Next week London celebrates the annual Chelsea Flower Show in the Royal Hospital grounds, just down the road from our showroom on the Pimlico Road. For four days, Chelsea will be filled with bustling green fingered crowds, and a wonderful energy. Many of the antique shops pay homage with beautiful floral displays, and I’m looking forward to Scarlet & Violet’s unique English country arrangements arriving in our showroom.

This year, the Chelsea Flower Show’s highlights include honouring the Queen’s 90th year. Also the entrance of the grounds will be strewn with 300,000 individually crocheted poppies. Orchestrated by designer Phillip Johnson (who won Best Show Garden in 2013) the project was founded by Lynn Berry and Margaret Knight, who began by making just over a hundred poppies to honour the memory of their fathers who fought in the second world war. The word spread, and very quickly people from all over the world (including ages, from 2 -102!) started contributing to the project. The results promise to be breathtaking, showing the same extraordinary spirit and magical vein as the Tower of London project which I loved so much.

In conjunction with the show, and with the onset of the lighter Spring Summer evenings, we have designed a new garden bench: the Wilsford Garden Bench. This joins our series of handcrafted garden benches in our reproduction furniture range, and is illustrated here with photos from our latest advertising campaign.

The Wilsford design is an Arts and Craft, Chinese Chippendale revival garden seat. The repetitive and geometrical pattern with intricate interlaced fretwork, is typical of the Chinoiserie fashion that swept through England in the eighteenth century.

In keeping with much of Jamb’s wooden seating, the Wilsford is constructed from solid oak and, as with much of our reproduction furniture, can be amended to fit any space.

The Saltram Bench is modelled on another eighteenth century design by Thomas Chippendale. It is inspired by an original antique piece of furniture that came fromSaltram House, one of Britain’s finest examples of an early Georgian residence that stands on the banks of the River Plym, Devon.

Robert Adam remodelled the Tudor house in the 1760’s, and employed Thomas Chippendale to make most of the furniture.

We have also designed the Saltram in a smaller version to work around tables and smaller areas .

The first garden bench we made, the Pennington, is an oak bench with chamfered edges and traditional pegged construction. I will always love the simplicity of the design.

To be able to relax in the garden now while the soft evening light gradually fades is pure bliss. Here’s to the season of growth!