THESE flowers do not smell so sweet but they would undoubtedly be very sweet to the taste as they are all made from sugar.

However, it would be shame to eat them as they are part of a display that has taken more than 1,000 hours to create.

The banquet of medieval sugar flowers goes on display at Sir Harold Hillier Gardens, near Romsey from Saturday.

They are the work of sugar artist Lyn Pearce and 40 of her students and have been created to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Henry V’s victory of the Battle of Agincourt.

Lyn, from Fair Oak, runs five classes – in Upham, Colden Common and Alresford – and she and her team have been working on this project since just after Christmas.

The display features floral headdresses, a boar’s head, decorated candelabras, swords as well as stain glass panels made from boiled sweets.

Lyn, who has been working with sugar for 25 years, carried out careful research so that only flowers which were available in England in Henry V’s time have been recreated.

Sugar was a luxury in the medieval period and royalty of the time loved to flaunt their wealth with the lavish displays of their confectioners’ works.

In 1429 the coronation feast of the eight-year-old Henry VI (son of Henry V) included sugar sculptures with a political message – one depicted a leopard grasping a fleur de lis (France) while crouching on top of a custard tart.

Henry VIII was a sucker for marzipan confections and was reputed to have elaborate sugar copies of his forts and cannons made. In 1582, Elizabeth I was presented with a sugar model St Paul’s Cathedral.

The sugar flowers will be on show at Hilliers until Sunday, September 6.

Lyn will be giving demonstrations of her flower-making Saturdays and Sundays and Bank Holiday Monday during the exhibition’s run.

The display, the biggest Lyn has ever worked on, has already be seen in public at Bishop’s Waltham Gardening Club’s show and will have another outing in Farnham next March at an open weekend run by Squires Kitchen Shop, which has supported the project.

The sugar flowers will last indefinitley if kept in a dry atmosphere and Lyn would love them to have a permanent home.

“I feel it needs to go on permanent display somewhere - it think it would fir in well at a stately home,” she said.

- If you prefer the real thing the gardens also have Summer Bounty - a stunning array of summer flowers on display in the beautiful surrounds of Jermyn’s House from Friday (August 28) until Sunday.

Free with normal admission to the Gardens

Both exhibitions are free to view with normal admission to the gardens.