strawberry hill house flower festival

23-26 JUNE 2019

FLOWER FESTIVAL IN A FAIRYTALE SETTING

The very first time I heard about this new and intriguing flower festival was after a foam-free floral design workshop at Sarah Raven’s led by Fiona Pickles of Firenza Flowers. Fiona’s class was based around large floral installations and was attended by a number of florists already immersed and practising sustainable floristry wishing to learn and share invaluable techniques and ideas. It was delightful to see a lot of familiar faces from my Instagram pages and it was so exciting to make some new connections. Shortly after the class, Leigh from Leigh Chappell Floral Design phoned me with details about the flower festival she was busy organising with two other friends floral photographer Janne Ford and Claire from Honeysuckle and Hilda. They were in search of florists to join them in transforming Horace Walpole’s neogothic 18th century castle Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham, London into a wild, romantic flower-filled fairy tale setting around the time of British Flowers week. With sustainability in mind, florists were to only use natural, seasonal ingredients, implement a variety of sustainable floristry techniques, excluding plastic floral foam and other non-biodegradable and environmentally harmful materials. Leigh was hugely inspired by David Attenborough’s recent talk on current environmental issues at the house and soon after the idea of a new kind of flower festival with a very contemporary message was born. This was the beginning of something incredibly exciting and I couldn’t wait to get stuck in and start planning my display.

Florists and flower growers from all over the country signed up to help, each of us were given a room or part of a room within the house, to design a sympathetic display. Bearing in mind the house’s age and delicate nature, the floors, woodwork and tapestry, wallpapers, books in the library, furniture could easily be damaged by water and even insects brought in with plant material. This historic house required some really mindful planning of ingredients used and the logistics of a tight timescale for set up. It could not have happened without the army of volunteers at Strawberry Hill House who enthusiastically assisted everyone before and throughout the entire event.

Some of the larger rooms were split between designers, florists and growers teamed up to handle larger, more time and labour intensive displays. The main entrance hall and staircase were decorated by Firenza Flowers and her team of experienced helpers. Fiona was also appointed creative director for this particular event, taking a lead in artistic direction for the finished look and feel of the house. Her timeless, romantic entrance hall display was admired by all visitors as they entered the house while her delicately placed, entangled flowers cascaded along the staircase and lead the way from ground floor all the way up to the second floor of the house.

Brilliant plant and garden photographer Eva Nemeth joined us to capture all the beauty that was installed for the 4 day festival. All of the photographs below are credit to her talent and truly showcase the hard work exhibited by all involved.

Wonderful botanical paintings by artist Flora Roberts were displayed around the house, including the top floor landing .

The main staircase really set the scene with its wild, romantic beautifully arranged light and airy floral displays. Each and every room in the house had its own flower treatment, all with a different atmosphere and light levels, some with fresh ingredients, others following a dried, preserved theme. With one thing in common they were all beautifully chosen for each particular space. With the help of Eva’s images I am able to show you around the whole house and showcase the marvellous work and talent of each and every contributor.

Starting our tour on the ground floor the first and one of the most impressive, thoughtful displays were created by talented duo, the Twisted Sisters. They dreamed up the most inspiring and grabbing dried flower display in The Great Parlour.

Onto the first floor of Strawberry Hill House several rooms greet the visitors, all with a very different feel. The Blue Bedchamber was one of the most uplifting rooms with wonderful frothy white clouds of Ammi set agains the contrasting, electric blue walls. It was filled with flowers by Janne Ford and Pigpen Flowers photographer/floral designer and flower grower collaboration and to what a wonderful effect.

In The Green Closet, which is one of the most delicate rooms in the house in conservation terms relating to walls, floors woodwork and tapestry, the instruction was to only use dried flowers. Bex from Botanical Tales created the most enchanting everlasting flower installation that perfectly complemented the green walls and lower light levels. Bex worked with dried flower wholesaler Atlas Flowers on this installation.

Still on the first floor in The Blue Breakfast Room, two floral artists exhibited their work. Fig and Fern Floral showcased a selection of arrangements around the fireplace and mantle wall with a lighter, brighter colour palette to contrast the darker walls. Floral Evolution’s elevated flower arrangement was set in the ornate bay window.

There were many more rooms to fill on the first floor, one of which The Star Chamber was the most tricky in terms of space and light, or rather the lack of it. The Star Chamber is a rather dark walk through room that was brilliantly illuminated with the bright and light flowers by Leigh Chappell Floral Design and flower growers the Wolves Lane Flower Company. Leigh used potted plants as well as other fresh flower arrangements to create a floral woodland feel.

The Library with its huge collection of antique books required shielding from moisture, wet leaves, possible insect infestation, hence there were limited amount of carefully placed fresh arrangements installed. Three artists created three very different displays in this large space. Louise Langdon chose vintage books, hardly visible plant stands and different vessels filled with fresh summer flowers to showcase a very pretty corner of the room near the window.

Wild and Co opted for a large, wild and spreading urn arrangement for the fireplace area. And in the middle of the room Ros from the Natural Dye Works assembled a lovely collection of her naturally dyed silk ribbons.

In The Holbein Chamber with its soft lilac walls, fantastic grower and floral designer Sarah from Nettlewood Flowers together with South West London florist Petal HQ assembled a crescent of stunning blooms under the gothic windows. I loved the gradual blending of colours from lilac through pink to orange.

The Beauclerk is a small, ornate, powder blue room on the first floor where Somerset florists Jane Edmonds (Jane Flower Jane) garden and floral designer extraordinaire and Toria from Wildly Beautiful Flowers set up two stunning displays with an elevated urn and a meadow-like floor arrangement in moss with grasses.

The Tribune room was graced by one of the most spectacular oversized urn arrangements put together by Brigitte from Moss and Stone Floral Design. Being the largest scale urn display, it enabled visitors to walk beneath the flowers and immerse in the blossoming branches, arching rose briars and have a closer look and experience the intensely scented summer blooms and intricate details.

One of the lightest, most feminine rooms was found on the top floor, the Plaid Bed Chamber, where Hannah from Aelisabet Flowers filled the space with rambling roses, peonies, sweet peas, evoking a lovely light and airy floral experience.

Right next door exhibited Becky from Picking Posies in a room that used to be Horace Walpole’s bedchamber and one with a much darker and more ornate feel to it. Becky’s design was a wonderful windblown mixture of fresh and dried ingredients, with a real movement within the design, a real eye-catcher. In the same room the wonderful multi-talented artist Sarah Saunders also created a display for the fireplace.

Returning to the first floor, three rooms should be mentioned together, all having strong, scarlet tapestry walls, presenting a dominant, challenging background to any floral arrangement. The Great North Bedchamber is an impressively sized room boasting two beautiful recess windows. In the window recess on the left, Devon-based florist-grower Holly-Bee Flowers created the prettiest window display with three urns in descending sizes, filled with the most beautiful roses, foxgloves and spectacular flowering branches of Cornus (dogwood). As I myself planned a display for the other window recess on the right, Holly and I planned our arrangements to complement and mirror each other in shape and form, creating a sympathetic design to both the room and the windows. They could work well separately but also together, framing both windows. We both used flowers and foliages from our gardens and plots. For the fireplace, The Real Flower Company created a scented rose and seasonal flower display.

The Gallery is another large red and gold ornate, ballroom style space where window sills were laid with delicate meadow-like flowers by Grace Mary Design. The press event also took place here on the Sunday evening.

From The Gallery opens the small Round Drawing Room, that was decorated with a central pedestal display of fountain-like blooms by Wild Renata Flowers. With its impressive size and packed with scented roses, wild trailing foliages and blooms it was an absolute beauty inviting you to explore the room through the framing gothic doorway.

I should also mention the beautifully written, tasteful labels for all displays made by talented Oxfordshire calligrapher Jane John. Fantastic talks given by growers, environmentalists, florists during the festival on sustainability explaining the aims and efforts of many in the floristry industry, the trends and explaining the work of the reassuringly growing number of florist-growers focussing their businesses on sustainable practises. The wonderfully decorated Strawberry Hill House attracted record visitor numbers during the 4-day flower festival and was a huge success for all.

Plans for a repeat of this successful event in June this year were well underway already at the beginning of 2020. Some florists have already signed up from the year before joined by a growing waiting list of florists wanting to contribute. There were plans for more talks, workshops, demonstrations and more, when the coronavirus outbreak had suddenly put a stop to many similar events at the beginning of March. Plans are to postpone it to the autumn this year, but with all the uncertainty around, we will just have to see and hope things will get back to normal when we can carry on planning and look forward to wonderful events like this and many more to come.