Chelsea in Bloom & RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Chelsea in Bloom &

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show

We had an amazing time visiting Chelsea in Bloom and the RHS Chelsea Flower Show a couple of weeks ago. We wanted to share with you some of the fantastic displays and a round up of some of our favourite bits.

Chelsea in bloom

We have made this event a fixed date in our diaries for a number of years now, and always find it such an inspiring event to pop to London to see. The variety of creative ideas and the scale of some of the installations really is impressive, and gives you such vision to aim big and be creative. This year designs were based on the theme Great British Icons, but a different take from everyone made it so special. Mechanics, logistics, and volume of flowers must take very careful planning and organisation.

Veevers Carter (above)

These bold, bright and stunning stylish displays were created for Jigsaw. Out of all the displays seen this one had the most exquisite attention to detail, and fitted perfectly with their displays. The strikingly vibrant colours of the flowers and umbrella props worked so well with the pops of yellow in the store frontage.

Philip Corps Flowers

This one really stood out, and very deservingly won Highly Commended! Created by Phillip Corps Flowers, it included gorgeous florals, with a playful and classic hint to the queen's corgis. We loved how their displays followed through internally as well, the whole thing was really well thought through, classic, elegant and felt completely in-keeping with the Jo Malone brand.

Lucy Vail

It’s been a busy year for Lucy Vail this year, with installations created for both Chelsea in Bloom, and the Chelsea Flower Show, all of which made an impressive impact. This elegant and natural style display was made for Annoushka, it cleverly incorporated lots of plants, with crates, moss and canes.

Amanda Willgrave

We loved the use of so many great British flowers in the installations at Smythson, beautifully created by Amanda Willgrave, and supplied by Stokesay Flowers & GB Foliage.

Stunning jewel colours gracing the front of Tiffany’s this year.

Early Hours London

The coolest of displays throughout, a fabulous take on a street party from the iconic Vivienne Westwood. Cleverly created by florist Early Hours London. You absolute couldn’t miss this one with the pops of colour and mass of flowers.

Lavender Green

We popped by Lavender Green to see their impressive shop front. This piece, depicting the crown jewels, looked simply stunning. A real mass of flowers was used, supplied by fleurametz. They’d perfectly caught the Jubilee spirit with the huge crown and the rich royal colour of purple hydrangeas and alliums.

Cloud boutique & florist Kamil @kamiletto.jpg

It was a delight to capture Kamil on hand refreshing displays. This beautiful installation, bursting with colour, won Silver! It was designed for Cloud Boutique, by florist Kamiletto. Fantastic achievement for his first year involved with Chelsea in Bloom.

The Chelsea Flower Show

The overall feel of the show this year definitely seemed to be moving towards the idea of wellness and gardening and flowers all being part of that important conversation around wellbeing and self care. All the gardens seemed to have a nod towards various aspects of mental health, wellbeing as well as green issues and helping nature. There was lots of wild garden style planting, with a focus on pollinators and no real prominent ‘trendy flowers’ like there usually is. The only ones that really stood out as having a moment were geums - they were on every exhibitor stand. Our resident flower grower Marianne from Frances and Rose says the stand out varieties from this year were definitely “Mai Tai” and “Totally Tangerine” - the oranges are back!

Our top garden was definitely The Place2Be “Securing Tomorrow Garden”, it was beautiful with such a fantastic message behind it. It was the one you wanted to sit quietly in and could have done happily for hours (although a few thousand onlookers would have put a stop to any peace and quiet). They won a very worthy gold medal!

A few other highlights included: “A Garden Sanctuary” by Hamptons, which was basically the most beautiful studio space you could wish for; The David Austin display stand which will never disappoint; the RAF Garden which was really moving and the Veevers Carter display of the Queens head in pressed flowers was absolutely stunning - very clever and incredibly delicate.

There were some really impressive displays by florists inside for the 'floral gallery' in the Great Pavilion.

It was lovely to see Anja there from Norris Floristry who we've worked with here at The Freelance Florist. She won a silver-guilt medal for her beautiful installation ‘Reconnect’.

This stunning display from Acacia Creative Studio won silver. Their nature inspired dining experience, “Immerse yourself in wild melody”, how beautiful!

We came away with so many ideas and thoughts, plants we wanted to buy and definitely slightly sore feet. We’re already busy planning our trip next year and hoping to offer some amazing floral opportunities alongside.