Flowers in lockdown
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.
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.
Flowers in the time of Covid
The next few months we plan to go back to basics. Growing flowers, learning how to arrange them, studying plants, photographing them, writing about them. It’s safe to say that until much later this year there will be no weddings, no parties, no workshops - this is going to be one long research trip! But while we have our health, we will be in the garden, slowly building on what we’ve started there for the future. We hope to share more with you here as we go.
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
- John O’Donohue
Everything is different now. So very different, for all of us. This pandemic has robbed us of many things. In a business sense - cash flow, our work for the season ahead, our wonderful team, our certainty for the immediate future and weekly routines. It has robbed us of brushing past people in crowded rooms, of shaking hands, of coffee shops and wine bars and kissing our friends and parents, our freedom to go out and be in the world. For the time being, at least, we are restricted, isolated, distanced. But I don’t want to write about that. What I want to write about is hope, and change for the better. Because, while none of us expected THIS, there are, perhaps, silver linings to be found. For the moment time - to realign, to refocus - being one of them.
This week we were due to re-open the studio and flower school for the new season, preparing to welcome brides and mothers-of-brides and planners through our doors to discuss colour schemes and hash out itineraries and students coming to study floral design with us for a day, or a week - it’s one of the most exciting stages of the year, the cusp, when everything is just about to get going. For us there’s nothing we love more than a full diary of dates stretching ahead, that blissful workaholic haze of early mornings and challenge and adrenaline, one project after the other until the winter when we exhaustedly crawl back into hibernation again until spring. For the last five years this has been the annual dance, a rhythm we are familiar with and thrive on. We’d lined up the perfect team to work alongside us - all similarly champing at the bit to get off the starting blocks and into the field to join the flowery fray. And then out of nowhere - Covid-19. BOOM!
A week into the UK lockdown and we are only just beginning to come to terms with what this means. Everything looks different. London is deserted; our beautiful city boarded up and unrecognisable. On one of those grim mornings last week I made my usual pot of strong coffee and took a mug out into the garden. My husband was listening to the news, the air was tense with anxiety and everything was eerily still - no children playing in the school playground, no cars on the road, no planes. I stood amongst the potted pelargoniums and drank my coffee. I had a childish and self-indulgent urge to cry but couldn’t. Crying seems to get harder as you get older, perhaps that’s as it should be. Instead I concentrated on the silence in an effort to compose my thoughts and get on with the day. And then I realised something. The world around me was far from silent - to the contrary, the whole morning was full of birdsong. Every day since I’ve tuned into the blackbirds and starlings whistling and chirruping to each other, and the swaying canopy of holm oaks in the wind at the end of the garden sighing like the ocean. In these moments I find I can cling onto a sense of peace, that at some point all will again be right with the world.
In the meantime nature carries on, regardless of us and our viruses. It has its own schedule to keep to. The earth warms, birds chirrup, stag beetles have sex in the sun, the honeysuckle scrambles up over the fence and unfurls its grey leaves. In the garden time slows - yet at this time of the year every day is like watching the plants fast-forward to fuller, more vigorous versions of themselves. This is where we’ve been the past week, in among the leaves and new fronds, keeping close to the earth. Raking soil, planting, watering, making good. These simple acts, the rhythmic, methodical processes of keeping a garden, are utterly life affirming.
The flowers are blooming, more and more every week. We have time to really think about them and give them the attention they deserve. Each harvest we are collecting all the treasures that might be taken for granted in the rapid pace of usual life - tiny narcissus and fritillaria, the first of the tulips, ranunculus unfurling their petticoat skirts.
Against all odds the past few weeks have been a strangely fertile time of creativity and ideas. Even though its just us the two of us now, and far from the jazzy, busy season of hustle we were expecting. Perhaps, without the racing and dashing of everyday life as we know it, there is now the space to reconsider whether all the usual freneticism is worth it, whether there are other ways of operating, as a business, as a family. For us, a chink of light has illuminated what’s important and what’s superfluous. What we thought achievement meant and what it should. And what we want to focus on for the future of Aesme - what it is, really and truly - that we’re trying to do here. Refocus, reposition, make the most of the time available.
The next few months we plan to go back to basics. Growing flowers, learning how to arrange them, studying plants, photographing them, writing about them. It’s safe to say that until much later this year there will be no weddings, no parties, no workshops - this is going to be one long research trip! But while we have our health, we will be in the garden, slowly building on what we’ve started there for the future. We hope to share more with you here as we go.
Bittersweet October
October is a bittersweet month for us. In these last few weeks of the season the seven-month growing period is winding down and we host our final Flower School classes of the year. There are still so many seasonal materials to arrange with - the studio luxuriously stocked with asters, jewel-coloured dahlias, berries and fruiting branches, zinnia, chocolate cosmos, giant centaurea, flowering shrubs, herbs and perennials, including one of my favourites - Japanese anemones. Acid-toned beech branches, garlands of drying hops and curling bracken like ornate fronds of rusting metal. But the weather is turning, winter coming on, and at a certain point we relinquish the warmth, light and garden bounty of the earlier parts of the year. The wheel turns again as we knuckle down to what will be a busy winter ahead in preparation for spring.
IN THE STUDIO
October is a bittersweet month for us. In these last few weeks of the season the seven-month growing period is winding down and we host our final Flower School classes of the year. There are still so many seasonal materials to arrange with - the studio luxuriously stocked with asters, jewel-coloured dahlias, berries and fruiting branches, zinnia, chocolate cosmos, giant centaurea, flowering shrubs, herbs and perennials, including one of my favourites - Japanese anemones. Acid-toned beech branches, garlands of drying hops and curling bracken like ornate fronds of rusting metal. But the weather is turning, winter coming on, and at a certain point we relinquish the warmth, light and garden bounty of the earlier parts of the year. The wheel turns again as we knuckle down to what will be a busy winter ahead in preparation for spring.
Our ‘Day of Flower Arranging’ workshop and 3-day ‘Intensive Floral Design Masterclass’ were a whirl of activity, flowers and laughter in the studio, with students from London and around the UK as well as Paris, Romania, Indonesia, Australia, Singapore and South Korea. We greedily mopped up the last of the dahlias, coppery rose-foliage and scabiosa from the garden. Bouquets and centrepieces were woven with fine-leaved ferns, pistachio-coloured hydrangea, snowberries and shimmering strands of miscanthus grasses.
One of my favourite installation pieces of the year was this arch of massed hops, ivy berries, ferns, asters and bracken created by the students during the final session of our last Masterclass. The combination of that luminous lilac with the reddish-brown of the bracken was so beautiful and otherworldly.
We are working on our Flower School 2020 programme as we speak and are so excited to share what we have in store for students next year. Dates will be released in November so keep your eyes peeled on Instagram where we’ll be announcing ticket availability, or sign up to our newsletter at the top of the page to be the first to know about spring/summer workshops.
In other news we have recently added a little film to our website. It was created earlier this summer, directed and edited by the lovely Luca Lamaro, to tell the story of our studio and garden. We hope you enjoy it! Click here to watch the full version.
Mid-month our team created the floral decorations for a glamorous and atmospheric autumn wedding in Saxmundham, Suffolk. The ceremony was held in a twelfth-century church and reception at Sibton Park on the Wilderness Estate. I’ll wait to share the professional images as Cinzia Bruschini is an absolute magician behind a camera but there are a couple of sneak-peeks below that we captured during set-up. One of the guests described this wedding as a ‘cross between an Erdem campaign shoot and Brideshead Revisited’; suffice to say an American girl married an Englishman and it was all very stylish and chic. We scoured our cutting garden, surrounding hedgerows and local flower farms for the most exquisite seasonal ingredients. The colours were divine - nudes, coffee, copper, peach and plum with autumnal branches and foliage.
Working away on a wedding, while logistically challenging, is also a lot of fun - there’s a great deal of laughter and camaraderie, especially in the rain, which seems to elicit a rallying of spirits. I’ll remember this wedding for the delicious colours, glorious English countryside threaded with fog and mizzle, large vans navigating narrow lanes and the sound of six sleepy voices calling goodnight to one another down a hotel corridor. If you ever find yourself in this neck of the woods seek out the church of St Mary’s, Huntingfield, the ceiling of which was intricately decorated during the 1860s by one woman, the rector’s wife, Mildred Holland. Reportedly she did so with no help, lying on her back on the scaffolding. Quite a feat and an extraordinarily beautiful sight, worth taking a detour for if you’re in the area.
We have a new account on Instagram where we are documenting our wedding work. Please join us for the journey @aesmeweddings
Looking ahead to Christmas, tickets to our festive wreath workshops are now available via our web-shop here if you would like to come along! We have a morning and an afternoon session on both Saturday 30th November and Saturday 7th December. Spend a lovely couple of hours in our flower studio making a wreath for your door or as a gift for a friend. There will be fragrant evergreens, textural and fruity decorative elements as well as an array of dried flowers specially grown, harvested and dried by us from our Hampshire cut flower garden. And of course, lots of steaming hot drinks and mince pies.
IN THE GARDEN
Rain, rain, rain - the song of this October. The darkest and wettest I can remember. Drizzle and fog, damp leaves, damp bonfires. In the shrub beds the leaves are turning - abelia green to bronze, nandina green to raspberry.
On the farm we began the laborious task of clearing and turning the cutting garden around for a new year. With the last wedding of the season under our belts we lifted the dahlias and annuals, and prepared the beds for spring bulbs. There is some satisfaction to getting ahead with this task and beating the first frost to it. That way you don’t have to witness the plants wilted, blackened and mangled - always a slightly gloomy sight when the temperature drops. What we like most about working on the land, farming and harvesting crops of flowers to supply the studio, is the absolute necessity of a ‘can-do’ attitude. Gardening and growing for harvest requires optimism and faith, there is no room for laziness or procrastination. There is always work to do, and plenty of it!
Becky dug some heroic trenches. In went the narcissus, alliums, fritillaria and iris and, in the tunnels, ranunculus and anemones. The first sowing of sweet peas have already germinated and are throwing up their tender green shoots. We’ll have three long beds solely for herbs next year - so many delicious and useful varieties of mint, thyme, hyssop, sage, lemon balm and rosemary, as well as echinacea, cardoon and lavender. It’s amazing how much four people can achieve in a single day, and how much the garden changes in the course of these few weeks. Although the vista of the garden is brown and green, with very few flowers left besides the perennial beds, everything soon becomes orderly and attractive in another way - neat rows of dark beds de-weeded, fed and mulched. I find the straight lines, raked soil and precise edging immensely satisfying, so different to the beautiful chaos and blurred edges of the summer.
Jess is planning out the next plot of land we intend to amalgamate with the existing garden next month, generating spreadsheets and reams of detailed drawings and diagrams. Very mathematical at this stage, but we can already envisage how glorious it is going to be once the phase of diggers and graft and fence-laying is past and the plants begin to establish themselves. It’s an ambitious project alongside our studio work, effectively doubling the size of our plot once again, but will enable us to supply a far greater volume of flowers to the studio next year to decorate weddings, events and workshops. Importantly, it will give us a greater variety of the different blowsy, vine-y and delicate materials we love and simply can’t get our hands on any other way.
We picked the last few buckets of everlastings and limonium for Christmas orders and parties. This year for the first time, we grew flowers especially for drying (for winter use). We began harvesting in early July and now have an overflowing room strung with hundreds of bunches of beautiful fragrant dried flowers, herbs, umbels and seedpods - a sea of apricot, pink, rust, grey and mauve. All ready for the festive season, just around the corner…
IN THE ETHER
A few things we’ve been loving this month…
R E A D I N G - ‘Land of Plenty: A Journey through the Fields and Foods of Modern Britain’ by Charlie Pye-Smith
L I S T E N I N G T O - Desert Island Discs
F O L L O W I N G - @wilderbotanics | @jackdavisonphoto | @alysf
E A T I N G - Ribollita, inspired by Darsham Nurseries
V I S I T I N G - Darsham Nurseries, Saxmundham, Suffolk & Hughenden Manor gardens, Buckinghamshire
Autumn equinox
Autumn - nature’s sigh of relief. After the September equinox the summer race is abruptly over, change on the wind. As the season begins to darken, there is a lightness that comes with letting go; the final dance at the end of the night, the swan song. Energies swirl around through shapeshifting September days. There’s the ascendancy before the tipping point and then, when the crest of the wave breaks a sense of abatement, but also renewal.
IN THE STUDIO
From our foam-free installation workshop; beech, elder & viburnum foliage with dahlias, Japanese anemones, garden roses, grasses & hops on the vine
Autumn - nature’s sigh of relief. After the September equinox the summer race is abruptly over, change on the wind. As the season begins to darken, there is a lightness that comes with letting go; the final dance at the end of the night, the swan song. Energies swirl around through shapeshifting September days. There’s the ascendancy before the tipping point and then, when the crest of the wave breaks a sense of abatement, but also renewal.
In the early mornings before work I walk the dog across Bushy Park, between copses of ancient oak trees, sunbeams slanting through the mist, deer making their strange, prehistoric mating calls across the mown paths and windswept grasses. The landscape is shifting, prairie-coloured, the air smells of smoke and warm hay. As the month goes on, leaves begin to fall and the wind picks up, swirling them around the tussocks, peppering the river with ochre and copper. We stand on the bridge watching them float by. I feed Mavis blackberries from the brambles; she wrinkles her nose if they are too sour and spits them out into the grass. But she likes the sweet ones. Sometimes in the studio we find her salvaging blackberries from the green waste.
Snippets from the perennial beds for an autumn masterclass in London; ferns, pansies, chocolate cosmos, pennycress & gaura
Ceramic Urn | Borage, roses, zinnia, cosmos, dahlia, nicotiana & grasses
Urn of dahlias, miscanthus, lisianthus, centaurea & autumn leaves
Every year I think this moment is pure and utter magic, when the colours turn, even though I know that it is simply that the leaves, their veins closing up, are slowly starving of water and minerals, the chorophyll fading. I know this and yet every year I feel there is something so painfully romantic about it. Perhaps we just look for metaphors in the natural world to make sense of our own beginnings and endings.
It is my favourite time of the year to live in London; the city is so beautiful now. The street-lamps, red brick buildings, bridges. The melancholy parks, all skittering leaves and waning roses, tangles of dusty colours and fluff, acid hits of lime and dark berries. Mackerel skies reflected in the river.
In the studio we’re taking time to savour the last month of the growing season. Our rhythm is dictated by the garden, the business orbiting around it. We go up and down with the weather, harnessing and responding to the different energies each season brings, working hand in hand with them. Every project in these last few weeks is a product of this exquisite, stormy period between summer and winter, a cocktail of turning leaves and fruit, the feathers of grasses, the last flushes of flowers from plants that have given their all. For a wedding in Hampshire there are blackberries and sloes, elder and pale roses. For a class in London we harvest peony leaves that have turned a coveted nude-pink and pair them with limelight hydrangea and metallic fronds of Panicum squaw. One afternoon Yukiko shows us pictures of her favourite garden in Kyoto, thickly carpeted with red maple leaves. I come home to my flat and anxiously peer out of the hall window - my acer is still green, only the tips beginning to darken. When they finally fall it will be the beginning of winter.
Autumn wedding arrangements for Claire & Greg on their wedding day in Ovington, Hampshire
Armfuls of amazing Hydrangea Paniculata from The Real Flower Company
IN THE GARDEN
Becky, Jess & Yukiko tackling Tunnel Two!
Delphinium, cosmos & centaurea still going strong
In a gardener’s world it is the start of a new year.
This month we’ve all been hard at work turning the garden around for a fresh start, thinking ahead to spring. Taking out old crops, turning beds over, tilling the soil, planting seeds and hundreds of ranunculus and anemone corms for spring 2020 weddings and workshops. Early in the month we ordered large quantities of organic compost packed with sheep’s wool and bracken - a real treat for our hard-working beds.
Outside the perennial and annual beds are still going strong, giving us weekly bucket-loads of zinnias, dahlias, cosmos, borage, rudbeckia and centaurea and we’ve planted up several new varieties of frothy, feathery grasses. Exciting plans are being drawn up for a garden extension over the winter… more on this soon…
IN SUSSEX
A couple of weeks ago a creative autumn shoot took us happily back to the garden in East Sussex where we held our annual retreat in June. How much it has changed in three months! - the colours and textures so different to the lightness of early summer. We teamed up once more with friends and collaborators Heidi, Kristin, Sarah and Annie. It is always such a pleasure to create beauty with these girls! And not forgetting Josh who gamely assisted, carrying camera equipment and heroically wafting bonfire smoke…
Credit Kristin Perers
It was a perfect September day, smoky and mellow, the paths down to the dell carpeted with lilac cyclamen. It made me think of this poem, ‘Song of Autumn’, by Mary Oliver…
In the deep fall
don't you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don't you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don't you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
Head-piece of berries, seedheads & grasses. Credit Kristin Perers
Credit Kristin Perers
Credit Kristin Perers
Credit Kristin Perers
Heavenly snippets from Sarah’s garden.
Credit Kristin Perers
Credit Kristin Perers
Credit Kristin Perers
Lunch at the Woodshed.
Credit Kristin Perers
Credit Kristin Perers
Credit Kristin Perers
Credit Kristin Perers
Autumn Shoot at the Woodshed - thanks and credits go to:
Photography: @kristinperers
Setting: @secret_garden_at_the_woodshed
Vessels: @_viv_lee
Fashion Styling: @flint_lewes
Floral Styling: @aesmeflowers
IN THE ETHER
A few things we’ve been loving this month…
R E A D I N G - ‘Cherry’ Ingram: The Englishman Who Saved Japan’s Blossoms by Naoko Abe
L I S T E N I N G T O - Counting Crows: This Desert Life
F O L L O W I N G - @anjadunk | @brunettewinebar | @james.mc.grath
E A T I N G - Tomatoes from the garden. Mum’s elderflower cake
V I S I T I N G - Polesden Lacey, Surrey
Late August
Late August, and the seasonal barometer prevaricates daily between high summer and early-onset autumn. It has been a month of workshops at Aesme, with three wonderful groups of florists visiting from Seoul, each for a three-day intensive class on garden-inspired floral design
IN THE STUDIO
Late August, and the seasonal barometer prevaricates daily between high summer and early-onset autumn. It has been a month of workshops at Aesme, with three wonderful groups of florists visiting from Seoul with Flower Workshop Korea, each for a three-day intensive class on garden-inspired floral design for weddings. These workshops are a luxurious and immersive deep-dive into arranging flowers in the most naturalistic and seasonal way possible - lots of dahlias, rudbeckia, scabiosa, tobacco flower, garden roses and phlox this month - with textural shrub-foliage, foraged clematis vines and grasses, and plenty of scented herbs, fruits and vegetables - apples, tomatoes on the vine, artichokes and beans. It is such a treat to really revel in these materials and experiment with them, coming up with a different colour palette for each class, pushing the boundaries of what we feel is familiar or safe. It’s a fantastic time of the year for this - the leaves beginning to turn and some of the rusty tones appearing - mouthwatering mingled in with the softer shades of summer - bronze with lime and peach, caramel with lilac, blush with gold.
Sharing our flowers, watching other people discovering and enjoying them, has to be the most enjoyable aspect of the job, particularly when we have grown the majority of them from seed, bulb or tuber, and nurtured the plants towards a fruitful harvest. Especially when many of the students are working with particular varieties for the first time. There’s a palpable sense of anticipation in the studio, which we love and find infectious, and it makes us want to push the boundaries with what we grow the following year.
I’m always struck by how much people love using weeds, vines, grasses, vegetables and fruit just as much as they enjoy the flowers themselves - its those textural elements that bring an arrangement alive and fill the studio with fluffy, frothy works of art - each one an architectural sculpture, and so detailed, so colourful. It definitely isn’t the easy option, growing and gleaning your own materials, especially alongside design work for events and running regular classes. I’d go so far as to say that it may be the hardest form of product sourcing. But that direct connection with the source itself - the soil, the plants that give us these treasures every week, the weather, is integral to what we do here at Aesme, and the special experiences we want to provide for our students and clients.
IN THE GARDEN
At the farm our cutting garden is in peak production mode. This is the time of plenty, of harvests and corn dolls and receiving, after all the months of tending and nurturing and encouragement. The time of the year when people are gifting and trading the fruits of their labours - tomatoes for courgettes and rosemary, a bowlful of butterhead lettuce, just cut. A friend gives me a precious bagful of macadamia nuts picked from the tree on the ranch where she grew up in California. This is the most pleasurable way of living and eating - practical, frugal and generous at the same time.
The roses have eased a little now between flushes but our main ‘cut and come again’ crops, which include dahlias, phlox, scabious, rudbeckia, cosmos, nicotiana, daucus carota, calendula, borage, amaranthus, zinnia, Californian poppies and everlastings, are flowering prolifically along with successional plantings of hardy annuals like agrostemma and sweet peas. The herb beds have been full and luscious, the perennial beds yielding achillea, echinacea, chocolate cosmos, gaura, fennel, verbascum, campanula and spires of dainty thalictrum flowers.
Around the garden the hedgerows are beginning to glimmer with blackberries, hawthorn and rosehips and the scratchy outlines of drying umbels. We pick raspberries and whitecurrants from their canes to eat while we are cutting and fill little pots with ripe tomatoes, their sharp scent filling the tunnel. The garden is full of butterflies and drunken bees and the occasional sound of seeds showering from brittle pods, a sure sign that summer will soon be drawing to a close. Waiting just around the corner are days of morning fog and mellow afternoons filled with drifting bonfire smoke, when the leaves spin from chartreuse to titian red as if licked by flames, and finally to a dry cinnamon brown, crisp underfoot. For now we hover on the bittersweet bridge between two seasons, looking ahead, and looking back.
IN THE ETHER
A few things we’ve been loving this month…
R E A D I N G - Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree | Modern Nature: Journals, 1989 – 1990 by Derek Jarman
L I S T E N I N G T O - Miles Davis : Kind of Blue | Madeleine Peyroux : Dreamland
F O L L O W I N G - @coyotewillow | @lagrottaices | @hortusvarius
C O O K I N G - Pear salad with gorgonzola & walnuts by Deliciously Ella | Roast tomatoes on toast with tarragon & thyme by Gill Meller | Cromer crab in Norfolk
V I S I T I N G - Wiveton Hall Garden, Norfolk & Colby Woodland Garden, Pembrokeshire
A London heatwave
It is currently 37 degrees in London, stifling and still, pollen drifting slowly in mid air. Landing back at Heathrow last night, it was barely cooler than Italy, the same humid blanket of heat and haze spreading across Western Europe.
IN THE STUDIO
It is currently 37 degrees in London, stifling and still, pollen drifting slowly in mid air. Landing back at Heathrow last night, it was barely cooler than Italy, the same humid blanket of heat and haze spreading across Western Europe. Too hot to work - almost too hot to write - it has taken most of my energy today just to unpack, water the garden and occasionally pad barefoot to the kitchen for more elderflower.
July has been another wonderfully full and floral month in the studio with private and group classes and as always we have loved welcoming guests to our leafy haven in the city, sharing ideas, great flowers and cafetieres of strong coffee in between lulls of companionable non-conversation and concentration. Flower arranging never ceases to be meditative, even when there is a lot of it to be done in a little time (as is often the case for us in the run-up to weddings or events); it quietens and calms and focuses in a way that I think is quite addictive to those who really embrace and enjoy it.
Recently I’ve tried to build in time for more creative experimentation whenever I get the chance; working with flowers and plants there is always so much more to learn and to try, different combinations of materials, different techniques. It is easy to fall into the trap of replicating, particularly when it is your job, and sometimes it is nice to make something that isn’t for sale, isn’t ‘appropriate’ or proportionate or even finished. In our classes we always say that the goal is to experiment, to try something new, not to worry about getting it exactly ‘right’, to take it apart if you’re not happy with it, to start over, mostly just to enjoy it; flowers are, after-all, the greatest luxury. When you are arranging for a client the over-riding priority is the End Result. When you’re arranging for yourself it is the process that takes precedence, that peculiarly ecstatic state of mind when you are coasting, not thinking about anything, finally. And then, after some time, and all of a sudden, you are flooded with new ideas.
To quote from the book I recommended in the last post (still so much at the the forefront of my mind that I am re-reading earlier chunks of it) To The River by Olivia Laing -
‘I was getting anyway into one of those trances that come from walking far, when the feet and the blood seem to collide and harmonise. Funnily enough, Kenneth Grahame and Virginia Woolf both wrote in praise of these uncanny states, which they thought closely allied to the inspiration writing requires. ‘Nature’s particular gift to the walker,’ Grahame explained in a late essay, ‘through the semi-mechanical act of walking - a gift no other form of exercise seems to transmit in the same degree - is to set the mind jogging, to make it garrulous, exalted, a little mad maybe - certainly creative and supra-sensitive, until at last it really seems to be outside of you and as if it were talking to you, while you are talking back to it.’ As for Woolf, she wrote dreamily of chattering her books on the crest of the Downs, the words pouring from her as she strode, half-delirious, in the noon-day sun. She compared it to swimming, or ‘flying through the air, the current of sensations & ideas; & the slow, but fresh change of down, of road, of colour: all this is churned up into a fine thin sheet of perfect calm happiness. It is true I often painted the brightest pictures on this sheet: & often talked out loud’.
I feel like this when I am arranging flowers.
Next week the studio will be closed. We are all taking a break after the summer rush to go offline, stretch our horizons and re-energise with some coastal walks, fresh fish and early nights ahead of a busy August. More from the studio then!
IN THE GARDEN
It is that point in the season when there begin to be momentary glimpses of the next; the sorrel in the hedgerows turning rusty pink and burnt amber, the summer-weary earth is parched, little cracks appearing in the dust like miniature fault-lines. At the farm we’ve been making steady progress; it’s been a month of maintenance and weed control - so difficult to keep on top of in the height of the summer but made far easier with extra help. With the first flush over there is a brief lull before the next crops really get going - perhaps a little later this year because of the long, cold spring - the flowers of high to late summer - dahlias, zinnias, rudbeckia, scabiosa, daucus carota and everlastings. And vegetables too - lettuce and cabbages, french beans, radish and tomatoes. We harvest buckets of poppy seed-heads, so useful for the autumn, and already turning from that misty blue-green to tobacco brown and gold.
IN ITALY | GIARDINO ESTIVO WORKSHOP
Late last week Jess and I flew to Milan and drove north, spending the weekend on Lake Como. It was beautiful: terracotta, primrose and ochre villas with tiered gardens and shutters painted dusky blue, turquoise and emerald, hills brushed with mist, frangipani blossoming and trailing in the lake water that turned gold at dusk. Striped awnings, stone terraces of vines, water slapping the underbellies of boats and above the hills - pine, ferns, wild strawberries and hydrangea - the peaks not jagged but soft and undulating, blanketed with forests.
Not missing the chance to visit an Italian garden while we had a few hours spare we visited Villa Balbianello at Lenno. Built in the late 1780s by a wealthy cardinal, and most recently owned by handsome explorer Count Guido Monzino before passing to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano (the National Trust of Italy) upon his death in 1988, the villa and its gardens are deceptively small and rather formal. But worth travelling a way to see was the snake-shaped Ficus which entwines the loggia, and the evergreen oak pruned into the shape of an umbrella, with a view across the Lake to Bellagio. We’ll share photographs in a later post, because there are many. I’d like to go back there, probably in autumn when the camphor laurels turn red; it must be a breathtaking sight.
On Sunday we moved east into the mountains to a little village near Erba, halfway between the two ‘legs’ of Lake Como and Lecco to host a two-day workshop at Olga’s Flower Farm. On the site of a nursery run by her mother Cecilia, Olga grows beautiful annuals - rudbeckia, cosmos, zinnia, dahlias, phlox, celosia and many more which she sells to florists in Como and Milan. We were spoilt for choice, and for foliage too - most exquisite varieties of ninebark, abelia, porcelain vine and viburnum as well as apples and pomegranates. It was a treat to be thrown into what I think of as the next season almost - late summer/pre autumn, the ‘serotinal’ period according to the ecologists calendar - a couple of weeks before we begin harvesting our own. The colour palette for the workshop was dominated by these dusty reds, corals, gold, rust and toffee.
It was extremely hot, as can be expected of Italy in July, and I think heat renders a lovely, if slightly sleepy atmosphere because those two days seemed to slip by in a slow, hazy, drifting sort of way. Everything just took the time it took - cutting, arranging, tweaking, drinking espresso, moving around from shadow to shadow, from the shade of one tree to another. And all day long, the unceasing soundtrack of cicadas.
We had the most wonderful group of students - a gaggle of kind, talented, imaginative and intelligent women, many from Italy but also from Barcelona, Vienna, New York, London and Scotland. It is the greatest privilege, not only to teach and to share our passion for plants and flowers with other like-minded enthusiasts, but to travel and see other gardens, other farms, in landscapes and climates different to our own. There is as much of a thrill recognising a shared love of the same flower as there is to discovering new ones.
We stayed in an old stone farmhouse at the foot of a small, bone-shaped lake and at the overlap of two mountains rising steeply towards the cloudless sky. At night a gossamer veil of heat slithered across the forest, causing the visual illusion that distinctly individual pine trees were now merging into one another, a soft black ashy slope so close you could almost reach out from across the valley and brush it with your fingertips. The owners, an attractive and glamorous proprietress named Roberta and her husband (whose name we never caught but we instead privately named ‘Mr Fawlty’) spent the hottest part of the afternoons in their cavernous cool room off the terrace watching the flat-screen television, oddly surrounded by the family silver which was laid out on every available surface as though it had been got down for a spring clean, many springs ago, and inexplicably abandoned. After the extreme heat of the day we would tiptoe past and slip into the shockingly cold (for a minute at least) pool, which was a green as old glass, and look out at the Lombardy hills, the rows of lavender fizzing with bees, the tier of terraces bordered by rough stone walls stepping down towards the shore of the lake where a wooden cabin was stacked neatly with logs. Occasionally the resident Great Dane - a great black shire-horse of a dog, would sidle over and lean her weight against you, bizarrely accompanied by a tiny black rabbit that had an unnerving habit of popping up next to you just when you least expected it after dusk. It was a strange and beautiful place and in many ways, despite it being really only a half-day of travel away, we couldn’t have felt further from home.
Of course being Italy we had delicious food, and it would be remiss of me not to share a few tasters… a risotto with melon. Ravioli with ricotta and orange zest in Como, a divine saffron risotto in Canzo, and on the farm coffee-soaked pastries and tiny espressos to make the heart flutter, orecchiette with shrimp, iced berries and elderflower shortbread.
We would like to thank… First and foremost, our students, for being such a joy and for making it all possible. Olga, for inviting us, sharing your beautiful flowers, allowing us to snip from your shrubs and exquisite pomegranate tree! Giulia for helping us with all the hard graft, you were a wonderwoman, and also for the beautiful blackberries, flowers and grasses from your farm. Cristina and Chiara for the food, coffee and general assistance. Fati Amor for the linen and silk ribbons; Agnes Duerrschnabel Atelier for the bowls and vases and Madlen Ceramics for the candle-holders.
A June masterclass
June flew by. We are at our most productive now, in these summer months, moving from one project to the next but poring our hearts and minds into each one, always searching out the most beautiful plants, the perfect shade of this to go with that, how to bring the freshest…
IN THE STUDIO
June flew by. We are at our most productive now, in these summer months, moving from one project to the next but poring our hearts and minds into each one, always searching out the most beautiful plants, the perfect shade of this to go with that, how to bring the freshest, most ethereal produce to the table. Bringing the garden to the party, which is pretty much our company motto these days.
The studio is very much the home of the business now, bedded in, comfortably accommodating our workload and somehow expanding and contracting with the size of each project and the team we have in working on it. Yukiko has taken responsibility for the daily running of the space and keeps it spotlessly clean and organised, efficiently turning it around between each event so we’re ready for the next. The place has an uncanny way of being just what you need at any given time; a workshop of whirling activity but also a leafy, cool and calm haven in the noise of the city. My favourite time there is in the early morning, drawing back the shutter door and the sun streaming through the back window, drinking a coffee and answering emails under the silver birch in the garden with a long day ahead. Or later, once the flower work is done and the shadows are lengthening across the floor, rows of arrangements lined up to go out the next day, and a couple of bees buzzing happily between them gorging on nectar.
Twice a week a full van of flowers brings the latest freshly cut produce up from the farm and we gather round the workshop tables, going through the buckets, passing around new varieties that have come into flower - this week stems of raspberries and whitecurrants, the first velvety chocolate cosmos, sprays of Violette roses and maroon Verbascum.
Our June Masterclass proved to be another magic three days of creativity and floral collaboration, with students from Australia, the US, Korea, Hong Kong and the UK. During these workshops we place great emphasis on seasonality and using locally-grown materials, thoughtful sourcing and foraging but also design, careful editing and pushing the boundaries of working with ‘colour palettes’. It is so interesting to discuss and compare the differences in the industry in different parts of the world and hear people’s experiences in starting their own small businesses. No matter the distance travelled everyone seems to come together with the same goal and the same questions; how to design and supply flowers for events in a sustainable, mindful way, how to break into and then make a living in an industry still largely dominated by wasteful methods, rigid expectations and unnatural or stiff design templates, how to grow or source flowers that are softer, more beautiful, unusual and difficult to find from large scale wholesalers. In group discussions each morning we cover everything from honing a philosophy to live and work by, colour pairings, pricing, green waste management and wedding logistics - it amazes me how much we can cover in three days with our heads together, and at each Masterclass someone always brings a new topic to the table to think about.
Image by Wendy Charlotte
Image by Wendy Charlotte
This month the studio was continuously heaving buckets from the farm – the first flush of garden roses, sweet peas cut long on the vine, bearded iris, alliums, foxgloves, calendula, nigella, delphiniums, Californian poppies to name a few – and treats including beautiful lime-leaved mock orange and pale peonies grown by Babylon Flowers and Bosley Patch in Oxfordshire.
We have just scheduled our autumn studio workshops where we hope there is something for everyone - a day’s flower arranging class, a 3-day Masterclass in September and again in October and a foam-free installation workshop. These are the last floral workshops we will be running in 2019 (aside from Christmas workshops and wreath-making). Further info here can be found here.
We worked on some lovely weddings at one of our favourite London restaurants this month, St John in Clerkenwell. Specialising in seasonal British produce and with a staunch ethos of no-waste cooking, it is such an appropriate setting for our farm-grown flowers, and its all-white-painted/stainless steel interior makes is a real pleasure to dress with kitchen-garden botanicals. To tie in with the culinary setting, we incorporate lots of fruits, vegetables and herbs into the designs - artichokes and their giant, leathery silver leaves, chocolate mint, lemon balm, edible flowers and summer fruits. It is a simple and yet highly effective celebratory offering for the guests; exceptional food and wine, flowers and potted plants, a little candlelight.
ON RETREAT
Images mostly Kristin Perers, a few by us!
The week that ended with midsummer we escaped the city and headed for East Sussex for our annual retreat, this year hosting Flower Workshop Korea for four days in an idyllic private garden in the Weald. Arriving from London by train, our guests were whisked off to tour Sissinghurst Castle and Great Dixter where we drew inspiration from the gardens for the designs we would make over the coming days.
The floral design workshops were held in the beautiful glass ‘Woodshed’ and throughout the grounds including an all white installation in an ancient wooded dell of gigantic oak trees and shadowy ferns, inspired by Vita Sackville-West’s White Garden at Sissinghurst, and a tablescape of grasses and sorrel referencing the meadow in the Orchard at Dixter, using incredible ‘rock’ vases made by Noe Kuremoto Ceramics.
The final afternoon was spent on a photoshoot with our friend and talented photographer Kristin Perers with styling by Heidi Francis and the balletic Annie modelling clothes by ethical labels Elena Dawson, Sula and Still and flower designs by all the guests.
My abiding memories of the week are of birdsong, laughter, delicious healthy food, woodsmoke and classical music floating through the garden at Great Dixter in the hazy late afternoon light, roses scrambling up through lichen-laden apple trees in our host’s orchard, a candle-lit lantern at the gate at night, lighting the way to the guests’ farm cottages across the field, the hooting of owls in the valley, thunderstorms, dewy, sun-dappled mornings. It was an incredibly special week, and a great privilege to share one of our favourite parts of the English countryside with our Korean guests.
IN THE GARDEN
Down at the farm we are at full tilt in June, the rose garden and sweet peas now in prolific flower. In the tunnels we’ve been cutting from a statuesque crop of candy pink and lavender delphinium, many varieties of calendula, Californian poppies in shades of buttercream, streaky pink, orange and red, nigella, clarkia, forget-me-nots and agrostemma. Outside the perennial beds have yielded geums, wallflowers, heuchera, geraniums, campanula, achillea and ferns. In the large raised bed, rows of phlox are flowering and behind them, zinnias, cosmos and rudbeckia are fast on their heels, with the dahlia beds getting bushier by the day.
We cut and harvest bi-weekly for our weddings, workshops and orders, and at this time of the year all our materials are cut from the farm with the occasional top-ups from local growers or plant nurseries. As amateur gardeners it has taken a few years to trial how and what we grow, the right quantities and varieties etc to fully supply the schedule of the studio during the busy summer period. We’re now really starting to see the fruits of our labours, and nothing makes us prouder than delivering an event where every vase, bowl or bottle contains the stems we have nurtured from seed, shrub, bare root, tuber or bulb.
Year by year we have maximised the productivity of our farm plot, growing it gradually and organically in line with the growing of the business. This has felt the sensible way to supply the requirements of our studio (we use everything we grow in-house and don’t sell wholesale) and in keeping with the demands of an increasingly busy workload in London, without it being too much to keep a grip on or incurring much wastage. Having a gardener and extra help this season has moved us on leaps and bounds.
We’ve had the immense joy this year of harvesting particular colours of varieties chosen for specific clients’ events – something we’re keen to do more of as we continue to expand the growing side. Because much of our work is so colour and design-focussed, and the lead-time for events (particularly weddings) often reasonably long, we can tailor the bed-space we have to accommodate special elements in particular tones and shades - it’s a holistic process that is beginning to come into its own, and is deeply rewarding. Just last week we cut dusty-mauve delphiniums and burgundy centred phlox to fulfil a rich colour pairing one of our brides had hoped for when we first starting discussing her wedding last September. Working in this way keeps the palette of the garden constantly shifting and interesting, rather than being dominated by any one preference, and for clients who love colour there are so many possibilities. We love taking a brief and incorporating it into the garden - it’s no coincidence that this is when our studio produces its best work.
IN THE ETHER
A few things we’re loving at the moment…
R E A D I N G - Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit, Hard Water by Jean Sprackland
L I S T E N I N G T O - Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa - Don’t Explain (very loud, on repeat)
F O L L O W I N G - @elenasplate | @ernst.berlin | @scribewinery | @lucianogiubbileigardens
C O O K I N G - New potatoes and garden-grown mint. Roasted Romaine lettuce with pancetta, toasted breadcrumbs and lemon. So good!
V I S I T I N G - Sissinghurst & Great Dixter, Sussex, Grey’s Court, Oxfordshire, the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival
Bearded iris, peonies and peas
It’s been a busy and productive month in the studio with weddings every weekend, a steady flow of beautiful flowers coming in and out and the constant to-ing and fro-ing of vessels and buckets and plants. May is perhaps our favourite month, fast-paced and flashing by so quickly, yet at the same time strangely long and drawn-out - the flowers of late spring - tulips, anemones, the last of the narcissus - giving way to peonies, clematis and bearded iris.
We’ve so enjoyed working from some very colourful and creative briefs this month. Autumnal rusts and berry tones for a wedding on the Kent/Surrey border with a beautiful blowsy blossom and hawthorn arch. A long aisle of Italian alpine meadow-inspired arrangements (to reference the groom’s heritage) in the Nash Conservatory at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. A Chinese-Jewish wedding at the extraordinary Sezincote House (a two-hundred year old Mogul Indian palace on an idyllic country estate in Gloucestershire, built by an English aristocrat for his homesick Indian bride), with a rambling clematis and wild rose briar chuppah, oodles of lush table arrangements and hundreds of metres of twisting, curving leafy vines across the clear marquee ceiling. Last weekend, a church wedding and reception at Cowley Manor in the Cotswolds with abundant urns, table arrangements and a marble mantelpiece laden with peonies, bearded iris, spilling with tiny blue Lathyrus flowers on twirling vines.
In the STUDIO
Vessel | Korean ceramic tea bowl & kenzan Materials | Ranunculus, Saponaria, sweet peas & pennycress
It’s been a busy and productive month in the studio with weddings every weekend, a steady flow of beautiful flowers coming in and out and the constant to-ing and fro-ing of vessels and buckets and plants. May is perhaps our favourite month, fast-paced and flashing by so quickly, yet at the same time strangely long and drawn-out - the flowers of late spring - tulips, anemones, the last of the narcissus - giving way to peonies, clematis and bearded iris.
We’ve so enjoyed working from some very colourful and creative briefs this month. Autumnal rusts and berry tones for a wedding on the Kent/Surrey border with a beautiful blowsy blossom and hawthorn arch. A long aisle of Italian alpine meadow-inspired arrangements (to reference the groom’s heritage) in the Nash Conservatory at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. A Chinese-Jewish wedding at the extraordinary Sezincote House (a two-hundred year old Mogul Indian palace on an idyllic country estate in Gloucestershire, built by an English aristocrat for his homesick Indian bride), with a rambling clematis and wild rose briar chuppah, oodles of lush table arrangements and hundreds of metres of twisting, curving leafy vines across the clear marquee ceiling. Last weekend, a church wedding and reception at Cowley Manor in the Cotswolds with abundant urns, table arrangements and a marble mantelpiece laden with peonies, bearded iris, spilling with tiny blue Lathyrus flowers on twirling vines.
Vessel | Low & wide Japanese ceramic bowl & kenzan
Materials | Grasses, nandina, ranunculus, ferns, the last of the tulips
Exquisite bearded iris cut from the garden
Vessel | Large & shallow resin bowl | Materials | Hawthorn, Fritillaria Imperialis, iris, tulips, corncockle & alliums
For the Baylight Foundation x Natoora supper club at Walmer Yard in Notting Hill during London Craft Week
Materials | Cabbage & variegated tulip leaves, clematis, Californian poppy, Ornithogalum nutans (milky bellflower)
Alpine-inspired aisle arrangements for Hannah & Gianluca in the Nash Conservatory at Kew Gardens
Antique cast iron urns full of spring flowers for Anna and Andras’ wedding at Cowley Manor in the Cotswolds
Clematis & strawberries in stoneware bottles for Natoora x Baylight Foundation supper with Chef Dan Cox of Crocadon Farm
Hannah’s bouquet contained corncockle, Marguerite daisies, Californian poppies, Aquilegia & sweet peas
Materials | Faded ‘Coral Charm’ peonies with Saponaria, iris, elderflower, clematis and dog rose briars
Installation | The chuppah, dressed with clematis vines, hawthorn, spring blossom, sweet pea and potato vines, and garden roses, for David and Tash’s wedding ceremony, in the ornate curved Orangery at Sezincote House
Laying up the tables for D&T’s evening reception dinner at Sezincote House. The floral colour palette was creams, blush, coffee, rusty orange and pops of bright red to reference the bride’s Chinese heritage
In the GARDEN
Preparing the largest annual bed for cutting from high summer
The garden has come on in leaps and bounds over the past few weeks with the help of Becky who is a recent addition to our growing team, assisting with cutting for weddings and events, maintenance and turnaround between crops. Once over the tulips were whipped out and replaced with annual seedlings - stocks, runner beans and Nicotiana (tobacco flower), and lots of seeds direct-sown to cut from later in the summer. Two new long beds have been planted up with dahlias. In the tunnels the sweet peas, calendula, Californian poppies and corncockle have been flowering like mad, the ranunculus waning and soon to be replaced with sea lavender and straw flowers. Every week there are new varieties showing - this week the bearded iris and first flush of roses have been gently brought back and coo’ed over at the studio. And the nigella are just starting now too - African Bride, Sativa (black cumin) and Hispanica, which are the colour of dark blue denim.
One of the most exciting things for us this year is growing crops of different varieties specifically for our clients within a particular colour palette. The red sweet peas (Air Warden, Winston Churchill and Red Ace) that we grew for David and Tash’s wedding at Sezincote - sown from seed on Christmas Eve - started flowering just in time and we were able to cut long, whole vines for them with these hits of beautiful scented red flowers. For Anna and Andras, who had a white/buttercream and peach palette with accents of blue, we cut Lathyrus sativus azureus and Californian poppies like wrinkled silk rosettes.
Our first roses are fairly short-stemmed at the beginning of the season but we cut them into crates filled with jars of fresh water and bring them back to the studio regardless - so useful for low bowl arrangements and small clustered vessels for table styling. We use many of the weeds that we pull up in our designs too - speedwell, hairy bittercress, shepherd’s purse, forget-me-nots, jack-in-the-hedge. At the moment we have a real problem with invasive creeping buttercup but the upside is a profusion of glistening, sunny flowers just when you are searching for that hit of yellow. Herb Robert is an old favourite – it grows everywhere around the garden, and at the moment is a nude pink turning to flaming red. We pull it up by the root, soak it, store it in buckets of water and use it for filling the base of arrangements; a touch of vermilion when you want to spice things up a bit. We don’t discard the stunted, strange (sometimes slightly freaky) plants in our garden; it’s a bit like nose-to-tail eating in a restaurant; there’s a use for everything, weeds and weirdos alike.
If you’d like to join us for a day in the studio we have a A Day’s Flower Arranging Workshop coming up next month on Wednesday 17th July, 10am to 4pm. We’ll have an abundance of freshly cut flowers, foliage, fruits, vegetables, herbs (and decorative / edible weeds!) from the garden in an array of delicious colours to arrange with and we’ll be covering garden-inspired bouquets and table centrepieces (using the chicken-wire technique). Further details and tickets are available here.
Hyacinth, magnolia, hellebores
It’s been a month of strange timing and judgements calls. The balmy days of late February were followed by the tail end of a storm, whipping through the treetops and rippling the tunnel roofs. Capricious spring weather.
In the GARDEN
It’s been a month of strange timing and judgements calls. The balmy days of late February were followed by the tail end of a storm, whipping through the treetops and rippling the tunnel roofs. Capricious spring weather.
Tulip ‘Concerto’ flowering in one of the tunnels, and dahlia tubers going into their pots.
In the outside beds the hellebores are still flowering happily along with scilla, snowdrops and the beautiful wood anemone nemerosa, an incredibly delicate and soft variety. To hedge our bets (last year having had late snow) in the autumn we split our bulbs, planting half in the tunnels and half outside, including replanting many of last year’s tulips and narcissus bulbs (which we stored over winter in the shed) in the smaller tunnel for an early crop. As luck would have it, encouraged by the warmer weather many of these are already flowering and we will no doubt be missing a number of our early flowering varieties while we are overseas - such is the heartbreak of leaving a garden you so lovingly tend! So far we’ve cut ‘Concerto’ - a creamy yellow tulip with a black centre like a bumblebee’s bottom, narcissus ‘Actea’, ‘Elka’, ‘Cheerfulness’ and ‘Jenny’ and pleasingly long-stemmed anemones, along with masses of heavily scented apricot, pink and white hyacinths.
We trialled ‘Multiflora White Pearl’, ‘Gypsy Queen’, ‘Aiolos’, ‘Pink Festival’ and ‘White Festival’ hyacinths this year; after a disconcertingly quiet winter they suddenly popped up in the new year and grew very happily in the tunnel.
A final push last week saw the final (for now at least) section of the cutting garden transformed from an ill-planned and weedy area to four new long beds. Into one of these have already been planted new shrubs including Nandina, Pittosporum and Spiraea and the others will be filled with a mass of colourful dahlias come early summer.
Seeds sown this month - Nicotiana, including our favourite ‘Apple Blossom’ from last year and a new variety we’re excited about called ‘Tinker Bell’. Also tomatoes, stocks - lots of whites, apricots and pale pinks - and Malope.
We’re looking forward to welcoming Becky to the team in May who has spent the last few years as a chef on sailing yachts (so a seasoned early riser and used to being out in the weather!) She will be working on regular maintenance and helping to cut flowers ahead of our weddings and workshops. The garden, which has gradually grown from an allotment-sized plot (and before that a large bramble patch) to just over a quarter of an acre, is intensively planted and we are hoping it will be an extremely productive operation this season. While we’ll still be very involved we’re excited to see what a difference an extra pair of hands makes - to the garden and to us!
In the STUDIO
This month we’ve been preparing the studio ahead of another busy year. The ‘season’, by which I mean the hustle that begins in April and goes on until late October, kicks off again as soon as we get back from the Far East so we’ve been working day and night to make everything ready. Finishing the studio garden, painting and polishing, restocking sundries and props. It’s going to feel so good to open our doors again and we can’t wait to welcome all our visitors this year.
Pops of colour for a spring drinks party in Soho; one and a half metres of tulips, Cornish narcissi,and alliums, with butterfly ranunculus and Fritillaria Uva Vulpis & Meleagris dancing above.
We’re also soon to be joined by Yukiko, a florist from Japan, who is coming on board our team and will be working with us in the studio from next month as well as some talented new freelancers assisting on our events and a few lovely volunteers lending a hand in exchange for learning the ropes and having some creative time with the flowers. The studio will be a productive and industrious place this season! Looking forward to long, light days fuelled by iced coffee and good music and flowers everywhere you turn - the best kind of days.
Magnolia in bloom at Kew Gardens. On the right: Magnolia heptapeta ‘Yulan’.
It has been a knock-out year for the London magnolias. We were lucky enough to catch them fully blown at Kew Gardens recently, some blooms the size of large dinner plates and almost frighteningly perfect - like leaves of velvet, streaky pink or as white as snow. Many had been battered by the buffeting winds, the grass strewn with a carpet of jettisoned petals.
Light spring arrangements to dress an apartment in Kensington for an interiors shoot earlier in the month designed by Olivia Outred. Featuring tulip ‘Verona’, velvety brown Iris tuberosa (widow iris) from Cornwall and Primula ‘gold lace’.
With the warmer weather and weeds beginning to encroach again down at the garden we’ve been experimenting with using foraged stems in bouquets and arrangements. Rosettes of Cardamine hirsuta (hairy bittercress, which is edible as a bitter herb and apparently very good in small doses in salads) or Prunella vulgaris (self heal) look beautiful in low bowls as an alternative to moss and Sinapis arvensis (charlock) as fillers for hand-tieds. We’re so drawn to the ‘waste-not-want-not’ approach and ridding ourselves of a hierarchical attitude when it comes to the materials we use. At our core we are celebrating the fleeting beauty of nature and one of our founding principles at Aesme was (excuse the pun) ‘digging deeper’. This is why we established our cutting garden in the first place, because we want a direct relationship with our produce that goes beyond just buying and selling. The ingredients we use tells the story of the season, the weather, they are deeply evocative and we are nurturing them or finding them and using them carefully and with consideration for the other elements they are put with. Like a chef taste-testing recipes - it’s all about the combination of one ingredient with another, the preparation and then the execution. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Adding in extra colour or texture is like adding seasoning - the bright, sour flowers of the charlock in the bouquet above and below are like a hit of citrus in a creamy dessert when added sparingly to the paler tulips, but they would be too much with other more dominating colours. Weeds are too often overlooked and an untapped resource for new and interesting ingredients. We’re going to be researching them, harvesting them and arranging with them a lot more this year.
Left: a small bowl arrangement of yellowing anemone leaves, rosettes of hairy bittercress and Narcissus ‘Elka’.
Right: a bouquet of tulips, Narcissus ‘Wedding Bell’, Anemone ‘Coronaria The Bride’ and charlock.
Some of you may have seen on ‘Instagram Stories’ that Jess and I are currently in Japan. I am writing this update from Kyoto where it is 6.00am. We have been longing to visit Japan for many, many years so it is a dream come true to finally be here, to see some of the most beautiful gardens in the world, and draw inspiration from Japanese design and aesthetics at the source - the attention paid to every minute detail here is astounding and touching in equal measure. We already feel an affinity to certain aspects of the Japanese art of flower arrangement, Ikebana - the emphasis on seasonality and the artful treasuring of a restrained selection of ingredients. It will be fascinating to take a class and begin to explore the history of this ancient art form and spiritual practice further.
We’re back to Tokyo at the end of the week and from there fly to Seoul to spend a couple of days visiting the flower market and then on to Jeju Island to teach a 3 day workshop. We knew that there would be so much to share from this trip that it would warrant its own blog post so stay tuned for this next month!
In the Ether
A few things we’re loving at the moment…
R E A D I N G - The Photographer in the Garden by Jamie M. Allen & Sarah Anne McNear, In Praise of Shadows by Junchiro Tanizaki and the Monocle travel guides on Tokyo, Kyoto and Seoul
L I S T E N I N G T O - Billie Eilish, Yo Yo Ma
E A T I N G - Delicious seasonal meals at Savory, Kyoto and Bistro Rojiura, Tokyo
V I S I T I N G - The Camellia Show at Chiswick House & Garden (on until 31st March 10am - 3pm), the Magnolia at Kew Gardens
