Home Flower Set "Winter Garden"

In 1773 a plant from South Africa reached Kew and was raised under glass. Joseph Banks named it Strelitzia, after Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a keen botanist herself, and added reginae, "of the queen". It was devotion with a purpose: the flattery helped keep royal favour, and money, flowing to Kew. The bird of paradise flower has carried a love letter to a queen ever since.

The green hydrangea carries a quieter one. In Japan in the 1820s, the German doctor Philipp Franz von Siebold fell in love with a woman named Otaki; their daughter Ine would become Japan's first woman doctor of Western medicine. Siebold had to leave, and in 1839 he published a hydrangea under the name otaksa, for her. Botanists later set the name aside, as the species had already been described. The story stayed. The genus name itself is Greek for "water vessel", after its tiny cup-shaped seed capsules.

Winterberry keeps the last secret. Its shrubs are either male or female, and only the females bear berries, and only when a male flowered nearby at the same time. Every orange-studded branch is proof that the pair found each other in time.

The French call a glasshouse room attached to a home a jardin d'hiver, a winter garden. Set these three in three vases, bird of paradise tall, hydrangea in the middle, winterberry alongside, and you have one: a bird behind glass, berries from far away, and a corner where the mind wanders and new ideas turn up on their own.

The set arrives loose, for you to arrange; vases are available separately. Delivered in Paris, Monday to Saturday; delivery is free from €100.

Some flower substitutions may occur if we find that the quality of the delivered blooms isn't up to our standards, but the overall color palette and style will remain intact.