Floating around London’s Chelsea Flower Show as dusk is about to fall, the air is thick, the herbal scents of salvia and geranium offset by the minty nepeta and the flouncing citrus sucker punch of verbana. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a quick hit of the just-debuted Catherine’s Rose, a coral-pink floribunda rose named after the Princess of Wales, which smells of mango and Turkish delight.
Amid the floral pavilions and hulking vegetative displays, and past the Pimm’s stall, Burberry has brought together the fashion crowd to celebrate its latest collection, itself inspired by the Royals. It’s not haute couture, it’s hort(-iculture) couture.
Here, at the world’s most prestigious gardening and floral design event, the British house welcomed the likes of Bianca Jagger, Jason Isaacs, and Jerry Hall to a dinner for the launch of its fourth Highgrove x Burberry collaboration. The collection takes cues from the lush gardens that surround the Cotswolds-set private residence of the British King Charles III and Queen Camilla. It includes tailored pieces and knitwear, silk scarves, pajama-like separates, and the house’s classic trench coats, all featuring hand-drawn prints by artist Helen Bullock, who created the works based on the colorful scenes of Highgrove’s Kitchen Garden. (Several fashion brands hold a Royal Warrant—basically, a special designation that allows them to use the royal arms to show they’re monarchy-approved—with Burberry holding its own since 1955.)
“Burberry has a deep appreciation for British places and landscapes,” says Carly Eck, a curator and archivist at Burberry. “There are many synergies between Burberry and Highgrove, notably in supporting British artists, respecting nature, and championing UK craft and manufacturing.”
The last few seasons have seen fashion locked in an intense love affair with food—from Moschino’s pasta bag to A.P.C.’s olive oil, and the “tomato girls” of TikTok storming the coastal towns of Italy in broderie anglaise and fruit-printed head scarves. But fashion has long rooted around the garden for inspiration. Last June, Loewe quite literally said: When life gives you tomatoes, make a viral It bag. After a popular tweet compared the fruit to a Loewe design, Jonathan Anderson posted the tweet to his personal Instagram account—and later revealed the prototype for a tomato-shaped clutch bag. (“Meme to reality,” he captioned it.)
Last year, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior Cruise 2025 collection reveled in Scottish Highlands-ready tweeds and tartans in a show staged at Drummond Castle in Perthshire. Longchamp’s summer 2025 collection, the earth and grassy-toned “Live Green,” found its inspiration in the pastoral picnic settings of the French countryside. While bold floral motifs proliferate from Dolce & Gabbana to Marc Jacobs, smaller brands have long laid their own (flower) beds: Gardenheir was founded by two avid gardeners, with Martha Stewart-inspired straw hats, actual gardening tools, and clogs that attract the real heads and aesthetic gardeners alike. And Niwaki is a fashionable gardener’s fave, a garden tool shop, run by a former buyer for Paul Smith, that has collaborated with Ulla Johnson and streetwear brand Noah.
Los Angeles-based, cult-favorite denim brand Mother recently launched their vibrant “Avant Gardener” collection for summer. “Flowers and gardening are always a fun story idea for the summer because of the bright colors and opportunity to play with apron and dungaree inspired silhouettes,” said Tim Kaeding, creative director and co-founder of Mother. “With our ‘Avant Gardener’ collection, we aimed to reimagine the concept by focusing on artistic depictions of nature.” The pieces, including denim and graphic T-shirts, draw inspiration from artistic heavyweights like Matisse, Miró, Marimekko, Warhol, and Picasso. “We created a colorful collection full of airbrushed fruit graphics, floral embroidery, pop art berries, and our new flowers al fresco print.” There seems to be a collective desire to connect with the earth—to cultivate community and commune with nature—which you could also do with some Glossier garden gloves.
Burberry whisked its crew off to the Cotswolds and Highgrove Gardens, hosting a private tour and a painting masterclass—led by the Highgrove collection’s print illustrator Helen Bullock—in the Kitchen Gardens, surrounded by sweet peas and poppies.
“The gardens were overflowing with inspiration. It was so hard to make a decision on where to start,” Bullock says. “But I felt a real connection with the fountain—the focal point of the kitchen garden—covered in moss. It was a rather weird and wonderful shape. I also absolutely had to honor the bees. They’re an unmissable part of the garden, and especially important to the king. I loved how homely the garden felt—not too curated, and very liveable, so I hopefully captured that in the cascade prints.”
“We’ve always said that mother nature is the last great luxury house,” says Richard Christiansen, founder of Flamingo Estate, the lifestyle brand behemoth named after his own sumptuous homestead, set among perpetually golden-hour orchards and the rolling California hillsides. “We need her more than ever now. In uncertain, difficult times, nature gives us hope and a sense of tradition and permanence, which is so important.”
Christiansen, once an advertising executive, developed Flamingo Estate from a COVID-era project supporting local farmers selling vegetable boxes into over 50 products, like soaps made with Big Sur salt and candles scented with heirloom tomatoes, as well as farm boxes full of seasonal white peaches and asparagus. Flamingo Estate has collaborated with Kelly Wearstler on a California modernist-style gingerbread house, and produced a set of bronze garden tools with Campbell-Rey and a luxe cashmere blanket with The Elder Statesman. Quickly, he laid the roots for luxury fashion to find its own footing amid the mulching, weeding, and harvesting.
Flamingo Estate partnered with Burberry to celebrate the Highgrove collection in LA back in May before Christiansen set off to the Cotswolds. At his estate, guests observed honey-making with a beekeeper, took a class in Japanese flower arranging, and learned about soap-making done using fruits and plants harvested from the estate’s orchard and gardens. “The Highgrove Garden was always my dream,” Christiansen says. “It’s been on all of my moodboards and I have looked at every photo since I was a small child. It represents not just a beautiful garden, but all of the hands that tended to it. So to do that with the additional layer of traditional heritage from Burberry was a dream come true.”
As we departed Highgrove, Christiansen was studiously noting the gargantuan ivy scaling the king’s residence. Nara Smith discussed her hopes to have chickens in her own garden soon. A parade of the floral-flecked scarves, variously worn as neckerchiefs, bag adornments, and headbands, filed out on their way to Estelle Manor, the week’s Burberry bolthole.
Burberry’s rich archive still teems florals, which Eck gets to explore: there are the floral-themed print advertisements from 1867; the silk-lined, iris-dotted outerwear pieces from 1913; and ditsy runway prints, weaves, and embellishments from throughout the ’90s. “In 2003, Burberry created a gardening capsule comprising an apron, gloves, and a tool belt featuring garden motifs, which was whimsical and fun!” Eck says. “I look forward to acquiring our latest collection of Highgrove into the archive, which will be a fantastic reference for generations to come.”
