Sharing what moves and inspires us.

We’re delighted to be taking part in Strawberry Hill Flower Festival with Phoam Labs co-founder, Dundee Butcher, and the team on hand throughout the event. With a talk, live demonstration, and the chance for visitors to try inserting flowers into Phoam for themselves, it’s a wonderful opportunity to connect with so many designers and florists. Ahead of the festival, we caught up with Leigh Chappell, founder of the Strawberry Hill Flower Festival, and this year’s curator, Gaia Eros, to hear more about Strawberry Hill House and the festival itself.

Leigh Chappell’s floral career is a story of serendipity, passion, and creativity rooted in nature. With a background in graphic design and a childhood spent exploring the Welsh countryside, her work carries a distinct sensitivity to form and feeling. Known for her natural, romantic style and her ability to create atmosphere with flowers, Leigh has become a well-respected voice in British floristry.

Gaia Eros, daughter of John Elkington — a world authority on corporate responsibility and regenerative capitalism— grew up with a strong awareness of these issues and has become an important motivating force herself. After an early career as a tree surgeon and 17 years in film production, she decided to dive headfirst into the colourful world of flowers. Now celebrating eight flower-filled years in the industry, Gaia’s superpower is her insatiable enthusiasm for connecting and collaborating as a way to bring people together.

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Leigh, can you tell us how you found your way into flowers?

Leigh: My background is actually in graphic design. I worked in that world for years, designing things like packaging for brands such as Crabtree & Evelyn - lots of floral illustrations, ironically. I always loved the shapes and forms of flowers, but I was working with them on paper, and not in real life!

At some point, I realised I didn’t just want to draw flowers - I wanted to handle them, smell them, be surrounded by them. I think there was something very appealing about the immediacy and tactility of working with the real thing. It’s a bit like having the colours and textures already mixed for you, ready to use. I found that incredibly inspiring.

Were flowers always part of your life growing up?

Leigh: Yes, absolutely. I grew up in a village in Wales and was surrounded by nature, hedgerows full of primroses, bluebells carpeting the woods, wild foxgloves. I think that early exposure to natural beauty never really left me. Like many florists, I’ve always had a deep appreciation for flowers, but it was just something in the background for a long time until I made it my profession.

Making a big career change isn’t easy. How did that transition happen for you?

Leigh: It wasn’t a sudden leap. I had three young children at the time and was juggling part-time work. A friend invited me to do a floristry workshop, just something creative and hands-on, and I said “yes!” That was a real turning point. I instantly felt like, “This is it.” I loved every moment of that course, and from there, I started looking at floristry much more seriously.

Then I met a florist who specialised in weddings, and we really clicked. Her work was loose, garden-inspired, and romantic, exactly the style I loved. I worked with her for a few months, and then she dropped a bombshell: she was moving to Cornwall and offered me her 20 upcoming weddings. It was a case of sink or swim. Terrifying but exhilarating. I teamed up with another florist friend, and we made it work.

Tell us about the Strawberry Hill Flower Festival - how did it come about?

Leigh: Strawberry Hill House is a few minutes from where I live, and I didn’t know much about it at first. But it’s a remarkable place, Horace Walpole’s Gothic revival villa. He was the son of the first British Prime Minister and a true eccentric - artistic, poetic, theatrical. He hosted wild parties and collected Gothic art. The house is now recognised as a queer heritage site, and it’s filled with personality.

I was invited to create floral installations for the opening of their Lost Treasures exhibition, and the response was amazing. Afterwards, they were looking for ways to bring people in again, and I suggested a flower festival. You used to see them in churches and villages, it felt nostalgic and joyful. So we gave it a go. That was in 2018, and this year will be our seventh. It’s grown into something really special.

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What makes the festival unique?

Leigh: It’s a space where florists can be completely free - no client brief, no commercial pressure. Everyone brings their own voice and style. We mix established names with new talent, people who grow their own flowers and those who don’t. It’s all about creativity and connection.

There are no competitions or awards, it’s not about being “the best.” It’s about celebrating the art of floristry in all its diversity. And when the house is full of flowers, it’s like stepping into a dream. The building itself transforms, and I often imagine Horace Walpole wandering through, completely delighted.

How did you approach the task of curating this year's Festival?

Gaia: The Strawberry Hill House Flower Festival has always been a brilliant unicorn — unique in celebrating creative freedom and difference. I leaned into that for my one-off curating year. I began with a core of designers whose work I deeply admire, and then threw the doors open with an Instagram call to platform younger and less well-known but hugely talented floral artists.

I’ve also worked hard to amplify the spirit of collaboration and teamship that I first felt when I exhibited in 2023. Here, florists aren’t in competition — it’s all of us together, creating magic in our own ways, to show the world what is possible. In doing so, I hope to deepen appreciation for the immense talent, care, knowledge, and graft that goes into our work.

What do you hope visitors will take away from this year’s Festival?

Gaia: I hope visitors leave inspired — not just by the beauty they see, but by the sense of exponential magic that happens when so many people approach a shared project with skill, determination, and love.

This year, by approaching floral artists I deeply admire, we’ve also ended up with around one-sixth of our exhibitors being neurodiverhent. I wanted to celebrate this, so I’m making a short film with our amazing Festival Opener, Anya [“the Garden Fairy,” powered by ADHD], alongside anonymous contributions from ND exhibitors. The brief was simple: what would you want to say to a child who comes to the Festival, feels its wonder, but is also struggling in life — diagnosed or undiagnosed?

This is very close to my heart. My adored seven-year-old nephew is Blue Badge autistic, and my creative partner — who changed everything I thought was possible when he built my enormous spider, Arachne, for SHHFF 2023 — is AuDHD. Our differences are our greatest strengths, and I’m so excited to celebrate the artistry of all the incredible designers exhibiting this year.

Strawberry Hill House Flower Festival takes place 12 - 14 September 2025

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