The London Dungeon has immortalised the political party leaders in garden gnome form. The terrifying garden scene is the attraction’s unofficial entry into the Chelsea Flower Show and situated opposite the hallowed halls of Westminster from now until this Saturday.
Nestled within the new sinister shrubbery at the London Dungeon entrance, the ‘Gnopes Garden’ will force visitors to come face to face with the attraction’s ghastly guests in gnome form; our political parties’ leaders… Rishi Sunak for the Conservatives, Sir Keir Starmer for Labour, Ed Davey for the Liberal Democrats, Richard Tice for Reform UK and Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay for the Green Party.
The inclusion of these pint-sized politicians is bound to raise a few eyebrows following the election announcement, whilst at the long-running gardening show gnomes have long been banned from official entries after judges in 1990 feared the ornaments were ‘tacky’.
The spine-chilling garden has been created in the run up to the general election, now confirmed by the prime minister, and like all the twisted tales in the Southbank attraction was inspired by Victorian history.
Garden gnomes were popularised by Victorians in the 18th century for use in the gardens of people who couldn’t afford to take part in the unusual trend amongst the wealthy of the time – hiring old men to live as ‘ornamental hermits’ at the bottoms of their estates for years on end.
Guests at the London Dungeon needn’t worry about seeing the terrifying ‘Gnopes Garden’ at the attraction for too long as the display is only available for a limited time from 22nd – 25th May.
A London Dungeon spokesperson says: “A Dungeon entry to the Chelsea Flower Show must be scary (even when unofficial) so we took inspiration from the scariest thing we could think of… the current state of British politics. Being the experts in London’s bleakest past and based just across the river from Westminster, we felt inspired to turn today’s dark reality into art by immortalising our collective national feeling of dread in garden gnome form.”
