EDWARDIAN BEAUTY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20077, 6 April 1935, Page 11

EDWARDIAN BEAUTY

LONDON FLOWER TASTE One of the glories of Edwardian London, the window-box filled with gay scarlet, yellow, or blue flowers, is to be revived by hostesses for the Jubilee celebrations, states a London exchange. Already in the florists’ salons plans are made for filling these boxes, and blossoms beloved of pre-war hostesses, such as musk, mimulus, fuchias, geraniums are being grown in the nurseries.

New hybrid nasturtiums shown for the first time at horticultural exhibitions last year are to make their first appearance in the flower shops for the Jubilee window-boxes in bright shades of gold, orange, and scarlet. They have been specially cultivated with a view to the smaller window-boxes of 1935 Mayfair—boxes that will be placed outside the windows of luxury flats instead of town mansions. That mixture of scarlet geraniums and white marguerites so typical of Edwardian Mayfair is to reappear, according to the head of a Kensington flower salon with an Edwardian tradition.

Hydrangeas will be chosen by hostesses who have their rooms decorated in these pastel pinks and blues, and who will be prepared to change their scheme of window-box decoration about once a month during the season.

For the off-white or “distressed” white rooms, the fashion for which is led by the Duchess of Kent, the 25-year-old mimulus, or monkey musk plant, with its bronze blossoms, is to stage a “come-back” in Mayfair. The giant musk, with its yellow flower, will be another favourite, and neither of these has the powerful and not too popular odour of the ordinary small musk plant. For streets in Mayfair where the sun beats down the little mauve-blue ageratum is to fill windowboxes, that will suggest cool, far-away woods at twilight.