RHS Journals

The Garden
February 2003

Making arrangements for dinner

Floral decoration was first used at the table. Brent Elliott takes his place among early books on the subject

Where we now say ‘flower arranging’, the 19th century tended to say ‘table decoration’, because the dinner table was the primary place where flowers were arranged. In 1861 the first recorded competition for table decoration was held, as part of the festivities for the opening of the new RHS garden in Kensington (see ‘The first table decoration competition’, The Garden, February 1987, pp78-80), and thereafter the vogue for table and other interior floral decoration swept irresistibly on. It is in the 1860s that books on flower arranging first began to appear, and in the 1870s and 1880s a couple of books were published which consisted purely of plans for laying out tables. The two shown here were illustrated in John Perkins’ Floral Designs for the Table (1877). Note that, although professional floral decorators were starting to appear, on country estates flower arranging was frequently a job that fell to the head gardener. Perkins was head gardener at one of Lord and Lady Henniker’s gardens, while William Lowe, author of Table Decoration (1887), the other such book held in the RHS Lindley Library (and, alas, illustrated only in monochrome) was gardener at Euston Hall, Suffolk.

The layout illustrated on the left (above) is for a breakfast or dinner table, decorated entirely with roses and rose foliage (Rosa ‘Maréchal Niel’ was suggested for the yellow bloom). The layout on the right (above) is for a breakfast table, with wreaths and swags of vinca and ivy, dotted with single flowers of lobelia, red and blue cinerarias, and borders of forget-me-nots.

Brent Elliott is RHS Librarian and Archivist

The RHS Lindley Library holds more than 50,000 books, 1,500 periodicals, 25,000 botanical drawings, and the UK's largest collection of horticultural trade catalogues.

The works shown are held in the rare books room of the RHS Lindley Library and may be consulted at the London branch at 80 Vincent Square, London, and is open to the public Monday - Friday, 9.30am - 5.30pm.
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