Strawberry Hill Flower Festival

Janne Ford, Philippa Stewart and Leigh Chappell with Philippa's unique dahlia flowers.

This Offshoot episode takes us behind the scenes of the Strawberry Hill flower festival 2024. There are buckets of flowers in the rooms. Florists and flower growers pass by with armfuls of greenery. But by the time you are reading this page - all of the buckets, chicken wire and string will have been cleared away and all that will remain are the stunning installations in each room of Horace Walpole’s little gothic mansion.

For three days people will admire and wonder at the beauty of this floral art, peaking into tiny rooms, gazing up through the staircase, admiring windowsills, all full of colour and then it will be gone and all that will be left from this sustainable festival will be a compost heap. But in another way it won’t really be gone because I won’t forget the image of that enormous allium constructed from allium flowers or the spiral of a meadow lifted on bamboo canes, in the centre, a spot to cloud gaze.

I hope that this episode will inspire you too, to look at more of the work of our flower growers and floral designers and to see a flower festival in a slightly different light. You may not be able to visit this year but put the date in your diary for next year.

Top row of photos are Henck Röling’s spiral meadow.

Second row left to right: Lily Matilda Flowers in the Star Chamber; HORTUS poeticus ‘The Natural World, a Feast for the Eyes and the Curious Mind’; Gaia Eros Florals with the alliums

Third Row: left to right: Andy Monaghan in mid-creation, Yeon-Hee’s beautiful 3-D pressed flowers and the dried buttercups of Lucy Phillips and Kara Johnson