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…
A few snapshots from a recent weekend spent on the Norfolk coastline, stretching the legs and widening the eyes - vast pebble-blue skies stretching above the scratchy dune grasses on Holkham beach, watery sunshine through yellowing leaves and forests of pine, terracotta tiles and rust-brown reed beds rustling in the wind beneath the windmill at Cley.
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!
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…
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.
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 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.
The festive season is underway. In the studio we have been busy making this year’s wreaths using all the flowers, branches, seedpods and grasses we began harvesting back in early July at the farm. Bound into bunches and hung from wooden beams in the attic in long lines of copper, pistachio green, ochre and apricot; it’s a thrill to rediscover all the treasures squirrelled away months ago - roses, delphinium, forget-me-nots, strawflowers, fennel and so many more…
