This week will see the sweet scent of Summer wafting through the streets of London as The RHS Chelsea Flower Show flourishes for five days of fanciful floral fun.
Almost 160,000 green-fingered enthusiasts are expected to visit the Royal Chelsea Hospital this week to see dazzling displays from the cream of the gardening-crop, and to hobnob with like-minded horticulturalists.
And a day of feasting one's eyes on the flowerbeds will indubitably be rather thirsty work, so luckily the canny bunch at the nearby The Milestone hotel have cultivated a special menu of floral Broken Clock vodka cocktails to toast this year's event.
This colourful concoction is the Red Carnation - named after the Milestone's own boutique hotel collection - and it's brimming with abundant English country garden essences and comes complete with an eye-catching posy encased in an ice cube.
Our english vodka has been expertly cross-pollinated with Italicus rose and bergamot liqueur, Noilly Prat botanical dry vermouth and a few dashes of orange bitters, before being spruced up with some sappy Pino Mugo pine tree liqueur.
And for added floral effect, the cocktail is topped off with a liberal perfumed spray of honeyed and herbal Santa Bianca Essentia Helichrysum, meaning it really is the bee's knees.
