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

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.