NERINE ADORNMENT

The Nerines are coming through now from the garden. This week I had the charming company of a grower and arranger from Switzerland for a private class. I was praying Anouchka and the Nerines would coincide because they feel like the ultimate autumnal treat to pass on. Fortuitously the garden gods obliged and we had a few precious stems to play with along with Japanese anemones, nasturtium, garden roses, asters and lots of glittering grasses which are fun to sprinkle and seem to add a bit of glamour at this time of the year.

I always feel autumn is the most glamorous time of the year - perhaps its the novelty of the darkness narrowing in around the edges of the day, the glow of lamplight, the slight chill in the air; it always makes me want to get my act together, sartorially, to dress up a little more, and I find that that also extends to my arrangements, this feeling of adornment, of leaning into the sensual, velvety textures, the smoky gemstone colours. It’s a yearning for cosiness, I suppose (as opposed to the crispness, the lightness of earlier in the summer). And there’s also that sense of urgency that we’re on limited time; there’ll soon be frosts and the days of cutting flowers in the same abundance we’ve grown used to are numbered. The addition of a metallic grass to an arrangement has the same effect of adding jewellery to an outfit - a little sparkle, the dangle of an earring to catch the light…

Nerines are a guernsey lily. We grow a few varieties - this one is Nerine bowdenii ‘Vesta’. You plant them as a bulb and they naturalise, returning every year just when what you’re craving is a frilly, powder pink flower that smells of milk chocolate.

Speaking of gifts, I have a funny story to tell you that I think if you’ve found your way here you’ll probably appreciate. We had a guest on our last workshop of the season named Nancy, and Nancy is into ‘dead stuff’. Botanical dead stuff, I hasten to add! During those two days we noticed that she would nip outside every now and then. At first I thought it was to field calls from Delta Air Lines to arrange her travel back to Colorado following a cancelled flight but then it became clear that, while this may have contributed to her frequent in-and-outs, there was also a spot of urban foraging going on.

Not content that there was quite enough deceased material in the studio to sate Nancy’s appetite, she took it upon herself to scour our backyard and planters for the missing pieces, returning with stems of sunbleached hollyhock (dried to the colour of parchment by the raging temperatures of our long, dry summer) and crispy wisps of wisteria and jasmine vine that tumble over our neighbour’s wall. After the workshop I saved the wisps and put them in a little bottle on the side and this week they were passed onto Anouchka who needed little persuasion that they were a great textural addition to the arrangement she was making (look closely and you’ll spot the bronze tendrils above). But the journey of the crispy wisps didn’t end there, oh no! Because Anouchka’s next stop was the studio of Sarah Statham at Simply by Arrangement in Yorkshire, and so off they went… Perhaps their final resting place will be Sarah’s compost pile but I feel like they’re something she will appreciate beforehand. Who knows, perhaps this could be the beginnings of a secret society for those who appreciate the beauty of the otherwise overlooked - our signal a wisp of dried jasmine vine passed surreptiously along, or tucked into the brim of a very good autumn hat. If you know, you know…

Anyway, I digress once again. Autumn is here and so it’s yes to the metallic grasses, to the guernsey lilies. Yes to the crispy wisps. Yes to all of it. And onwards into October!

WET & WILD JULY

I am writing this at the kitchen table on a wet and stormy afternoon - the last of July. The baby and dog are both asleep and all is quiet. As is now apparently customary (despite being July) the wind is blowing and rain drizzling and it’s chilly enough to light the fire.

Looking back through the (copious number of) photographs that I took this month, a recurring theme appears to develop. Grey skies, red flowers. Dusky red, brown red, tomato red, raspberry red, reddy pinks. Also a lot of pink, blue pinks, baby pink.

In the hedgerows the blackberries are beefing up and plumping out now. Somewhere between red and pink. A reddy pink, a pinky red. Does putting a ‘y’ on the end of a colour begin to explain its shifting ambiguity? I wonder.

So yes, it’s been a ‘weathery’ month. A lot of rain, a lot of storms, hurrying clouds. Hurrying to hang the washing out when the sun appears, dashing out to bundle it all in when it starts raining again. Falling asleep to the applause-like sounds of the latest deluge, waking to gentle mizzle. The London suburbs are suddenly quieter, now that the schools have broken up, and a listless summer-holiday energy has settled over the city.

The garden, on the other hand, has never looked better at this time of the year. Lush and verdant, teeming with insects. The perennial beds are awash with shivering golden grasses and pale spires on tall stems.

Mid July is the annual viewpoint with two seasonal vistas, one ahead and one just behind. Early summer is past and in shadow now. The next season - I hesitate to even say the word - comes into sight up ahead, still blurry and a way off but inching closer with its crisp mornings and langourous afternoons of mellow sunlight.

A reminder to breathe, taste, swim in these longer days for as long as possible, to squeeze every last drop of summer ‘til the pips squeak.

Early in the month we installed a wedding at Hedsor House for which - for once - it was a balmy 28 degrees and very windy. The ceremony was held outdoors in a small topiary garden for which we created an undulating floral border of perennials and garden roses. In the hall we wound spindly leafy branches up around the columns with honeysuckle and sweet pea vines entwined around them.

We made the tables luxuriously laden with a continuous stream of flowers the full length, arching vines of honeysuckle, tiny perennial foxgloves, blush, apricot and pale lemon roses among the candles and glassware. Just as the guests were coming in for dinner, it must have been about 8pm, I snuck a glimpse of the room with all the candles lit and the sunlight beginning to soften, the peach roses glowing. It was all very warm, very scented, very romantic!

Many congratulations to our clients, Alex and Peter.

Thank you to our lovely team - Zeph, Charlotte, Aila, Fionne, Eliza, Emma, Felicity and Daniel - for bringing the imagined brief to life. And thank you to Alexis from Willow & Oak for an expertly crafted event; we loved working with you.

Mid July - a brief jaunt to Pembrokeshire.

Rockpools, drizzle, fish and chips, stretching the legs and eyes. Mavis is at her very happiest and most prance-y on this beach.

The annual pilgrimage to Sissinghurst Castle.

Always a lot to see and inspire…

The white, silver and greens of Vita Sackville West’s ‘White Garden’, which is like diving into a refreshingly cool pool.

The Clematis was extraordinary this year, as were Dan Pearson’s beautiful reimagined ‘Delos’ under the bruised sky and the clouds of dusky red smokebush.

And then on to Sussex and Dixter.

It was obviously meant to be our lucky day that day. We got the last two scones in the house, the sun came out for the evening, our friend Daniel who works in the nursery took us on a tour of the garden after closing time AND I got to eat my first mulberries straight from the tree. Delicious.

There is nowhere in the world like Dixter. To borrow an expression from the writer Diane Ackerman, it is just '“sense-luscious”. Fizzing with life and colour and creativity and ideas.

As usual we came away with some lovely plants, about a million photographs and many quick scribbles in our notebooks.

Thank you very much for reading.

We hope you’ve all had a wonderful month and managed to stay dry!

Until next time.

X

MIDSUMMER

It seems only a moment ago that it was spring, cold, damp, dark in the mornings. And yet we are already past midsummer, already a week beyond the solstice and accelerating fast into the second half of the summer.

June, true to form, has been busy and beautiful.

This is the month we revel in the sheer abundance and frothiness of the garden at its best, before it gets hotter and drier.

The first flush of the garden roses were wonderful this year. They benefitted from a long wet spring and have been laden with flowers for weeks, their perfume fragrant and heady.

The peonies were glorious too and are just coming to an end. The Claire de Lune were particularly floriferous this year - they have been in the ground three years now. Likewise the pansies which have been flowering their little stems off - we added some new plants this year and they are bedding in well.

Sunset and sunrise in the garden…

We enjoyed arranging with a lot of pale pink flowers this month. Corncockle, valerian and kolkwitzia, geraniums, aquilegia. So beautiful with silvery greens, lime greens, bronze and/or plum!

Our June workshop was awash with incredible varieties cut specially for our visitors who came from all over the world to immerse themselves in botanical beauty for two days at the studio. We love to create a very nurturing space for these workshops so that everyone, no matter their experience or background with flowers, can learn, discover and explore their own creativity with the most amazing ingredients to hand. Growing every flower ourselves it is very special for us to be able to share varieties that some of our guests have never encountered before and it’s always surprising and moving to see what is created with them. Flower arranging is such a personal practice, it’s visceral and intuitive and it’s hard to put into words how exciting the energy is in a room full of people who love handling flowers in an artistic way.

We are very excited to have just released our 2024 workshop dates on the website and tickets are available.

For those who are interested in attending our Flower School next year, all the information can be found here.

This month we’ve had Aila working with us. Aila runs a flower farm back home in New Zealand, Hands in the Dirt, and is visiting the UK during the NZ winter season. It has been wonderful having her positive work ethic and upbeat presence with us in the studio and garden and we know she is going to do great things with her beautiful flower business. She also wears great hats.

We’ve had some lovely weddings this month, filling bucketloads of mouthwatering colours and transporting them back to London to be carefully arranged into vases and bouquets back at the studio.

Last weekend at the Savile Club we created a naturalistic display to the central staircase. We’ve long dreamed of using a pale yellow palette at the club - the interiors are icy blues, silver and white, so it has a dreamy, fairytale-like quality to it. We kept the design loose and sporadic to reflect the way the plants look in the garden at this precise moment in the year - sprawling vines of Clematis and Nasturtium, towering spires of Campanula, Thalictrum, Veronica and Cephalaria gigantea (giant scabious), the fading seedheads of Allium globes and tiny flecks of white Gysophila and pale pink Nepeta. We always hope to achieve an effortless, just-gathered look for our clients’ wedding flowers, even though they are anything but! Just gathered, yes, but effortless, not so much… It’s a wonderful privilege to be entrusted to create installations for a couple’s wedding day and its always a joy to work at the Savile Club. We have dressed this staircase many times but we always try to do something new and find a fresh way to decorate it.

This week it’s British Flowers Week and to celebrate all the incredible locally grown flowers we are lucky enough to enjoy arranging with here in the UK we have a summer sale on our online courses until 2nd July.

Click here to browse the full range of classes.

We’re gearing up for another busy few weeks ahead and can’t wait to show you what we’re working on in July!

Thank you for reading.

Until next month. A.

THE MONTH OF MAY

May. This is the month when things have really got going for us, flower-wise. Later than usual after a cold and wet spring and, as opposed to previous years when we’ve been in the deep end from March onwards, it’s been a serene and gentle incline to the busy summer season.

After weeks of brooding skies and drizzly mornings the sun finally deigned to make an appearance.

Londoners became markedly more cheerful overnight and there followed a grateful rush of alfresco socialising, ice-cream eating and premature states of undress.

Earlier in the month we bade a fond farewell to the tulips, Narcissi, Muscari and Fritillaria. Our Ranunculus have not fared too well this year so they’re rather thin on the ground but glorious nonetheless - whirling, ruffled and burnished, petals streaked with fine, feathery brushstrokes.

The above arrangement was inspired by one we saw in the window of an incense boutique in Kyoto in 2019. We have been meaning to try this asymmetric linear shape ever since and the small, low urn was the perfect container for these sculptural dogwood branches. We used the incredibly two-tone Fritillaria persica ‘Green Dreams’ and Scilla hispanica (pink bluebells) and threaded Clematis montana through the foliage.

Above a tablescape of tulips, Narcissi, Veronica, Fritillaria and Physocarpus arranged simply in stoneware bottles. These ceramic vessels are commonplace Victorian containers and were ‘reclaimed’ from their burial place under a Welsh hillside where they had been disposed of in bulk. The beautiful thing about them is that every one is different, the heights, shapes and glazes vary from bottle to bottle. The earthy tones are nicely offset by a lively pop of lemon yellow - and a shaggy red dog (an Irish Terrier will do if you can manage to get hold of one).

Speaking of red - a study of the spring garden with a sprinkling of our favourite ‘Cafe au Lait’ Ranunculus which is a glowing ember of a flower, amber on the upper petals with a dusky red underbelly. Arranged with veined peach Heuchera leaves, sprigs of Potentilla, Deutzia, and dusted with a few Geum, Polemonium and Saxifraga.

The studio has filled with flowers every week - special favourites being fussed and coo’ed over as new varieties begin to bloom - Iris siberica ‘Dance Ballerina Dance’, the Japanese peonies, the foxtail lilies, black pansies, branches of apple blossom with palest pink petals.

We hosted the first of our 2023 Flower School workshops this month, welcoming guests from the UK, Italy, France, Switzerland, South Korea, the US and Canada for two days of high octane flower appreciation. It was such a pleasure, especially after a four year hiatus from teaching, to host such an enthusiastic group of women - every one genuinely exploring their own creativity with flowers and plants in a different way.

The month of May is all about the little speckly, freckly details and this workshop was a chance to really delve into that. It isn’t a month for large, showy flowers and instead the dainty and delicate come to the fore. In the garden we call this the ‘May Gap’, in between the tulips and just before the peonies, roses and iris. Every workshop we host is highly seasonal, using what is readily available naturally and locally - from our own garden and the immediate fields surrounding it. We don’t want to think of this in a ‘theme-y’ way but rather as a chance to focus upon that particular moment in that particular year. Every week is different, the weather, the ingredients.

Our May workshop was an opportunity to celebrate the exquisite details the garden and hedgerows were offering us and we had some incredible varieties to tuck into - Spiraea, Ornithagalum, Polemonium, Thalictrum, Clematis, Alliums, Geranium, Aquilegia, Tellima, Valerian, Heuchera… too many to mention.

There were some notably show-stealing foraged ingredients among the arrangements too - glistening buttercups, herb Robert, hawthorn, green alkanet, comfrey, dead nettle, speedwell.

One of the best things about this time of the year, matched only by autumn in the colour stakes, is the spring foliage and that was something we had a lot of fun with in choosing the materials for the workshop. For the urn arrangements we mixed the metallic bronze leaves of Physocarpus and the matt silver of Eleagnus in among the greenery and blossom which gave a particularly ethereal, shimmery look to the designs.

Thank you so much to all our wonderful guests and helpers who made this workshop a very special one.

Well after all that rain the garden was just waiting for a little sun to explode into flower and colour! And it does feel explosive - so much growth in so little time.

The interesting thing about May is that the beginning and the end of the month are so very different in terms of character, it really is spring reaching the ‘cusp’ of summer and just tipping over into it.

Early May there are all the Fritillaria, Scilla, Primula, the last of the Narcissi and Anemone. Now we have the first roses, peonies, lilac, alliums both little and large, Iris, Camassia, Clematis, Tellima, Geum, Valerian, Polemonium, all the different varieties of Geranium. In the tunnels, the first sweet peas, Orlaya, Nigella and Agrostemma. The hedgerows around the field are white and frothy with hawthorn, apple blossom and cow parsley.

Jess spent last week in Seville, exploring the narrow, orange-tree lined streets, eating tapas, drinking wine and visiting the gardens of the Real Alcázar de Sevilla and the Parque de Maria Luisa which were, by all accounts, drenched in roses and Bougainvillea and very inspiring.

I spent the week in Wales where the weather was magical, the birdsong exuberant and the meadows awash with wild flowers. There was a lot of rambling through the woods and fields, eating outdoors, sun dappled naps and generally chasing after my son who has recently learned to walk and spent the whole week dashing alarmingly from hazard to hazard. I could do with a holiday actually, to recover.

During his naps I arranged flowers. It was lovely to pick and arrange slowly without any particular purpose, just for the sheer enjoyment of the process.

Thank you for reading and wishing you all a wonderful month ahead.

Till next time.

X

THE APRIL DANCE

The growing season starts like a slow dance. A glide. The seasonal equivalent of a waltz, or perhaps a foxtrot.

At the cutting garden we take delivery of a whole host of new plants and give them a home in the moist, cool soil. Some to replace winter losses, others that are entirely new to us and we’ll have to wait a few weeks yet to see in flower.

In April there are a lot of damp, drizzly days planting, weeding and mulching.

The garden has never looked better. It is starting to feel well established now and the shrubs are filling out beautifully.

From tunnel 2 we cut Narcissi and Anemone. The Ranunculus and Allium are just beginning; we’ll begin harvesting them next week.

In the outdoor dahlia beds the tulips are flowering alongside more Narcissi, primroses and pansies, Epimedium, Ipheion, Muscari, hellebores and some incredible Fritillaria - persica, meleagris, acmopetala, imperialis, elwesii and michaeilovskii.

It's the best feeling after the long winter to work with the sun on your back and to be able to generously fill buckets with colourful flowers to send to London.

In the studio we get back in the saddle and flex our design muscles ahead of the season, experimenting with form, colour and texture for various projects ahead. One of our key preoccupations this year is really reflecting how the garden looks and feels, trying to capture its energy and the way it changes - day by day, week by week, month by month. It is much more subtle than the four-season model would suggest and the spaces between the seasons seem to have a character of their own.

Using the abundance of flowers suddenly available for cutting we start working on an exciting new series of online classes. It feels great to dive in at the deep end on a new project; we love this work and the particular process of researching and planning, shooting, recipe testing, writing and editing.

Above is a favourite spring colour palette. Mixing bronze with varying shades of pink and plum.

The Malus ‘Prairie Fire’ explodes into a riot of blossom outside my bedroom window; the leaves are a beautiful rich, reddy-brown and the flowers lightly scented.

Forsythia with Tulipa sylvestris, the wild tulip.

Accompanied by Fritillaria elwesii, Fritillaria michailovskyi, Narcissus ‘Blushing Lady’, Oxalis (creeping woodsorrel) and fans of dried grasses.

I love the soft, icy blues in the garden at this time of the year - the Muscari (grape hyacinth) and Ipheion (spring starflower). And all the graceful stems of Anemone and Fritillaria. The tiny Epimedium flowers.

It’s a magical, subtle time as things just start to get going.

A study in white.

Exochorda x macrantha ‘The Bride’ (pearl bush), Anemone coronaria ‘The Bride’, Fritillaria meleagris ‘Alba’, Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’ (snowflake) and Thlaspi arvense (pennycress).

An Easter tablescape with a mix of vessels and materials:

Narcissi, Fritillaria, Spiraea, Anemone and Prunus.

Easter was spent in Wales among the daffodils and dripping branches.

So many extraordinary wild flowers in the woods and meadows - coralroot bittercress, aconites, wild strawberries, forget-me-nots and primroses.

Whilst in Wales I took the opportunity to visit one of my favourite local gardens one afternoon between April showers. Aberglasney is in the Tywi Valley in Carmarthenshire and well worth a visit if you are ever in the area. It’s an exquisite garden - or series of gardens - in the grounds of a vanilla-coloured mansion.

There is a lot to see, I had to do three ‘laps’ just to take it all in.

The gardens have distinctly different sections that lead into one another down the hill, starting from an Asiatic area at the top with paths through Magnolia, Rhododendron, Camellia and Azalea shrubs native to Japan, Nepal, Tibet and China. The ‘Alpinum’ is home to low-level dwarf varieties and at this time of the year is like a soft, pastel watercolour of Primula, Muscari, Pulsatilla and Saxifraga.

There are several walled gardens including the productive kitchen garden, which is beautiful later in the summer with step-over fruit trees, vegetables, herbs and cutting flowers, then an enchanting sea of Fritillaria meleagris in the lawned slope leading down towards the woodland and stream gardens. The ‘Ninfarium’, which houses a lush, sub-tropical garden in among the ruins of the original medieval building is named after the gardens of Ninfa outside Rome, created by the Caetani family, who once gave financial support to Wales’ most celebrated poet, Dylan Thomas.

The days continue to lengthen.

A few more and we're into May. One of the best months for flowers, arguably the best of them all…

If you haven’t already please do check out our YouTube channel where we are now posting regularly.

In addition to our monthly vlog from the studio and garden we are very much enjoying capturing and curating short, thoughtful films to share with you all and we’re so grateful for all the kind comments we’ve received recently. Topics include flower arranging, cut flower growing, seasonal studio tours and visits to our favourite gardens in search of inspiration. We hope you enjoy them.

Till next time. A.

MARCHING ON

Spring.

The verb ‘to spring’ from the Middle English sprygen - ‘to burst or flow forth, to sprout, to emerge, to happen, to become known’.

As a noun, from Middle English spryng (“a wellspring, tide, branch, sunrise, kind of dance or blow, ulcer, snare, flock”), from Old English spring (“wellspring, ulcer”) and Old English spryng (“a jump”), from ablaut forms of the Proto-Germanic verb. Further senses derived from the verb and from clippings of day-spring, springtime, spring tide, etc. Its sense as the season, first attested in a work predating 1325, gradually replaced Old English lencten (“spring, Lent”) as that word became more specifically liturgical. Compare fall.

I’m into dictionary definitions the way some people are the shipping forecast. “Viking, North Utsire; southwesterly five to seven; occasionally gale eight; rain or showers; moderate or good, occasionally poor.” Something comforting and peaceful about them.

Spring the season, on the other hand, drags her feet. While winter finally dawdles off, spring makes us wait for her like an impatient lover. Predictably wistful, too eager, looking for signs. The usual thing - watching the clock, worrying if we dressed right. She comes closer inch by inch, painfully slowly, giving in by tiny increments.

When the camellias begin to flower you know you’re in with a chance.

March is first base. The beginning of something. 

In any case, it’s a busy month. A month of preparation, planning ahead.

In the garden ‘the big chop’ ensues - cutting back the perennials and giving everything a good old haircut to allow the fresh green shoots to emerge.

It’s cathartic, and extremely satisfying, to strip away all the dead growth and take everything back to ground level.

The beds are given a lovely thick blanket of mulch to enrich the soil around the plants, suppress the weeds (to a certain extent) and to keep the soil damp and cool as the earth begins to warm up.

One Saturday a friend comes over to help for a few hours of (what he thinks will be) ‘therapeutic gardening’.

He brings sweet pastries and we drink coffee in the sun and it feels like spring.

Later, in torrential rain, we tackle the compost bays. Knee-deep, spades in hand, we apologise for the turn of events.

“Never happier than when shovelling shit”- his cheerful reply.

Me neither.

We compost all the perennial offcuts under last year’s food and flower waste. Excitingly we finally have our first big batch of lovely rich, crumbly compost.

It’s very satisfying to have finally cracked this and to be able to properly make use of our household and business green waste.

Certainly not glamorous but it might be one of our proudest moments so far.

I should have taken a photo to mark the occasion. Then again, perhaps not. We got home looking a tad feral.

The annual seeds are sown.

In trays there are Malope, Nicotiana, Helichrysum, Limonium, Tagetes, snapdragons and various perennial seeds.

Direct sown in our tunnels are scabious, cornflower, nigella, California poppies, Nasturtium, Omphalodes, Agrostemma, Phlox, Callistephus, Flax and Gypsophila.

The flowers are coming through now. Slowly. Another couple of varieties every week.

We’ve had a long spell of cold, dry weather and the season is slow to get going this year.

Narcissi, scilla, muscari, anemones. Some incredible hellebores.

We cut a little bunch of narcissi from the polytunnel and put them in a jam jar.

They drive around with us in the van back in London, through rainstorms and dazzling sun, the typical kaledioscope of weather on any given spring day.

They smell like vanilla.

In London the magnolia is in bloom.

After weeks of grey the streets are suddenly awash with these extraordinary blossoming trees.

It’s enough to make you fall in love with the city all over again.

At the studio we have a huge overhaul and spring clean in preparation for the new season.

All the doors are flung open, the windows polished, every cupboard and box is emptied, sorted, dusted and refilled.

An exciting delivery of beautifully aged reclaimed oak arrives all the way from Austria which we are using for cladding - a project we have wanted to do for a long time - and we spend an enjoyable couple of hours admiring each piece and deciding the order in which they’ll be fixed.

Arranging from the garden at this time of the year is very much an exercise in restraint. In making a little go a long way. Right at the beginning of the season still, you may only have one or two stems of each variety. It’s a bit like having nothing in the fridge and having to be inventive to make supper. Actually I love suppers like that. And flowers too.

x2 Forsythia branches

x5 hellebores (four different varieties)

x1 primula

x5 Vinca minor

x1 Fritillaria ‘Ivory Bells’

x 8-10 Scilla mischtschenkoana

The latter is white squill. A exquisite pale blue flower. We planted the bulbs beneath some rambling roses and they are naturalising beautifully, more and more every year.

Also at the studio, planning for our 2023 flower school begins in earnest. We like to start with a big brainstorm of ideas and then streamline from there.

‘Workshop flow’, Jess calls it.

We want each one to be different, to celebrate the materials of that particular moment in the year. We love working out how we can give our guests the best experience - what we’ll talk about, what we’ll make, where we’ll gather and sit and photograph, what we’ll eat, drink, listen to.

We have some great playlists this year. Classical. Jazz. Folk. Country.

See you next month! Excited for Easter and all the flowers to come.

Thank you for reading. A.