Her Majesty met the floral designers and was guided round the Garden Museum by Alan Titchmarsh, President of the Garden Museum, and Royal Florist Shane Connolly, who designed the floral arrangements at Westminster Abbey for the Coronation of The King and Queen on 6 May 2023. Her Majesty last visited the Garden Museum for British Flowers Week in June 2023.
The installations for the floral show have been designed specifically for the historic space, interacting with the Garden Museum’s Grade II* listed building, parts of which date back to 14th century.
Winter Flowers Week Installations
Shane Connolly & Co: A Shrine to Nature – an invitation to pause, reflect and enjoy the delicacy of simple winter flowers including Chimonanthus Praecox (wintersweet), Growing Helleborus, Niger (Christmas Roses), Salix and Mistletoe.
Carly Rogers Flowers: Deconstructed Landscape (pictured) – Inspired by the age old tradition of gathering winter foliage for garlands and wreaths to decorate our homes in celebration of the festive season, Carly Rogers has created a deconstructed and reinvented sculptural winter landscape, a ‘still life’ of mixed seasonal pines and moss that transports the visitor to an imagined natural space.
Hazel Gardiner Design: Pathway to Reflection – a tranquil and immersive grotto, adorned with gifts from the natural world, candlelight and delicate fragrances. Imbued with scents crafted by perfumer Maya Njie, the calming winter palette of dried flowers includes Straw Flower (Helichrysum), Teasle (Dipsacus fullonum), Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) and Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum).
Tattie Rose Studio: Winter Wild – Inspired by her grandmother’s story of a girl who travelled through the villages of Galloway in Scotland selling her homemade decorations from a sleigh before Christmas, the installation features a wooden sleigh hand-painted with her favourite winter flowers: snowdrops, cyclamen, hellebores, holly; and filled with wreaths and decorations made from seasonal foliage.
Floribunda Rose: Winter’s Embrace – brings the unexpected joy of winter flowers gathered from across the country onto a curved arch structure that visitors can walk through. Inspired by natural forms and bird cage pergolas, it is designed to evoke feelings of refuge and comfort, a winter’s embrace.
Winter Flowers Week is open from the 7th of December until the 11th (10am-5pm), with a late opening on Friday 8 December.