Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus! Daffodils at the Garden Museum.

Or Happy St Davids Day, if you prefer!

I did flowers for an event at the Garden Museum this week, and used lots of bright British daffodils and scented narcissi, combined with lovely yellow forsythia, pretty green guelder rose (Viburnum opulus), dramatic purple monkshood (Aconitum), purple limonium, blue hyacinths and British yellow tulips. I used British eucalyptus and viburnum tinus, and the gardeners at the museum gave me a big pile of foliage which would have gone to the compost heap had they not seen me on the hunt for extra foliage! They told me the name of it, and I've forgotten - Lavatera (tree mallow) maybe?

Spot the shy narcissus.

I remember monkshood from my flower identification exams at college - we had to learn which flowers and plants were poisonous or skin irritants. I wore gloves to handle the flowers, as I do with euphorbia (beautiful flowers, but horrible, irritating sap).

There were daffodils, limonium and guelder rose to brighten the cafe tables.

I think spring flowers suit this beautiful old church perfectly!

You can just about make out the model of the museum here - it will be closed at the end of the year to allow time for a major reworking, which will hopefully make it an ever better place to visit.

I had to return the gorgeous pedestal afterwards to my friend who had kindly lent it to me, but the flowers sat nicely on the floor of the museum.

The Cut Flower Plots at Hall Place

Have you been watching The Big Allotment Challenge? I watched the first series and felt a bit disappointed with the format - it seemed to be doing too many things at once. But this series, I am used to it, and I'm enjoying it for what it is much more. Maybe it's less about the process of growing (and there are programmes like Gardeners' World that show you how to grow, in more depth), and more about watching plants develop over a summer, and seeing what can be done with them. I've no interest in making jam or chutney (I live on Tiptree stuff, which has the bonus of providing me with pretty jars for flowers), and I don't care if my tomatoes are the same size and colour. I don't think allotmenteers need to have distinctions in floristry; as long as they can grow the flowers, they can just sell them to people like me! But it is interesting for me to see the difference in the results in vegetables and flowers, especially when some of the growers have chosen the same variety. And it's wonderful to see the different varieties.

Last summer I took my sister to Hall Place in Bexley, Kent a few times, and we walked around the cut flower plots. They are a florist's dream! There were different kinds of rudbeckia, dill reaching the sky, sunflowers, statice, cosmos, dahlias, rainbow-coloured chrysanthemums, asters, gypsophila, solidago, sweet peas, everlasting peas, cornflowers, and nigella (followed by pretty seed pods).

I am growing "Miss Saigon" hyacinths, so you can see why I was taken with this ruffled Antirrhinum "Madam Butterfly".

Yellow is the sunniest colour!

And I admire anyone, like the gardeners last night, who can grow rudbeckia. I've tried and failed twice, so I've given up for now.

If you like to grow vegetables and herbs, there is also a vegetable plot. I've not heard of anyone growing soya beans locally - will this trend take off? It'd be nice to have milkshakes made of Kent soya beans and strawberries!

Oh my gourd! It's Halloween again.

I'm back into full swing at uni, and enjoying working at the Garden Museum and my counselling placement, so blogging has been neglected a bit. Sorry!

I couldn't let today go by without a post though. I've mentioned before that I never really cared for Halloween until I became a florist. Now I can't wait to fill pumpkins and gourds with flowers!

These are a couple from last year, when I used lots of foliage from the garden, and the odd rose, but also used lots of imported/unlikely to be British flowers. There's also gorgeous viburnum from the garden, which makes me feel a bit sad now, because this year it got some sort of disease in the roots (possibly from the wet weather, I'm told) and died.

This year I did a couple of gourds for the Garden Museum. The gourds were from a farm shop in Sidcup, Kent, called Kelsey's. They had such a stunning display of pumpkins and gourds of different shapes, sizes, and colours, and I could see people harvesting even more in their field.

I cut lots of beautiful brown and orange foliage from the garden (Physocarpus 'Diablo', maybe?), which doesn't last that long in water, but looks incredible. 

I snapped off some red foliage with berries that was hanging off a wall in an alleyway (you wouldn't want to meet a florist in an alleyway around here!), trailing ivy that seems to creep in everywhere in the garden, and some sedum which is now dark red. From the museum's cutting garden, I cut lots of euonymus, rosemary, sage, persicaria, and a beautiful foliage with berries that I don't know the name of. My local florist gave me some alstromeria that had opened, and I bought some solidago from her. I used the colourful bottom leaves of physocarpus as a bed for the gourd.

One of loveliest things about making these was the visitors to the museum who sometimes watch, ask questions, and comment on my work. It's a nice change from working alone as a freelancer in the garage!

And here are the gourdy flowers.

The last arrangement above was very pretty, but I made a mistake by leaving it on the counter of the cafe - all that warmth and ethylene from fruit and veg meant the design didn't last that long and had to be thrown out in less than a week.

But the big arrangement in the porch of the museum lasted well, and the following week I just took out a few of the going-over alstro, persicaria and foliage, and added a few stems of new foliage, chrysanthemums and limonium.

Happy Halloween!

Sweet hearts and wishing trees

Here are some photos from my little sister’s birthday – flower arrangements and a wishing tree that I made for her (my partner did the blue leaves – my first effort looked more like a giant teardrop!) and baked treats that I spent the day before making. The flowers are guelder rose, blue hydrangea and purple limonium. The arrangements were inspired by the birthday cake my sister had for her first birthday in the 80s, with pastel fondant icing on top and hundreds and thousands around the side. The huge heads of hydrangea were the fondant icing and the fairydust-like limonium was the hundreds and thousands!

The sweet treats were heart and butterfly-shaped chocolate biscuits, Earl Grey cupcakes, and a chocolate and vanilla marble cake. I tried to tie in the colours of the flowers, so the cakes and biscuits were various combinations of purple, green, yellow, blue and white. The biscuits and big cake were painstaking to decorate, and the big cake went wrong – the royal icing was too runny! But as it was my first attempt to ice stripes down a big cake, I was pretty pleased with it. And the marble ‘worked’ when it was cut and tasted pretty good, which was a big relief! I was happy with the biscuits though. I can see why handmade iced biscuits are so expensive – it’s the time it takes to make the dough, cut them, bake and cool them,  do the outline, flood the inside with icing, then decorate. They’re fun to make but pretty fiddly, especially when you are using different colours of icing.

It was one of the few times I wished I had a dishwasher!

Glorious guelder rose

I made some arrangements for my little sister's birthday this week, using blue and green hydrangea, green guelder rose, and purple limonium. I also made her a little wishing tree. It's horribly dark and foggy today, so I'll add photos of these later in the week - hopefully the weather will brighten up and the photos won't look so gloomy!

There were some small stems of guelder rose and limonium and one stem of hydrangea left over, so I made up some jugs of flowers for the flat. I added some blackcurrent sage and pennyroyal mint from the balcony garden to the medium jug, to tie in with the red wild rose and to add a bit more interest. I like how the lime green guelder rose and the purple limonium are the same colours as the flowers on the Beverley Hewitt, small green and purple jug.