I’m thrilled to share with you images of the beautiful installations celebrating British Flowers Week 2018. Organised by New Covent Garden Market, the week is marked by six specially commissioned floral designs from some of the country’s most eminent florists. And you can see them in person as the designs are on display to the public at the newly-restored Garden Museum in London until Sunday.
The six florists and designs are:
Inspired by Fibonacci’s golden spiral and full of nature’s contrasting textures, Helen Chambers of Evolve Flowers has created a woven hay mat, floating from the ground and erupting with flowers, designed to take the observer on a journey through grass meadows, framed by trees, where lilies stand tall and stately.
A world of Wonders in One Closet Shut. This delicate cabinet of curiosities is a homage by Charlotte Smithson to the avid plant collecting of John Tradescant, buried in the graveyard of the Garden Museum, with delicately suspended laboratory glassware holding ethereal foraged flowers and foliage.
A box full of gorse, with a vase full of flowers at its heart, this installation is inspired by the unique qualities of British flowers. Inviting curiosity with its stark exterior and hints as to what lies within, visitors will be drawn to discover the floral design inside and feel a sense of the harmony of elements that might at first seem at odds with one another.
The arches in the nave of the Garden Museum lend their form to beech and birch branches in this design, which can be looked through, walked through, and guide you to other spaces. The tones and textures complement the surrounding stonework and are scented at different levels with herbs, stocks and lupins, leading up to foxgloves and fennel. And at the very top, the scent of roses and sweet peas fill the air.
The shadow box design created by Veevers Carter is an abstract replica of a curiosity described in George Stirn’s catalogue of the ‘Ark,’ and is inspired by the exceptional life of John Tradescant. An imagining of a woodland view, extraordinary flowers unearthed by Tradescant – phlox, clematis, Tradescantia, and others – form a frame through which the landscape is seen.
‘Plot 2’ seeks to celebrate women who grow, focusing on the beauty and chaos of growing flowers, which Camila and Marianne experience in their North London plot. Found objects from their growing sites: a rusty bath, stray crates and buckets, and the metal grid on which they usually propagate seeds, sit alongside fragrant roses, vegetables gone to seed and wild grasses in a homage to the beauty found in disorder.
Many congratulations to all the florists! I’ll be heading to the museum later today and I can’t wait to see the designs up-close. If you’d like more information about this annual celebration of homegrown blooms, head to the British Flowers Week website. And don’t forget to use the hashtag #BritishFlowersWeek if you post images of British flowers online.
(Images : Julian Winslow)
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