A VERY PENHALIGON’S PICNIC

An elegant picnic is all about the preparation: the Victorians, for example, weren’t ever known to do things by halves, or even quarters. Popular domestic manual Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, published in 1861, contains a picnic inventory of four roast fowls, two roast ducks, one ham, one tongue, and an unspecified number of fresh veal and pigeon pies – sometimes served on a proper dining table they had lugged along.

Of course, we’re not suggesting you subject your picnic party to acute meat sweats on a sunny afternoon – but we do have some rather useful tips to make yours a little bit more divine than the average sandwich on a park bench.

There’s nary a successful picnic that has taken place in a hideous location. Even if it requires a slightly longer journey, opt for somewhere picturesque: the grounds of magnificent National Trust park, for example, or perhaps a riverboat drifting down the canal where you can recite poetry to your guests. You might even simply decide a leafy spot in your back garden looks rather appealing, where at least you won’t have to drag your dining table very far.

The fundamental picnic essentials, lest one ends up sitting on the plastic bag that one’s lunch was carried in. Might we recommend our friends at Fortnum’s for wickers and blankets of all descriptions. As for additional ambience, far be it from us to advise you to take an open flame to a woodland area – but a Calisaya Bark candle safely flickering next to some chilled Champagne would be a thing of beauty.

A picnic can seem like an inelegant, haphazard affair if the proper precautions aren’t taken. Plastic tupperware and flimsy sporks that snap upon contact with cous-cous simply won’t do, not to mention being poor form for the environment It is therefore worth investing in a picnic hamper furnished with fine bone china crockery and silverware, to ensure murmurs of delight amongst impressed guests if nothing else.

It would be awfully uncharacteristic of us if we didn’t insist on adding some fragrance into the picnic milieu: after all, no one wishes to be overpowered by the smell of a particularly potent coronation chicken. Explore our bouquet of floral fragrances perfect for picnicking: perhaps the honeyed haze of Orange Blossom, the silver lime tree scent of Highgrove Bouquet, or the orchard delights of Artemisia. If you feel like running through a meadow, just make sure not to overdo it on the pork pies.