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!

A wet and 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.

September weddings

A simple, sophisticated bridal bouquet of massed ingredients - coffee roses, unripened blackberries, mauve-grey limonium, fluffy grasses and pops of red from three Tagetes ‘Burning Embers’.

Buttonholes for the boys - Nandina foliage tipped with red, textural berries from a flowering dogwood tree, blackberries (again!) and grasses.

And another - this time pale yellow ‘Imogen’ roses against a backdrop of the palest blue clematis, mustard fennel stars, creamy Hydrangea and tiny clusters of Thalictrum delavayi.

A delicate, textural flower crown of dried limonium, everlasting flowers and quaking grass tied with a silk ribbon.

Tulips galore

For this spring wedding at the Savile Club in Mayfair we cut lots of double tulips - pale pink ‘Angelique’, creamy yellow ‘Avant Garde’ and honey-hued ‘Copper Image’.

Our footed centrepieces are designed to be seen from all angles and take centre stage on wide, round tables. Each centrepiece is unique with shapes and colours varying depending on the individual materials.

The pale blue staircase at the Club is always a dream to dress - this foam free design included trailing ivy, full blown silken tulips in shades from ivory to plum, scented narcissus and frothy cow parsley.

The bride’s bouquet included copper Physocarpus and metallic Silverberry foliage, white and burgundy anemones and peach peony-shaped tulip ‘Charming Lady’.

Gold, rust, peach

We were able to make the most of the changing autumnal colours at the farm for this October wedding.

The bride’s bouquet was made up of the finest seasonal finds including peachy elder foliage, mottled hydrangea and glowing chrysanthemums the colour of rich egg yolks.

The tables were decorated with little antique glass bottles and individual stems of dahlias, chrysanthemums, Japanese anemones and yellowing Macleaya leaves.

For the flower girls, ranging in age from 11 to a tiny 2.5 - sweet little posies of flowering abelia, daisy-faced chrysanthemums and wispy grasses.

Sowing for spring

We start preparations for our flowers the following year from the September equinox onwards - sowing seeds of hardy annuals such as cornflowers and nigella, planting rows of ranunculus corms, tucking allium and Fritillaria bulbs into the perennial beds, and finally planting trenches of tulips in November. It’s exciting to imagine how all the hard work will pay off come spring, when reward comes in the form of soft unfurling petals and sweet scents.

These are a few of our favourite things to sow and plant this side of Christmas!

We sow sweet peas in September and tuck them into the ground under cover from November. Growing in the tunnel protects their delicate petals from any rain damage and we can look forward to clouds of scented flowers come May. Sweet pea ‘Red Ace’ adds a punch of lipstick red to bouquets.

Planted in long rows in the polytunnels, ranunculus and anemones provide a sweet shop display of colour from April onwards - from deep chocolate and aniseed red to sugary pink and fizzy yellow. We use these abundantly in our seasonal flower subscriptions.

Dainty Fritillaria bells, honey-scented cupped narcissus, ice blue muscari, multi headed tulip ‘Turkestanica’ and acrid yellow wild tulip ‘Sylvestris’ … the perennial bulbs cause the most excitement when they emerge, bringing that extra sense of delicacy to spring arrangements.

Sowing hardy annual seed the previous autumn gives us a jump start on the season. While the small seedlings appear unimpressive over the winter, by mid May the beds are bursting with bushy floriferous plants and towering spires, including this Delphinium consolida ‘Misty Lavender’ variety.

Sri Lankan heritage

The brief for this wedding was ‘fun and colourful’, to reflect the bride and groom’s Sri Lankan heritage.

The bride’s bouquet was made up of softer tones in cream, peach and coffee with tiny pops of pale blue and mustard.

We used lots of peppery scented marigolds, dahlias in shades of deep orange and spicy red and hot pink chrysanthemums.

The aisle was lined with grouped vessels in varying sizes and colour blocks for a bright, modern look.

August in the garden

Two years ago we set about expanding the cutting garden by adding a large section of perennial plants. Our selection was strongly influenced by the natural-style ‘prairie’ landscapes created by garden designer Piet Oudolf (and countless others). The reasoning behind this was two-fold - both for the incredible movement and texture created through the use of ornamental grasses and herbaceous perennials (which give endless, interesting combinations of flowers and foliage for our designs), and by the robust hardiness and drought-tolerant tendencies of the plants (which saves on unnecessary irrigation on our dry, chalky soil in the hotter months). Now in its second summer, and with only a small handful of losses over the winter, our choices are bedding in well and we’re enjoying their incredible floriferous display, grasses swaying and rustling, humming with insect life. Here are some of our favourites this month…

Macleaya cordata, the ‘five-seeded plume poppy’ muscles its way across the perennial paths, towering above its neighbours. The flower spires are incredibly useful for their height (we love to use them in large-scale arrangements). The plant also has large sculptural leaves in a grey-green hue.

There is something about the pop-art pink of Echinacea purpurea that just speaks of late summer sunshine on sultry August afternoons. Peacock butterflies flit between their fiery orange ‘cone’ centres, Pennisetum grasses whispering in the wind alongside.

The garden is where it all begins! Ally carries a bucket of perennial potential to be prepped and conditioned ahead of arranging. A good mix of textures and shapes provides the starting point for that weekend’s wedding urn designs.

Over the past few years we’ve planted a few different varieties of perennial scabious. Our favourite has to be Scabiosa columbaria, the ‘small scabious’. Having flowered profusely since June, the plants are now a textural tangle of pale mauve-blue flowers and seedheads, humming with bees.

June's finest

Stipa gigantea or ‘golden oats’ has been flowering now for a fortnight or so. The seedheads rise above the other plants, shimmering and swaying. Despite their great height they are still overshadowed by patches of towering Thalictrum ‘Elin’ and Cephalaria gigantea nearby.

Our first year of growing Eremurus himalaicus the ‘foxtail lily’. After such a relentlessly cold winter and given their shallow planting depth, we were unconvinced we would see these this year, but they have shot up and flowered beautifully.

The plan for the perennial beds has been to make the most of every bit of space, growing something for each season. Here the alliums and Eremurus rise up out of the clumps of grass and Aster foliage, which will be harvested later in the summer.

We’ve sadly lost several peonies this year, but the Itoh varieties seem happy and full of life. This lemon yellow ‘Canary Brilliants’ variety has a bright red eye in the centre - we arranged it with buttery Sisyrinchium spires for a photoshoot.

Seasonal wedding flowers

We’ve been lucky to experience some beautiful misty June mornings at the garden this year.

On arriving early one morning we were greeted by a sea of Dutch iris and their statuesque bearded neighbours rising from the bed in the centre of the garden. The air was swirling with moisture, dripping spiders’ webs trailing between each pale blue, mustard and mauve petalled head.

As fortune would have it that very week the studio had been asked to create the flower decorations for Vanessa and Reuben’s wedding. Vanessa’s initial reference image was of a poppy-strewn wildflower meadow with pops of scarlet red and cornflower blue. As we gathered buckets of cheery red geums, pale blue sweet peas, flax flowers and wild grasses, the timing of the moment wasn’t lost on the pickers and several days later an ecstatic bride messaged her thanks.

Seasonal synchronicity at its best!

Bouquets for brides

SPRING MEETS SUMMER | A moment in time that sings of hope - the first sweet peas blooming as the tulips come to an end. This allows for the creation of effortlessly feminine and romantic bouquets; blowsy petals, ruffles, tendrils and all.

MASSED | Sometimes simple is best - a combination of three ingredients really allows each to stand out - pale intricate Omphalodes linifolia, impossibly fluffy Pennisetum villosum and opium poppy heads make for a textural summer bouquet.

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME | There is a subtle dark to light gradation in this bouquet, but really all the attention is taken by the honey-centred ‘Julia’s Rose’ in the middle. Around the edges are sprinkled sprigs of scented calamint and hydrangea.

CHOCOLATE & LEMONADE | This bouquet doesn’t contain any ‘focal’ flowers, more a mass of ‘small faces’ - from pom pom dahlias to China asters and lots of pretty cosmos - ‘Apricot Lemonade’ and 'Chocolate’.

Familiar faces in March

After what seems to have been the longest winter, some familiar faces are brightening up the garden, and our mood!

Narcissus ‘Fragrant Breeze’ has beautiful wide cups in soft egg-yolk yellow - all the better for indulging in a long deep sniff!

A sweet little Easter tablescape of antique medicine bottles and a happy mix of Helleborus, Fritillaria, Narcissus, Tulips and Anemones

Colours and patterns galore: speckled Helleborus ‘Harvington Double White’, chequered Fritillaria meleagris and tiny yellow Narcissus ‘Minnow’

From the garden in February

A clutch of rain-splattered Helleborus feels like the sweetest gift on dark days

An injection of brights from Rainbow Chard - citrine leaves, fuchsia and red stalks

Galanthus Nivalis - their delicately nodding heads are sweetly scented

Creative play - a small arrangement made with snippets from the snowy garden, in anticipation of spring

2020 in 20

Like most, we breathed a loud sigh of relief as the end of 2020 came into sight. We ended last year more despondent than usual, quietly grateful for our health and the survival of our small events business. However… it is our strong belief there are always good things to be found amongst bad, and this is never more true than when immersed in the natural world. Shining bright amongst the awfulness of 2020, there were some truly beautiful moments to remember.

All dressed up and no weddings to go - the tulip beds flowered in the spring without hope of harvesting

We fell firmly in love with orange - a bright and happy, often overlooked colour

Regal, strange, beautiful - the bearded iris flowered wonderfully in the May sunshine

Beating the blues with armfuls of iris and warm sunny days in the garden

We fell in love with delphiniums, our tunnel crop growing over our heads in spires of blue and mauve

We experimented with COLOUR! Reds, oranges, pinks, yellows, purples, blues…

In the August heat the garden was a riot of colour, bolstering our spirits on low days

We grew our most successful zinnia crop and are looking forward to putting new gardening lessons into practise this year

Our baby shrub roses, planted at the end of 2019, settled in well and flowered profusely

Who ever gets to enjoy this many beautiful Belle Epoque tulips for themselves?!

Mavis missed welcoming students to the studio for their classes and wondered where everyone had gone

But she did get lots of kisses and attention from the two of us, which made her very happy

We grew plump China Asters - destined for special weddings - we’ll grow them again in 2021!

We discovered the magical beauty of Valerian - and its hellish self-seeding tenancies if left for pretty pictures!

We celebrated and cherished each flower variety more than ever this year

The new perennial section at the garden was grateful for the quiet year and settled in well without too much snipping!

We loved these ‘Blue Bayou’ tomatoes - on the plate and in the vase

We missed making bridal and bridesmaids bouquets, buttonholes, table flowers, urns, installations…

Free time meant more creative time for experimenting with different shapes and techniques

Arranging flowers gave us calmness and hope in a difficult year - proof if it was needed of just how powerful nature can be

New perennial beds

An arrangement of hosta leaf and Dutch iris ‘Silvery Beauty’, with wild meadow-grasses ‘Yorkshire Fog’, ‘Downy Brome’ and ‘Pendulous Sedge’.

May. The third month of our ‘season’. These are some of the most beautiful weeks of the year. Early mornings cutting at the farm, afternoons in the cool of the studio with the novelty of all the doors thrown open and the breeze fluttering through, the lengthening shadows in the evenings, the first days of restless heat and the promise they bring for the months to come. Every day we remind ourselves to live it to the full, that this is a fleeting moment in time and that these calm, quiet days should be cherished - for the unfurling iris, for the scent of coffee brewing on our camping stove at the garden, for the sleepy lizards sunbathing on the tunnel roofs and for the slower pace of life that is allowing us the freedom, for a time, to reflect and breathe.

Our new perennial garden at the farm, with shrub beds in the foreground. This patch is still in its infancy but settling in as the weeks pass. We’re excited to witness these plants develop over time - many of them will be waist or shoulder height once established and will provide beauty and interest throughout the whole year, not just in summer; the spires and globes of flowers becoming seed heads, the grasses producing fluffy tails and then drying, the umbels evolving to architectural skeletons in winter.

The garden continues to feed our work at the studio. Both literally and metaphorically, a flow of materials, gaining in quantity and variety by the week, and the propulsion of its natural energy carrying us along with it further into the year. Without the flurry and hustle of our usual schedule, this month has allowed us a unique and deep immersion in using our plants to fuel our design work and enabled us to dig deeper into the overlap of horticulture and flower arrangement. The collaborative relationship between our studio and the garden, and the tension and beauty this can create has become a total obsession and it has been a luxury to spend several weeks focussing on this alone.

Working on an arrangement of rowan, hawthorn, cow parsley, Camassia, Agrostemma and buttercups - a true reflection of our garden and the surrounding hedgerows, mid May.

Ranunculus, Dutch and bearded iris, sweet peas and Allium siculum.

The more we delve into these concepts, the more we are slowly deepening and developing our nature-inspired design philosophy and in the process the more layers there are to uncover, and the more there is to learn and think about and research. What flowers and gardens mean to us, why we grow plants for decoration and bring them into our homes. Why and how they have the power to move us, to bring us joy, to change the energy in a room. How to create arrangements with natural materials that are truly evocative of season and place. How to combine them in a way that is reflective of how and where they were grown. How to balance colour and texture. How to edit, to strip out the unnecessary and allow the materials to reveal their true characters and complexities, to distill and elevate the essence of each ingredient. On the surface, growing and arranging flowers seems whimsical - the ultimate frivolity. But there is so much more to explore, technically, intellectually than meets the eye at first glance. You can just graze the surface, dip your toe in, you can go deep as you like. These questions have preoccupied us for years but we’ve had time to really dive down this year - every time we come up for air we find we want to go further in.

The large bed in the main garden being prepared for the changeover from spring bulbs to dahlias.

A handful of vines of ‘Heavenscent’, a beautiful sweet pea with frilly, creamy flowers flushed with pale pink and a rich, heady perfume. We cut it long on the vine to enjoy its leaves, whiskery tendrils and contorted stems.

Flowers in lockdown

I lost myself on a cool damp night

I gave myself in that misty light

Was hypnotized by a strange delight

Under a lilac tree

I made wine from the lilac tree

Put my heart in its recipe

It makes me see what I want to see

And be what I want to be

lyrics from ‘Lilac Wine’ written by James Shelton

April. We gardened mostly. Re-scheduled 2020 to next year. A paschal moon rose. Lightening-jagged faultlines appeared in the soil after weeks of sun. The rain finally came.

Driving from London to the farm it seems that only weeks ago the roads were carving through meadows of iced umbels, casting the first golden-pink light of the day on the wool of sheep in the fields. Now the woods are a blur of bluebells, the verges indistinct, a billowing daze of cow parsley, the occasional daub of lilac.

The cutting garden has become the epicentre of our lives during the crisis. It gives us a rhythm to hold onto, the anchor holding us steady. There is always much to do, so much more to be done. Creating and maintaining anything is fulfilling but caring for plants and relying on them for harvest is a great leveller too. And gardening is really just the constant draining and re-filling of essential tasks ad infinitum. It keeps your head down, keeps you connected to the earth. For Jess and I a fairly dogged work ethic is coiled into our DNA - we don’t stop, ever. And right now that’s something I’m grateful for. It’s a slower place - there is more time for eating well, for reflection and all that. But too much introspection isn’t good for anyone. Some hard graft, however – that’s always good for the mind (if not the body!).

New routines and rituals begin to replace the old. Today we’d be entering the third week of a relentless schedule of weddings and teaching that in normal times would last through until mid to late October. Every few days we say ‘today we’d be teaching this’ or ‘tomorrow we’d be cutting for so and so’s wedding’ I guess as a way to keep abreast of a reality that is no longer in existence. And who knows whether it will be again soon – I suspect not. And when it is it will be another time, it will be different.

We had this private little thing that we used to do in the studio before a big workshop. We would select one of the cones of incense we brought back from Japan and light it, the smoke would drift through the studio and out into the back garden. Jess, Yukiko and I would be going about our tasks but it was this moment of calm and centeredness. And gratitude - for our beautiful studio, for the flowers, for eachother, and for the people we would be lucky enough to share them with. We miss Yukiko so much.

Sometimes we talk about what’s ahead and sometimes what’s been and gone – reminiscing has become a bittersweet pastime. This usually revolves around food. Going to restaurants. Hardly essential but it’s what we miss the most at the moment besides parents and friends. Most other things are superfluous but eating a meal in a roomful of strangers is the one luxury I’d keep if I could. The intimacy and theatre and excitement of a restaurant is like nothing else. I am relishing reading The Restaurant: A History of Eating Out by William Sitwell at the moment. He is a wonderful writer. “One of the main attributes that separates us from animals is that we consume things for more than thirst or hunger. We derive pleasure from what we eat and drink. There is satisfaction in flavour, texture and the wider experience. Indeed, much of the story of eating out is predicated on the fact that it is fundamentally unnecessary. Whatever anyone tells you, we do not need to visit restaurants to survive - but they make survival considerably more enjoyable.'“

With the time now to spend far more of it cooking we are eating better than ever – healthy, nourishing food that is prepared slowly, whilst working our way through a delicious bottle of something, and reading a book at the same time. But the meals out ‘before’ have taken on a mythic quality in memory. I can’t stop thinking about a bowl of pasta at Campania & Jones – whilst excitedly planning our autumn workshop in Paris with Clementine. An excellent steak at The Brackenbury Wine Rooms when the Icelandic family owners took over the next-door table, with a gradually increasing number of small children and emptying wine bottles. That was one of the last nights before the lockdown and they were certainly making the most of it. Yukiko’s first bowl of kedgeree at 202 – that was just before too. I read this great article recently by Ruthie Rogers, owner of the amazing River Cafe. Yes, I thought - that explains it. Food is all about people. Flowers are too.

April saw many beautiful flowers that didn’t have homes to go to and that was regrettable. Although we did enjoy working on a few creative projects of our own and luxuriated in arranging flowers for the sheer love of it again. There were tulips, anemones, hellebores, narcissi, spiraea. Brown, gold and lipstick-red ranunculus. But above all we were in thrall to the iris. Silvery blue, tall, architectural – we adore them. I brought a bucketload home with me last week and am hoarding them until the petals shrivel at the edges.

At this time of the year you can feel the shift in energy in the garden, the sudden surge of momentum. After the rain the plants puff out immediately and then its as though they double in size day by day. Everything begins to flower at once. It’s like an orchestra. The symphony begins!

May is all about the most exquisite of flowers - the bearded iris. There will be camassia too, aquilegia, geums, sweet peas, corncockle, the first roses of the season. But don’t let me get carried away! That’s a whole new chapter.