GIFFORDS CIRCUS
“When I see a show I don’t want to just be amused or moved - I want to cry. I think that a good circus should make you cry. Furthermore, a good circus, a circus that is doing its job, should somehow feel like a moment of crisis, like it is on the very brink of extinction, as if a moment of excess and brilliance has been reached and over reached. A good circus is a sublimely existential thing, living acutely and only for the golden present moment. This is what I have discovered.” ~ Nell Gifford
In the process of editing our book ‘Naturalistic Flowers: A Year of Plants, Places and People’ inevitably there were some stories and photographs that didn’t make the cut. One of these was an extraordinary day flowering up Giffords Circus during its summer tour of ‘Avalon’, a medieval-themed production inspired by Arthurian legend. It seemed too sad to let this chapter remain on the cutting room floor so we’re sharing it here and we hope it brings you joy!
It’s Gala Night at Giffords Circus and we’re here to do the flowers. Tucked into the orchards of Chiswick House in west London is a collection of wagons and tents strung together with bunting and festoon lights. You’d think they have always been here from the way the camp seems comfortably sunken into the grounds, but in fact they will move on in a few week’s time, hitting the road in a convoy-by-night string of vintage wagons and lorries in burgundy, cream and pale blue gloss, as they travel onto to Evenley Green to continue their summer tour from Stroud to London and back again.
Giffords smells like spun sugar and hay. Step past the box office and disbelief is suspended. It’s the 1930s, it’s bohemian, flame-swallowing, gravity defying, candy-striped, comedic, outrageous, burlesque. Hedonistic but with the nostalgic charm of the English village green. A tiny Vaudeville world of pure escapism, joy, colour, humour, naughtiness, childlike wonder. Spinning hoops and stars and spangles, gypsy, folky, provocative, romantic. Everything is charmingly hand-made, from the costumes to the set design. The embossed wagons are constantly and meticulously retouched. The clothes are dripping in diamante and glittering rhinestones. The animals, including a Shetland Pony and a troupe of rescue dogs from Romania, are obviously well loved and well fed.
Nell Gifford and Toti Gifford built this grassroots circus from the Stroud Valleys from nothing but a dream. Nell in particular longed to revive the rich circus culture of Europe in England at a time when it was nonexistent, when there was no demand or appetite for it. To some extent this is still true today - say “circus” you’ll often be met with the involuntary wince, raising of eyebrows or nose wrinkle, that accompany the uncomfortable connotations of creepy clowns, animal cruelty, chains and freak shows. It took many penniless years of discomfort and hardship but this thirty-strong, family-focussed, theatrical, madly creative company raises circus performance to an art-form and has achieved a cult status by evolving the old-fashioned traveling circus tradition - common in the English countryside before the advent of television, cinema and radio - into a modern form of entertainment that is relevant to everyone from the age of two to a hundred. Many families make an annual pilgrimage.
For Gala Night we want to encapsulate the spirit of the circus, bringing the garden to the party with bundles of flowers from our garden in bright, joyful colours.
Giffords distinctive vintage wagons are hand-painted in burgundy gloss with pale blue, cream and gold lettering so we seek out these colours in the garden - it is June and so awash with roses, sweet peas, peonies, cornflowers and poppies. The red geraniums are a nod to Nell, who loved them and we’re told would take them around with her on tour and have them at the entrance to her wagon.
We look at the gardens of Chiswick House to see what’s flowering in the immediate surroundings of the circus camp - oodles of garden roses and foxgloves.
The restaurant tent Circus Sauce has a ‘den of iniquity’ atmosphere and must have hosted some wild parties in its time for . It’s dark, clad in heraldric banners stitched with sequins and pearls, ragged strips of fabric strung on heavy garlands. The food is seasonal and homecooked British fare. There are seventy guests in for supper. To enhance the medieval banquet effect we make strings of garden-y posies in pewter tankards for the tables in a rainbow of colours, with flecks of vermilion and orange to be picked up by the flicker of candlelight for those burning the midnight oil.
Nell died in 2019 aged 46. Her presence is everywhere at Giffords: the show must go on. Every summer a new production. This year it’s the Arthurian legend ‘Avalon’, a medieval world of pageantry, crumbling castles, arching rose briars, knights in armour and troubadours. The performers - musicians, dancers, acrobats, aerial artists, magicians and clowns - are highly trained and internationally renowned artistes including Maximiliano Stia as Merlin, a Ukrainian acrobatic quartet, brother and sister act Dylan and Asia Medini as Sir Lancelot and Lady Morgan Le Fay who are fifth-generation circus performers and come from one of Italy’s oldest circus families and Latoya Donnert as the Lady of Shalott who is descended from a long line of circus performers - a Hungarian circus dynasty on her father’s side and a famous English circus family on her mother’s.
The show is bawdy, beautiful, hire-wire excitement. It’s dark and sweaty in the tent as rain falls heavily on the canvas. You can smell candy floss and sawdust and the fog of the smoke machine. The Damsels of the Ring twirl from their aerial hoops to Scarborough Fair.
Remember me to a lass who lives there,
For once she was a true love of mine.
There is a glittering of tears around the stand. This is Giffords: wilder and more magical than ever.
Thank you @officialgiffordscircus for welcoming us to your magical, mystical universe and to @nell.f.ohara for being such an obliging bouquet model as Lady Guinevere. It was a blast. Giffords Circus is currently performing their 2026 show ‘Waterfield’ - go check them out!
Naturalistic Flowers is published by @thamesandhudson and available at all good bookshops!