Hermès’ summer terrace: London oasis for al fresco elation
The French luxury maison opens a verdant terrace at its New Bond Street flagship in London's Mayfair, with an escapist garden evoking South African and Mediterranean summers, designed by Sarah Price
Stuck in the city for the summer, but dreaming of sun-drenched escape? Allow us to direct you to Hermès lush outdoor terrace in Mayfair, where immersed amongst its undulating fresh flowerbeds, you can almost feel yourself serenely sipping something fruity on the shores of the Mediterranean.
In celebration of the summer months, the French luxury house has transformed the terrace of its New Bond Street flagship into a lush, plant-teeming landscape, inspired by the flora found in South Africa and the Mediterranean. For the floriculturally fantastic project, Hermès has enlisted garden and landscape designer Sarah Price, whose has also designed for the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, and Cadogan Café in London's Chelsea. Here, guests are invited to sip on a selection of teas and coffee, plus thirst-quenching soft cocktails, cleansing concoctions and cold pressed juices.
Inspired by the maison's overarching epic theme of the year, ‘Hermès, A Human Odyssey’, Price has looked to plants and flowers native to the Greek islands inhabited by Homer's Odysseus, Fynbos, a small belt of scrubland of the Western and Eastern Cape of South Africa and the shrubland Garrigue regions of southern mainland France. The terrace is populated with sub-shrubs, herbs, flowers and resinous trees, in a fabric of complex colours of greens accented with yellows, pinks, whites and purples, featuring an Afhghani Fig tree, soft mounds of hair clover, Lavenders, zingy green Euphorbias and white and pink Cistus flowers.
A serene symbol of the atmosphere, Henry Moore's ‘Draped Reclining Figure’ sculpture also sits within the blooming space.
In a sublime shift from the epic tradition to the circular one, all of the plants, flowers and materials in Hermès' garden terrace will be donated to The Exchange, a community-run organisation that uses the heritage of Erith’s Old Library in south-east London as a space that was designed and built by local people to inspire new community-led programmes and activities. That's green-fingered thinking through and through.
INFORMATION
Open until 1 August; hermes.com
ADDRESS
155 New Bond St
London
W1S 2UA
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