This year Belgravia in Bloom runs from 20th – 25th May. We love this fabulous floral festival which coincides with the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show.

From Motcomb Street, through Eccleston Yards and Elizabeth Street, to Pimlico Road, the streets around Belgravia are decked with vibrant floral installations. As well as a special installation in Eccleston Yards, which will be announced by The Grosvenor Estate shortly, we’ve created a special cocktail to toast the week. Green and Pleasant Land, made with Barentsz craft gin, elderflower, lime, sparkling white wine and cucumber, is a deliciously refreshing and happy cocktail which we first tried during that amazing sunny week in February and think will be perfect on our terrace this summer.

The theme of Belgravia in Bloom this year is ‘Language of Flowers’. Jasmine, orange and angelica, three of the main botanicals in Barentsz gin which represent amiability, generosity and inspiration respectively, are matched with elderflower meaning compassion, and then topped up with sparkling wine and garnished with cucumber. Each ingredient pairs perfectly to create an extremely tasty and quaffable cocktail. We’re currently growing cosmos which we’ll be adding to our terrace. These happy and colourful flowers symbolise joy in love and life which we think describes our beautiful terrace and our guests here in Eccleston Yards perfectly.

We chose Barentsz gin deliberately as they have recently announced a pledge to remove from the world’s seas an equal weight in plastic for every bottle bought. The statistics around the plastic currently, and predicted to be, residing in our oceans is scary. At the moment, 8 million metric tons of plastic are disposed into the ocean every year, including 236,000 tons of tiny microplastics, causing enormous damage to our wildlife and world. In five areas it has gathered in to massive patches, indeed one between California and Hawaii is the size of Texas. Known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch it consists of 80,000 metric tons of plastic including abandoned fishing gear, plastic bottles, ropes, baskets and plastic packaging (averaging out at 250 pieces of debris for every person in the world.) There are many people doing amazing work to take plastic back out and find ways of either not using it or recycling it safely. If we along with Barantsz can contribute even in a small way we’ll be very happy. We did not choose it for this pledge alone. It’s a great tasting gin which makes fabulous cocktails too! Michael Claessens, the founder of Barentsz, has created a very unique gin by distilling both smooth creamy rye with complex wheat grains. The sweetness of the wheat and the longer finish of the rye compliment and bring out the gin’s orange and jasmine botanicals. It’s so smooth you can drink it straight and also makes amazing cocktails.