‘The King's Meadow’ – Summer at Sandringham

Step through the stone porch of St Mary Magdalene Church at Sandringham this week, and the honeyed aroma of fragrant hay, carrying the unmistakable feel of high summer, greets you before the visual fully takes shape.

As one of the UK’s most recognisable parish churches, St Mary Magdalene has stood as the Royal Family's local place of worship since the nineteenth century. It is best known globally as the destination for the traditional Christmas Day walk from Sandringham House. Stepping inside today, however, reveals a space momentarily reshaped by the natural landscape surrounding it.

At the entrance stands a sculpted tree that carries its own notable history. It first appeared at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2023 as part of The Yellow Brick Road exhibit in the Floral Marquee — a display that earned an RHS Silver Medal and coverage in Country Living. Here at Sandringham, its re-imagined framework provides the structural anchor for a sea of grasses, seed heads, and mid-summer blooms, with fragrant hay (generously supplied by Home Farm in Laxton, Northamptonshire) woven directly into the arrangement to ground the whole piece in something you can smell as well as see.

An idea rooted in royal history

The concept behind The King's Meadow traces back to British Flowers Week in 2018 at the Garden Museum in London. Helen Chambers NDSF was one of six floral designers invited to create a large-scale, immersive installation celebrating British-grown blooms. That original design allowed visitors to walk beneath a dense canopy of flowers, creating the experience of standing directly inside a living field.

During that exhibition, Her Majesty Queen Camilla (then HRH The Duchess of Cornwall) spent time inside the canopy, admiring the depth and variety of home-grown stems. Today’s installation at Sandringham serves as a quiet nod to that original design and a tribute to their Majesties’ long-standing support for British floriculture.

The architecture of a meadow

Creating a display that looks "left to happen" rather than tightly arranged requires a clear understanding of balance, weight, and light. Nothing here is packed together; stems are given air so each line remains distinct.

                           ELEVATION LAYERING

  Top / Outline   ⟶  Tall Highlander Grass & Hydroponic-Grown Panicum Sprinkles with Setaria Red and Green Jewel.Grass 

  Mid-Structure   ⟶  Copper Amaranthus 'Hot Biscuits' & Sunflowers Helios Flame and Sunrich Orange. 

  Deep Base       ⟶  Dark Physocarpus 'Diablo' & Early Berries join Cotinus foliage and Whilebeam berries lighten. 

To create depth, deep bronze foliage of Physocarpus 'Diablo' (grown in Norfolk and cut from Helen’s own garden) is layered low down. Placing dark, heavy foliage at the base creates shadows, making the higher, cloud-like sprays of Panicum grass appear to float.

Arching spires of Amaranthus 'Hot Biscuits', sourced from two independent growers in Cambridgeshire, provide architectural height. They balance the flat, golden heads of Achillea 'Cloth of Gold' and clusters of early Viburnum, Hypericum, and Whitebeam Sorbus berries tucked lower along the stems.

Soft, bristled heads of Setaria italica ('Red Jewel', 'Green Jewel', and Hylander grass) add motion, swaying slightly in the air currents moving through the open doors.

A local collaboration

Every stem used in The King's Meadow was harvested across nine independent British growers across Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire.

Unlike imported commercial flowers, which are bred for rigid stems and uniform heads to endure long cold-chain shipping, locally grown stems keep their natural curves. The bright gold at the centre of the display comes from Helios Flame and Sunrich Orange sunflowers grown by JB Robinsons in Quadring, near Spalding. Meanwhile, the delicate Panicum elegans grass was grown hydroponically and sustainably in Lincolnshire using solar power and harvested rainwater.

Because every element was harvested during the same week of July from regional soil, the palette harmonises naturally without needing to be forced.

Installations of this scale depend on hands-on work on the ground. Churchwarden and steward David McCarthey worked directly alongside the Helen and Hamuda (our resident tree engineer) throughout the setup, threading stems and helping build out the structure to ensure the display fit seamlessly into the historic fabric of the church.

The King's Meadow remains on display at St Mary Magdalene Church throughout the RHS Sandringham Show. If you visit, take a moment at the doorway, look past the bold sunflowers at the core and down into the lower layers of early berries, seed heads, and foliage to see the craftsmanship holding the meadow together.

What an absolute honour and privilege it has been to design and install British grown blooms in this prestigious location.  The view was fantastic too; to look out from Church and see the Iconic RHS letters taking shape and show stand builds being completed was quite magical. As a sustainable church flower Ambassador, I am passionate about the possibilities for arranging in churches and cathedrals especially using sustainable techniques and with British grown flowers.

Email helen@evolveflowers.com for details on sustainable church flowers workshops

Read about our Yellow Brick Road