Chelsea in Bloom, more inspiration for your Jubilee Party

is your bunting floral? this year's trend....at Smythson (TWR silver medal winner)

Chelsea in Bloom, where the stores around Chelsea Flower Show put on a ‘bit of a show’ to support the fact that the RHS floral extravaganza is based in Chelsea, is a lovely event, with some really gorgeous floral windows making shopping in the area a joy for the week. I have no doubt those Peter Jones Ladies love it! This year there’s a conducted tour around the stores involved that anyone can join, starting from today. Check the website for details if you are around and free.

Not surprisingly, this year the theme is the Diamond Jubilee and there are some innovative ideas, including floral bunting, seen here looking fabulous at Smythson, which you might like to practise for your jubilee party (a touch optimistic perhaps?)

The Chelsea in Bloom team get the Royal Horticultural Society to award a ‘best window’ but this year we are launching The Women’s Room Best Windows awards, based on the flower show system. So we are proud to announce…drumroll…. TWR’s Gold Medal best in show window to The White Company , Silver Gilt Medal to Jo Malone London, Silver to Smythson and Bronze to Ormonde Jayne. Well done all!

The White Company floral bunting

Our favourite window, (gold medal) although it was a tough call, was The White Company’s, it was the floral bunting and dress what swung it.

The White Company crown and dress details

Beautifully elegant and cleverly using tricky small windows was Ormonde Jayne’s floral crowns below (Bronze medal). Flowers were by Onlyroses.com

Ormonde Jayne's floral crown

Last year’s favourite window was Jo Malone’s amazing cherry tree, but this year’s was also lovely and a clever use of the internal/external idea it started last year, we’ve given it the silver gilt medal.

Jo Malone London oversized gardening window

The Liz Earle window theme Botanical Tea Party was based on the brand’s use of natural, British botanics in its product and was a neat idea, narrowly missing a medal. Designed by Jennifer Hirsch, the brand’s in house botanist, the inside/outside table will fair well through the week of mad weather predicted and is a great use of greenery rather than flowers. The blooms and plants were supplied by Derek Isaac from Super Nature Flowers

Liz Earle's botanic tea party

Emma Hope did something similar last year, but it’s still charming.

Emma Hope outside gardening

Below left is Paual Ka and right is Rachel Riley, we love the yellow and red, so cheerful!

Changing of the floral guard at Hackett, this is a terrific Jubilee window.

Peter Jones did itself proud with a beautifully executed rose portrait of the Queen, can you see  some of the red roses have sparkly diamonds in the centres? Caught the eye nicely.

Below is Anthropologie, a little way down the Kings Road but don’t miss it, as it’s a collaboration with The Balcony Gardener, one of our favourite gardening websites and it’s so detailed and stuffed full of interesting things to look at. Zoe Hodson, Junior Home Buyer for Anthropologie. told us ‘We collaborated with The Balcony Gardener to inspire our customers; showing them that city gardening is achievable, sustainable and beautiful’,

The Balcony Gardener at Anthropologie

Brora window had the most beautiful combinations of carnations, peonies, roses, delphiniums and hydrangeas imaginable, they were supplied by Cut Flowers in Waterloo. The colours here were simply gorgeous, my only teeny crit’ is that it’s quite tricky to read what is written on the word banners, but that’s nit-picky and I should just shut up really.

Brora windows, the prettiest floral combos with fab carnations

And finally the corgis at Ted Baker, hard to not love really.

Royal corgis at Ted Baker

Chelsea in Bloom website here