British Flowers Week in June
The Garden Museum’s annual British Flowers Week exhibition is returning to London, England, this summer, in partnership with founders New Covent Garden Market. Uniting florists, flower growers, wholesalers, and flower lovers, British Flowers Week is a celebration of Britain’s best blooms and talent in floral design.
This year’s week-long exhibition from June 10 to 15, 2021, will see five of Britain’s top florists – Cyrill Tronchet, Hazel Gardiner, JamJar Flowers, Simon Lycett and Tattie Rose – creating floral installations using environmentally sustainable methods, transforming the Garden Museum, 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London, into an immersive floral wonderland filled with the scents and colours of beautiful British-grown blooms. This year’s exhibition theme is ‘Healing’.
And, on a related topic: Save our Sunlight. A few weeks ago, the Garden Museum launched a petition asking the London Mayor to guarantee six hours of sunlight for the city’s green public spaces. No, they’re not asking him to schedule the sun, but to consider light when approving new development.
Current planning policy for London requires just two hours of direct sunlight on a park, playground, or wildlife area (as measured on the equinoxes of 21 March and 21 September). This means that local neighborhood parks could be overshadowed by a new development, or in darkness, for 22 hours a day.
“Please do not take our daylight. This will affect our wellbeing, and we have already suffered enough through the global pandemic,” implored Ghazala Butt.
More than 7,000 people have shown their support and signed the petition so far, and the museum been joined in the campaign by London Wildlife Trust, London Skyline Campaign, SAVE Britain’s Heritage, Stop the Blocks, the London Gardens Trust, Lambeth Village, and the Metropolitan Parks and Gardens Association.
The Garden Museum is located in the deconsecratd Church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, next to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official London residence. It was built by the sister of Edward the Confessor in the 11th century. Scheduled to be demolished in the 1970s, a group of volunteers and garden historians worked to save it, and have it dedicated to John Tradescant, the gardener to King Charles I, who was buried in the church.