“How can they even be real?” asked one of Jumeirah Carlton Tower’s event co-ordinators incredulously. He was marvelling at two stunningly dressed tables in the Knightsbridge hotel’s Garden Room for an Eid Al Adha dinner in collaboration with Sofiane Si Merabet, aka The Confused Arab, just before the guests began to arrive.
The striking floral tablescape is done up in shades of striking blue and purple, and created in ode to Chelsea in Bloom, the famed annual “art show of flowers” held in the nearby neighbourhood. Flower fever spreads across the city at this time of year – crowds also gathering to look at a flying horse made of foliage and feathers just around the corner from Jumeirah Carlton Tower.
“There was quite a large stem count for this install,” says Lily Sharkey, events manager at Flowerbx, the company responsible for the timely table decoration. “About 600 hydrangeas were used across all elements. These were complemented by 300 blue roses and 250 delphiniums.” How long did it all take to make? “Fresh florals are always quite a rush to create at the very last moment, so most of the build was completed in our studio the day before,” Sharkey explains.
Inspired by the prestigious flower show’s 2026 Out of this World theme, the muse for Jumeirah’s installations is the astrolabe, an ancient Arabian navigational instrument. The luxury hotel brand describes its connection to the theme as “woven throughout and a reflection of Jumeirah's heritage – welcoming travellers, offering a majlis of connection, and guiding journeys both near and far”.
Sharkey says: “I wanted to focus on its ability to read the stars. The mood of the installation was the night sky – I dotted blue irises through the arrangements, mimicking the glow of stars.”
Indeed, Jumeirah has introduced a whole canopy of special events and opportunities beyond the one-off supper to commemorate the season. Flowers have been blooming across the hotel’s facade thanks to the Astrolabe installation itself, a central display by Chelsea in Bloom gold medallist Paul Thomas featuring a powerful planet-like orb at its heart. The display is described as a “visual narrative of stars, desert landscapes and discovery”.
Continuing the theme, Astrolabe Discovery Stays are available in certain rooms, in which a monocular is placed on your balcony, enabling you to take in the cityscape and night sky on a whole different level. The hotel’s Talise Spa, meanwhile, is offering a new Jagaraga Ritual, in which orbit-inspired movements, celestial sound healing, chakra-based frequencies and Indonesian traditions are all called upon to revive and restore, leaving you calmer and more in tune with the universe.
Finally, there is an interactive Astral and Floral Scavenger Hunt, also pegged to the Astrolabe and curated for families and children, with clues carefully placed throughout the building. Successful scavengers are entered into a prize draw for an astrology-themed family guide to such landmarks as the Royal Observatory Greenwich and the Peter Harrison Planetarium.
This is certainly not the first time Jumeirah Carlton Tower has gone to such lengths to embrace London’s creative and arts scene.
Last July, in partnership with Christie’s London, it celebrated Marwan: A Soul in Exile, an exhibition in commemoration of the life and legacy of Syrian artist Marwan Kassab-Bachi. The hotel created The Collector's Stay, a bespoke combination of access to its finest rooms, suites and spa facilities, private tours of the 150 works in the show, including a pop-up coffee bar and limited-edition cakes, as well as a special restaurant menu to honour Kassab-Bachi’s heritage. For Mother’s Day this year, it wove together a similarly thorough collaboration with Lebanese jewellery designer Nada Ghazal, recognising the creative catalysts of “femininity, colour and flavour”.
As such initiatives show, and as Michael Grieve, Jumeirah’s chief brand officer, so succinctly puts it in his welcoming words at the beginning of the Eid Al Adha dinner: “Jumeirah is a majlis of global culture, conversation and connection where friendships are made, and friendships that last a lifetime are carried forward.”
