Royal visit for inaugural Winter event
Thursday 7 December saw Her Majesty, The Queen open the Garden Museum’s Winter Flowers Week. Running through to 11 December, the week is a celebration of seasonal flowers and foliage through immersive festive installations.
Five floral designers – Shane Connolly, Carly Rogers, Hazel Gardiner, Tattie Rose and Floribunda Rose – transformed the Garden Museum into a floral winter wonderland using sustainable methods and materials.
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 in May 2023.
Building on the success of the Garden Museum’s annual summer exhibition, British Flowers Week, which again was opened by Her Majesty, Winter Flowers Week is a new edition which champions a seasonal and sustainable approach to festive decoration.
The installations 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 and mean the Museum will be filled with the scents and colours of British-grown flowers and foliage for five days.
Who made what?
Shane Connolly & Co: A Shrine to Nature
Shane, author of five books, champion of sustainability in the floral industry, and a floristry judge at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, created 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
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, who holds a Master's from the Royal College of Art and combines a passion for flowers and plants with contemporary art, design and sculpture, created a deconstructed and reinvented sculptural winter landscape, a ‘still life’ of mixed seasonal pines and moss to transport the visitor to an imagined natural space.
Hazel Gardiner Design: Pathway to Reflection
Hazel is a botanical artist, gardener, broadcaster and Garden Museum Trustee. Her designs are responsive to the seasons, in an exuberant and naturalistic signature style often merging fresh, dried and edible materials with planting and here she crafted a tranquil and immersive grotto, adorned with gifts from the natural world, candlelight and delicate fragrances as well as ‘wishing messages’ for visitors to share their own thoughts.
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, Tattie Rose’s installation, whihc was built by the close knit family and friend team featured a wooden sleigh hand-painted with her favourite winter flowers: snowdrops, cyclamen, hellebores, holly; and filled with wreaths and decorations made from seasonal foliage.
Sarah Diligent, Floribunda Rose: Winter’s Embrace
Sarah, who runs a design studio and flower school in Hampshire championing British flowers and teaching sustainable floristry methods, introduced the unexpected joy of winter flowers gathered from across the country – including Rose Lilies from Smith & Munson - onto a curved arch structure that visitors could walk through. Inspired by natural forms and bird cage pergolas, it was designed to evoke feelings of refuge and comfort, a real winter’s embrace.
