chelsea Flower Show

Perhaps more interestingly (for a flower show) although 45.2% of images featured flowers there were 50.1% which contained people. The later-than-usual show was poorly timed for spectacular summer blooms, but the more important conclusion is that people were the real draw of Chelsea Flower Show this year. In this post-pandemic world the opportunity to socialise in a familiar setting was one of the most shareable moments.

3. Pumpkins out-performed Chelsea Pensioners

There were more than twice as many Instagram pics of pumpkins than there were of Chelsea Pensioners – but for all their prominence at the show the seasonal squashes still only appeared in 1.7% of the collective highlights.

Pumpkins and squashes featured prominently for perhaps the first time this year to highlight the autumnal feel of the show, whereas Chelsea Pensioners in their distinctive scarlet uniforms and tricorn hats have been in attendance since the show began.

We like to think that the Chelsea Pensioners featured in less shots simply because they’re far more sprightly on their feet than the humble squash.

4. The top 3 most Instagrammed flowers were: Geraniums, Dahlias and Daisies

Geraniums featured in 11.9% of all Instagram shots, Dahlia’s found their way into 6%, and Daisies popped up in 3.8% of all of the Chelsea Flower Show Instagram posts.

The remarkably long flowering season of geraniums is no doubt at least partly to thank for this statistic.

5. Garden Furniture and seating still featured prominently

September is not the best time for selling Garden Furniture – with most purchases taking place in April and May in preparation for the summer months - but despite this more than 28% of Instagram photos featured furniture or garden seating of some description. Arbours were the most popular, but we spotted plenty of garden benches, pergolas and even swinging day beds in the thousands of images we analysed.

Top 100 Items appearing in Chelsea Flower Show 2021 Instagram Photos 

Sources and attribution

Sharing: Please feel free to share this blog and data and re-purpose as you feel fit, however if using our data we kindly request that you link back to this original page (https://www.sittingspiritually.co.uk/blog/article/instagram-analysis-of-chelsea-flower-show-2021)

Method: We used cutting-edge technology developed by computer vision scientists to analyze every single Instagram photo uploaded at Chelsea Flower Show 2021.

If you'd like to download and draw your own conclusions from our data analysis you can use these two excel sheets:

Source A: Count of labels against occurrences for Instagram photos at the Chelsea Flower Show location between September 21st and September 26th 2021 (pre-filtered based on confidence score).

Source B: Instagram images with labels pre-filtered based on confidence score