Its hard to believe that a whole year has nearly passed since Charlotte and Lisa won a gold medal each at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show 2014 and of course Lisa being ‘crowned’ Chelsea Florist of the Year 2014.

But in less than 3 weeks both girls will be back at Chelsea again to see if they can once again bring home another couple of medals! This year the girls have to create Floral fantasy trees inspired by the Tulgey woods in Alice and Wonderland. So keep an eye on our competition area to see how they get on and to see pictures of their finished designs!

The girls were thrilled to qualify both for the 3rd time to compete at Chelsea which is probably the hardest part of the competition with a lot of keen competition and only the top 2 places in each heat going through to Chelsea, so the level of competition is normally very high! For the qualifying round this year they had to make ‘Asian wedding cakes’ which was a fun and unusual task.

Charlotte Murrant who is competing in the ‘Young Chelsea Florist of the Year’ category decided to make a cake inspired by Asian buildings and took to creating a framework from polystyrene, wire and pot tape which was then covered in pink felt dipped in hot wax to make an uneven, butter icing effect.

This was then separated with felt balls and adorned with beautiful orchids, heuchera leaves, along with other smaller delicate flowers and accessories including tiny gold picture frames filled with orchid petals as well as gold leaves and gold wire balls, finished with small delicate vine shapes punched from larger fresh ‘black tie’ leaves to soften the effect of the uncovered wax.

Lisa Fowler who is competing in the ‘Chelsea florist of the year’ category took her inspiration for her ‘Asian wedding cake’ from a Parasol and Origami. To create a stunning floral cake. The base of Lisa’s cake is polystyrene cake dummies covered in red clay, the bottom tier is then separated from the top 3 using the parasol to add an Oriental element to the framework.

Lisas clay construction is then edges in red Cornus to give the chocolate finger effect around each tier, the bottom tier is edged in dyed magnolia leaves and cordyline leaves made to look like roses, it is then adorned with stunning orchids, tropical Heliconias and ranunculus along with gorgeous origami flowers and paper elements within the design. The more you look at Lisa’s cake the more you see for example the very clever cupcake cases on the bottom tier that even i didn’t notice on the first look!