Inside Harewood’s Floral Takeover: Leafy Couture Brings Spring Indoors

For one bank holiday weekend only, one of Yorkshire’s most celebrated florists is transforming Harewood House into a living gallery of flowers.

From 2 to 4 May, Harewood House will unveil Harewood in Bloom — a new three-day event built around a striking collaboration with Leeds-based floral design studio Leafy Couture. While the gardens outside will be doing what they do best at this time of year (more on those 40,000 spring bulbs in a moment), the real surprise sits indoors, where the State Floor is being given over to a series of large-scale floral installations designed in dialogue with the house itself.

It’s a smart bit of curation. Leafy Couture’s founder Sarah Richardson has spent nearly two decades building a reputation for the kind of immersive floral work more often associated with high-end weddings and brand commissions for the likes of Jo Malone, Anthropologie and Channel 4. Bringing that sensibility into a Grade I listed house full of Chippendale furniture and Reynolds portraits is a bolder move than it might first appear — and one that rewards a slow walk through the rooms.

The headline moment is in the Entrance Hall, where Jacob Epstein’s monumental sculpture Adam is framed by a fresh floral response from the Leafy Couture team. Elsewhere, the Gallery hosts seven separate arrangements, each created by a different award-winning florist, alongside handcrafted paper flower installations made in collaboration with Harewood’s volunteers and local community groups. Together, they turn a route most visitors think they know into something quietly unfamiliar.

Outside, the gardens are putting on their own show. Head Gardener Trevor Nicholson has overseen the planting of 40,000 spring bulbs — camassias and alliums chief among them — in what is reportedly the largest single planting at Harewood for a century. The former playground has been reimagined as a sweeping spring landscape, and across the 140-acre site there are bluebells, wild garlic, horse chestnut blossom and the famous “pocket handkerchief tree” (Davidia involucrata) all timed, with a degree of crossed-fingers optimism, to peak across the bank holiday weekend.

“Much of what visitors will see can’t be planned weeks in advance,” Nicholson notes. “For many flowers, the bank holiday weekend is a fleeting window.” It’s a refreshingly honest pitch, and one that makes a strong case for visiting now rather than later in the month.

For those wanting to get hands-on, Leafy Couture is running a programme of paid workshops across the weekend, including vase arrangement (£85) and bouquet making (£85), alongside botanical painting with artist Nay Bellamy (£65) and crepe paper poppy making with Lola Design (£65). Free activities included with day admission include floral demonstrations in the Old Kitchen, a Top 10 Flowers trail, paper flower crowns, and Little Gardeners sessions where children can sow seeds to take home with the help of Harewood’s gardening team. Trevor Nicholson is also leading a guided garden stroll on Saturday afternoon (£15).

There’s also a quieter highlight worth flagging: Charlotte Verity: The Season Following, an exhibition of botanical paintings by the British artist running across the State Floor for the duration of the weekend. Verity’s slow, observational work — paintings often made over many years — feels like a fitting counterpoint to the more theatrical floral installations next door. Both, in their different ways, are about looking properly at things that don’t stay still for long.

Harewood in Bloom runs from Saturday 2 to Monday 4 May at Harewood House, Leeds LS17 9LG. Day tickets from £26.50 adults / £10 children when booked online before 8.30am on the day of visit. £3 tickets available for those in receipt of Universal Credit, Pension Credit, DLA and PIP. Free for Harewood Members and under 4s. 

Full programme and booking at harewood.org.