I recently had a wonderful flowery weekend at the Malvern Autumn Show. I was lucky enough to have a stand alongside 6 other grower/florists – Faye Lane (Rural Floral), Sally Oates (Dillycot Flowers), Justine Scouller (Far Hill Flowers), Heather Gorringe (The Great British Florist), Donna Bowen Heath (Heather & Honeysuckle) and Tammy Hall (Wild Bunch Flowers) along with Jonathan Moseley, floral expert on the Big Allotment Challenge.
This was a new addition for Malvern bought together by Jonathan & Nina Acton at very short notice. The idea was to bring British flowers to the publics attention and make it a fun area with demonstrations and have-a-go workshops, which were a huge success. Following the great response the organisers are developing this area to make it a new feature at the Spring Festival with a ‘Grow your own Wedding’ theme.
To encourage other people to try their hand at flower arranging and to enjoy the simple pleasure that flowers can bring, I demonstrated how to make a hand tied posy using flowers gathered from the garden. Jonathan was on hand to help me along with my first public demo.
For my stand I wanted to show what a wide variety of flowers & foliage are flowering at this time of year and how they can be put together to create beautiful arrangements that can be made for your own homes. For example my pumpkin arrangement might have inspired someone to use the idea for a Halloween dinner party and the teapot demonstrated that any vessel can be used as a vase!
For those with little experience of flower arranging the delightful dahlias, which really are the stars of autumn, look great in bottles and can make a big impact with hardly any effort.
I also designed 3 totally different bridal bouquets: a pretty pastels using dahlias in lighter shades, cosmos, pink roses, anemones, didiscus, blue Chinese forget-me-nots and grey foliage. A bright and colourful bouquet which included a mix of bright dahlias, pink cosmos, scabious, verbena bonarinesis, cerinthe and sweet pea tendrills and the rich and luxuriant bouquet which included, cafe au lait dahlia, amaranthus, scabious, blackberries, feathers and a touch of gold on the crocosmia. Showing that whatever your wedding theme, British growers really can offer you the choice of designs.
Our British blooms made a real talking point, we had such a lovely response from visitors. It was a wonderful opportunity to show case our burgeoning businesses and between us we put on a fabulous display to be proud of!
Photographs by Faye Lane at Rural Floral
