Inside the Reception Room at Château de Méridon

Colour and Scale in a Garden-Led Floral Installation

Château de Méridon sits in the Chevreuse Valley, about forty minutes from Paris. For this editorial shoot, the main floral piece was built around one of the tall windows in the reception room, reaching 4.52 metres high and 2.50 metres wide.

I did not want the installation to feel like an object placed in the room. I wanted it to feel connected to the architecture and to the woodland outside, so the structure was built to frame the window and continue into the room, with foliage climbing around the wood, flowers placed in clearer areas of colour, and low ferns at the base to bring the design down to the floor.

On a structure this size, colour cannot just be spread evenly across the whole piece, because the eye stops reading the composition from a few metres away. So I worked with colour in blocks. Peach tones were placed on one side, with peach lilies and garden roses. Deeper coral and pink tones were built on the other side, with peonies in several shades moving upwards from the base. Softer pinks held the centre, and the green foliage and Japanese maple gave the whole piece movement and space to breathe.

That is what gave the installation its rhythm. The darker peonies brought depth, the softer tones opened the composition, and the foliage carried the movement and allowed the flowers to sit inside the architecture rather than be placed on top of it.

The whole piece was built foam-free, with chicken wire and reusable mechanics. This is how I work on every project, but on a large wedding floral installation, the difference is very visible. The greenery is not there to hide a block of foam, it becomes part of the structure itself, and the flowers can move with the space rather than sitting in a fixed mass.

The flowers used in the arch included lilies, peonies in several colours, euphorbia, hawthorn, oak, Japanese maple and other seasonal foliage. The low ferns placed under the structure helped to extend the woodland feeling down to ground level.

On the tables, the work was lighter and more punctual. I used yellow lilies and small wild buttercups to draw a brighter line through the centre of the table, at guest level. The tables did not need to repeat the intensity of the arch, they needed something more delicate, something close enough to be seen while sitting down. The yellow brought light against the sage green tablecloths, and the buttercups kept the design loose and alive.

What interested me in this project was the difference between what holds the room and what holds the table. A large wedding floral installation has to carry the architecture and the space around it. A centrepiece works much closer, with the people sitting at the table, where the flowers are seen from a few centimetres away. These are not the same kind of design, and on a shoot like this, I try to let each one do its own job rather than force them to match.