Braving the elements

We’ve had a couple of mammoth coursework assignments recently, including one on the elements and principles of floral design. For this, we needed to do five drawings or paintings, using different art materials, to represent each of the five elements: colour, form, line, texture and space. I’m satisfied with my drawing for texture and my painting for form, which (I hope) show the respective elements effectively, but are pretty mediocre. However, I’m happier with my drawings for line and space and my painting for colour. The first one is a bit out of proportion – which is often a problem for me, as I’m a ‘details’ and not a ‘big picture’ sort of person! You can probably tell which picture I enjoyed doing and devoted the most time to. This was an unexpected bonus of doing a floristry course – it’s reignited my love of painting.

Judge a book by its cover

I took this photo when I visited the pop-up library in Selfridges earlier this year. As someone who studied English for as long as possible, I love books for their words; but as someone who brainstormed designs for books in my last job, I also love books for their covers. There are a few books that I have more than one copy of, simply because they have such great covers. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the main culprit.

But there are others, like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (one of my top five books), where I nearly always see the same cover, no matter which library or bookshop I go to. There is something comforting in seeing a new copy of the book which looks exactly the same as the one I bought almost twenty years ago.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”

The Catcher in the Rye

Happy St David’s Day

We did some designs with daffodils this week at college, so here they are, for my Welsh friends and readers. Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

Here we have a chair back, a topiary tree, and the beginnings of a textured cushion. There wasn’t time to do the spray of flowers on the top of the cushion…but I’ll put an ‘after’ picture next week. This design required the heart-breaking task of cutting daffodil heads in half. It felt like flower dissection.

The Golden Country

Since it is also World Book Day today, I thought I’d share a passage from my favourite book, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Whenever I see bluebells, I think of Winston and Julia on their secret first date.

“The bluebells were so thick underfoot that it was impossible not to tread on them. He knelt down and began picking some partly to pass the time away, but also from a vague idea that he would like to have a bunch of flowers to offer to the girl when they met. He had got together a big bunch and was smelling their faint sickly scent when a sound at his back froze him, the unmistakable crackle of a foot on twigs. He went on picking bluebells. It was the best thing to do. It might be the girl, or he might have been followed after all. To look round was to show guilt. He picked another and another. A hand fell lightly on his shoulder.

He looked up. It was the girl.”

Roses and strawberries in her basket to the brim

In one of my favourite Thomas Hardy novels, the heroine Tess of the d’Urbervilles wears ‘roses at her breast, roses in her hat; roses and strawberries in her basket to the brim.’ Given the chance, I would adorn myself with roses as Tess does.

Failing that, working at David Austin Roses was a joyful way to surround myself with the most beautiful and heavenly scented roses. I worked the five days leading up to Valentine’s Day. The first two days were mostly spent doing preparatory work, such as cutting cellophane squares and pieces of ribbon, stripping and conditioning foliage (I think we needed about twenty buckets of ruscus), and doing the odd non-Valentine bouquet. The last three days were spent making bouquets – there were hundreds of Valentine’s orders.

I have to say, this was probably the best job I’ve ever had. The people were lovely and the work was fantastic – the day after I’d finished working there, I woke up longing to dethorn some Miranda roses! I got to make many different bouquets, and I learnt a lot from the other florists. It may have been freezing outside, and not much warmer in the room where we worked (garden roses are especially delicate and need to be kept in the cold), but I was enjoying the work too much to care.

Here are some ‘Purely Roses’ bouquets – Miranda (the first bouquet I made there), Emily, Emily once it was in the box ready for delivery, Juliet, Patience, two Darcey (each using different foliage), and Miranda and Rosalind.

These are a couple of ‘Cottage Garden’ bouquets – Juliet and Patience, and Darcey and Keira.

These are some of the newer bouquets: a ‘Portabello’ bouquet, a 20-stem ‘Vintage’ bouquet and a 25-stem ‘Vintage’ bouquet, an ‘Enigma’ bouquet, and a ‘Floral Tapestry’ bouquet.

And just so you can see how much dethorning was involved, here are the thorniest of the cut roses, the beautiful Miranda.

In the language of flowers, specifically roses, a deeper colour reflects a stronger affection. So white roses are a sign of new and pure love (hence their popularity as wedding flowers) but deep red roses are a sign of passionate love. Unsurprisingly, given the tradition of red roses for Valentine’s Day, there were many orders for bouquets with Darcey roses, which are a deep berry-red. But there were also orders for pale peachy-pink Keira, deep pink Emily and Kate, rose pink Miranda with streaked green outer petals, blush pink Rosalind with a lovely fruity scent, as well as pale creamy-yellow Patience roses. I was given some Patience roses to take back to London with me. They looked gorgeous and filled the room with their incredible scent. The roses in the photos above are all quite closed, but will open once the receiver has put them into fresh water. Here are my Patience roses – and patience is certainly rewarded when this rose starts to open.

My first train on my journey up to Albrighton was called ‘A Shropshire Lad’. As well as the name of one of my favourite collections of poems (by A. E. Housman), it is also the name of a David Austin garden rose. I hoped it was a sign that my work experience would be positive. I guess it was just coincidence, but it certainly turned out to be a wonderful experience, and well worth the journey.

My final photo is of the view of the nearby field while I was waiting for my lift early one morning. What a lovely start to the day.

Roses are an Enigma

I’ve never been too keen on Valentine’s Day, but this year I’ll be spending the five days leading up to it doing work experience at David Austin Roses, so I’m pretty excited! They’ve added eight new bouquets to their website, and all are a beautiful alternative to the usual ‘twelve red roses’ (as lovely as traditional Valentine’s bouquets are, I think florists up and down the country get fed up of them by 14th February!). Instead of a dozen Grand Prix or Naomi, how about the wonderfully-named Enigma bouquet, which uses red-pink Darcey and Kate roses, and rose pink Miranda roses?

I start bright and early on Thursday. I can’t wait!

Colour me beautiful

One thing I’ve learned is that when someone tends to give you a lot of constructive feedback (aka criticism), you can be sure that any praise they give you is genuine. I made a birthday bouquet to give to a friend after college, and on seeing it, my tutor said it had a lovely colour harmony. All those hours I put into our epic colour assignment must have paid off!

This bouquet uses big, ruffled, cerise Tacazzi roses, bright coral pink Gracia spray roses, and claret astrantia. The flowers were for my friend Grace, so the Gracia roses found a good home.

I’ll be glad when the days are longer – for one thing, I won’t have so many flower photos that have to be taken in the dark!