WEST LOOP — From the Great British Bake Off to Project Runway to Steampunk’d, TV shows pitting real life people against each other in a series of competitive, niche tasks are all the rage. The latest addition to the genre, HBO Max’s “Full Bloom,” will focus on competitive floral arranging. And there’s a big Chicago connection: longtime Wicker Park florist Elizabeth Cronin will be one of the judges. Cronin, the owner of Asrai Garden , 1935 W. North Ave. in Wicker Park, will judge eight, hour-long episodes of competition floral work. The series — will will be produced by the same company behind ABC reality golf competition “Holey Moley” — is expected to air on HBO Max next year, Deadline reported. HBO Max is a new streaming service launching next year, according to HBO’s website . Cronin will judge the competition alongside Maurice Harris, the owner of LA-based Bloom and Plume . Simon Lycett, a celebrity florist, will host the show. While Full Bloom will likely thrust Asrai into the spotlight, it won’t mark the shop’s first TV debut. Asrai Garden/ Facebook The popular Wicker Park boutique Asrai Garden is set to open its second location in the Fulton Market. In the early 2000s, MTV’s “The Real World” filmed in a home on North Avenue, across the street from Asrai Garden. Cast and crew members filmed inside the garden shop. At one point, an Asrai staffer and a Real World star communicated from across the street by writing messages on signs in the buildings’ respective windows. What sets the Asrai Garden shops apart — and perhaps what intrigued HBO — is Cronin’s devotion to native plants and natural-looking arrangements. “No one was doing this type of thing when I started,” she said. Cronin’s arrangements celebrate the “wild” look of […]