At last! A Christmas flower stall.

If you cast your mind back three years, you might remember I was trying in vain to get a flower stall for Christmas with a fellow student from my floristry diploma. Fast forward three years and I finally have one! The lovely people at the Garden Museum are running an eco-friendly Christmas fair called Diggin' Design for the third year running (I should have asked them three years ago!) and I will be sharing a stall with another lady who volunteers at the museum. I'll be doing all British flower posies and bouquets.

So this morning I was at Pratley in New Covent Garden Market nice and early (on the way there I saw two ice cream vans on the road...surreal in November). There was plenty of British flowers loveliness to choose from, including a box of 200 different-coloured tulips, which was very tempting but a bit too much for my needs! In the end, I bought powder blue scabious (I couldn't believe it was still flowering), brassicas, paperwhites, and freesias. The freesias and paperwhites smell beautiful.

I also went to GB Foliage and got viburnum, berried ivy (the berried ivy growing in the garden is not that great now - the ivy is fine, but the berries are not so pretty), and mistletoe. "Is it British?" I asked. "Yes," came the reply. "We don't like the French stuff."

I also had a delivery from Tregothnan - lots of pretty Sweet Williams from B J Richards, the last of the British chrysanthemums (well, it is still November), ranunculus, rosemary, sage, and pepperleaf. I got a bag of scented pine cones too, which I've wired to add to posies and other arrangements.

Here's it all cut and conditioned and ready to be arranged.

And here are the first of the posies in upcycled jars and tins...I had to quickly take these before the sun disappeared. There are big bouquets too...but you'll have to wait till tomorrow for photos. Or better still, come to the fair and see them for yourself! The fair is from 10.30am to 5pm tomorrow, at the Garden Museum (next to Lambeth Palace). Who would have thought you could get all this from Britain at the end of November?!