LONDON — To people in the world of British gardening, the announcement was as startling as if the authorities at Wimbledon had suddenly decreed that players could compete in cutoffs and sequined tank tops.

So it was not surprising that the staid Royal Horticultural Society‘s decision to allow garden gnomes — creatures commonly associated with the landscapes of the unrich, the unfamous and the untasteful — at the Chelsea Flower Show this year elicited a variety of responses.

Such as people all but fleeing in horror when the word was mentioned. “Gnomes?” said one exhibitor on Monday, when the show opened in preview. “I can’t comment on gnomes.”

Some exhibitors went proud and loud, putting gnomes in places they would not be missed, like in the middle of the grass. Others seemed to feel that gnomes may be fine for other people, but certainly not any people they know, or want to know. One renowned landscape architect, Robert Myers, hid a gnome in a tree in his display, lost his nerve and took it out again before the judges could see it.