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.
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.
What a way to start the season, hosting a destination workshop on a little volcanic island off the coast of South Korea covered in pine trees and mandarin groves! Starting in Japan (we’ll be sharing a couple of the gardens we visited in Tokyo & Kyoto here soon) we flew to Seoul to spend a few days getting adjusted and preparing for the workshop before heading south to Jeju Island. The workshop was held at a wonderful cafe with views out over the blue waters of the Korea Strait. It was the perfect spot - modern, tastefully designed and with atmospheric music, delicious lunches and some of the best coffee we found on our trip.
All the flowers, foliage and plants were part-shipped, part-flown from Seoul where we had chosen them at the flower market early the preceding mornings. The choice of materials (from Korea, Japan and Holland) was exceptional - I’ve never seen so many flowers and branches in one place, the Seoul market is labyrinthine and just goes on and on… Our palette for the workshop was soft and feminine, with pops of yellow to reference the canola flowers that can be seen everywhere around the island, and mandarins, since Jeju is a tapestry of unending groves of these sweet, fragrant fruits. While travelling I was deep into reading all about citrus via Jess’ recommendation in our last post - it was surreal to be preoccupied with lemons in Italy while speeding through an Eastern landscape dominated by orange fruits.
For three days the sun shone and the sea sparkled and lapped against the dark, craggy rocks. We foraged dried grasses and silverberry from the coast-path and strange pitted black rock formations (they say there are three-hundred and sixty-five volcanoes on the island; one for every day of the year) for a setting-specific installation on the final afternoon. It was such a privilege to be working somewhere entirely new and unfamiliar and yet be made to feel so at home.
