The Garden Museum in London is preparing to host the inaugural Winter Flowers Week exhibition from December 7 to 11, spotlighting the beauty and diversity of flowers and foliage grown in the country during winter. The event will showcase floral installations by five renowned designers—Floribunda Rose, Shane Connolly, Hazel Gardiner, Carly Rogers, and Tattie Rose—who have been featured in previous British Flowers Week exhibitions.
Inspired in part by Shane Connolly's advocacy for Flowers from the Farm and sustainable floristry, the Garden Museum initiative features a 'Shrine of Nature' created by Connolly in the former church space. The focus of Winter Flowers Week is to provide an opportunity for people to observe winter's natural aesthetics and for designers to demonstrate their capabilities beyond the typical summer flower abundance. Despite the absence of cascades of summer flowers, Winter Flowers Week promises botanically intriguing displays, enriched by the scent of winter-flowering shrubs.
Flowers from the Farm members are actively participating in Winter Flowers Week, supplying materials to designers. Workshops hosted by Blooming Green and Leigh Chappell Flowers will further contribute to the event, with Floribunda Rose's Sarah Diligent among the five exhibitors.
Diligent shares insights into her design process for the exhibition, emphasizing the importance of celebrating winter flowers and their often-overlooked contribution. The Garden Museum's broad brief focused on winter flowers, sustainability, and seasonality. Diligent and her team conceptualized and designed 'Winter's Embrace,' a birdcage pergola structure showcasing British flowers. The design incorporates sustainability considerations, ensuring materials are repurposed for future events and flower compost.
The floral palette for 'Winter's Embrace' includes reds, purples, pinks, and white for lightness. Diligent utilized a helpful tool, 'British Cut Flowers arranged by color,' to guide her flower selection based on seasonal availability. Sustainability efforts extend to using fsc papers for printed materials and employing meadow boxes as sustainable floral mechanics, avoiding single-use plastics.
The installation will feature a variety of winter flowers, including narcissi, camellia, alstroemeria, rose lilies, daphne, heuchera, winter-flowering clematis, trachelospernum, and viburnum. The unpredictability of flower availability adds an element of surprise to the exhibit.
Diligent expresses excitement about creating 'Winter's Embrace' and looks forward to celebrating the beauty of British flowers during the cooler months. The installation aims to envelop visitors in nature, offering an immersive experience filled with color, texture, and beauty unique to winter.
Flowers from the Farm