British Flowers Week: A British flowers tea party

It was wonderful to fill up five buckets with flowers I've grown. Pink alliums, cornflower-blue cornflowers, strongly-scented roses...summer is well and truly here. I had to get the sprinkler out as the grass and shrubs were so parched - we've had a bit of drizzle the last few days, but it's so warm, it barely waters the plants before it evaporates.

I was so pleased to include my Bowl of Beauty peonies - they aren't scented, but they are showstoppers! This was the first one to open - if you are cutting yours, cut them just before they get to this stage.

The sixth bucket was filled with claret astrantia, drooping purple alliums, and blue-purple penstemon from Zest and white peonies from Pratley at New Covent Garden Market. You could tell it was British Flowers Week and wedding season, as the market was really buzzy when I went on Thursday, even though I went quite late (8am).

It was lovely to see a sea of Rosebie Morton British-grown roses at Zest.

I had a few flowers to do for a house party and so many left over, I was able to take some to a friend who I haven't seen for a year, and leave a couple of lonely bouquets on trains and train stations.

It was a great excuse to use a tea set (more on that on Alice Day, on the 4th of July) and to get a piece of rainbow cake from Cloud 9 in Brighton!

The philadelphus is looking gorgeous, and when I opened the door in the morning, I was hit with the smell of orange blossom (hence its common name, mock orange). So this Tiptree jar was perfect for a white posy of philadelphus, ammi, hesperis and alliums.

I have some Apollo irises that are a sunny yellow colour, and some orange and cream osteospermum. Not quite apricot, but this jar would have to do - and the peachy rose sat in one of many jars that I collect from people when they go out for scones!

The next date in your diary: Lonely Bouquet Day this Sunday, and an excuse to carry on using homegrown flowers!

British Flowers Week: the flowers!

Here are some details of the beautiful British flowers and foliage I have been using for British Flowers Week. The Sarah Bernhardt peonies, stocks (matthiola), alchemilla mollis (lady's mantle) and poppy seed heads were all from Pratley at New Covent Garden Market. You can imagine the incredible scent of the peonies and stocks.

The blue cornflowers, brodiaea, astrantia, Sweet Williams, rosemary, contorted hazel, and eucalyptus were from Tregothnan. The other bits were from the garden - William Shakespeare 2000 David Austin roses, sweet peas, pink cornflowers, scabious, caraway flowers, Genova dahlias, nigella flowers and seedpods.

It was wonderful to use British poppy seed heads, alchemilla, and astrantia for the first time. The imported seed heads and astrantia I've used in the past are all very uniform in size, but these looked more natural, and there were sometimes four seed heads on a stem! The astrantia was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, the intense heat meant that my peonies opened up, even after I'd stored them in a cold shed overnight. Usually I have the opposite problem - I buy them a few days early for an event and they just won't open in time!

I made three bouquets for Woman's Hour, Time Out London, and my local newspaper, the News Shopper.

Ten minutes after I had delivered the News Shopper bouquet, I was sent a nice thank you tweet from the Lewisham and Greenwich reporter, Mark Chandler. He said he'd never been sent flowers before and the whole office was happy with the flowers. Hurray! That's what the #Britishflowers community hoped to do - make people smile by giving them some beautiful British flowers. I think I wrote more letters to the News Shopper when I was a kid than I did to my Basque penpal. There was a children's section that ran competitions every week, which I would always enter. I used to keep all of my replies from the children's editor; I'd love to dig them out and have a look again! I also did work experience at their sister paper, the Kentish Express. The first time I went to report from the Magistrates' Court in Ashford, I embarrassed myself by saying, "Oh! It's just like EastEnders!" as I walked in.

Back to the flowers: I made a spray and left a lonely bouquet in Postman's Park, which I'll post about separately.

I also made some lonely bouquets which I left dotted around Lewisham and Bromley. And a blue, white and red posy for a journalist friend who invited me over to watch the football yesterday. Well...he enjoyed the flowers at least.

Nymans in May

I am sure there are others like me who wanted to visit Nymans after seeing Chris Beardshaw's BBC Four programme about it recently, as part of the British Gardens in Time series. The shameful thing is, I go past it on the way to Brighton if I visit my sister by car, but for some reason 'Nymans' just didn't sound like a garden to me, and I was never curious enough to find out what that brown sign on the M23 was all about.

Well, I visited it a few weeks ago, and I was glad I did! It's a wonderful place - there is a wildflower meadow with oxeye daisies, woods with fantastic carvings, a beautifully colour-coordinated allium, scabious and astrantia bed, a rose garden. Dotted around the gardens were some dainty aquilegias and perfectly spherical alliums - and the bees loved them.

There were a few peachy beauties which caught my eye: the 'Crown Princess Margareta' rose, and the 'Souvenir de Maxime Cornu' tree peony.

My favourite part was the most incredible wisteria-covered walkway. I had no idea wisteria was so scented. The walkway has now made it into my fantasy garden! There was also wisteria going up the house, and an unusual white wisteria near the secondhand bookshop.

My sister doesn't tend to look at things if you point to them or smell flowers if you put them under her nose, but I'd love to take her here one day and see how she responds to the scents. There are many unhelpful generalisations about autism (I would recommend reading 'The Reason I Jump' if you want an insider view of autism), not least that people with autism don't like sensory experiences. It's true my sister doesn't like being in a crowded, noisy shopping centre, but then again, who does?! But she does seem to enjoy the sensation of walking on a beach or in a park, hearing the sea or the birds, seeing the colours and the gentle movements, so I think she would enjoy a trip to Nymans. I'll post again if I manage to take her!

More flowers from Penshurst Place

Minimal writing in this blog, which might please some; just lots of photos of one of the most beautiful gardens I’ve visited. If you live in the South East of England, Penshurst Place is one of the best day trips I could suggest for sunny weather, such as we’re due to have this weekend. But do be sensible and take sunscreen, sunglasses and water! If you are an RHS member, you get free entry to the gardens, and it’s only another couple of pounds extra to enter the house too.

First of all, there were hundreds of varieties of flowers. Delphiniums, lupins, lavender, roses, scabious, astrantia, dahlias, lady’s mantle, peonies (which have been the star of a separate post), primulas, irises, foxgloves…and plenty more that I don’t know the names of. Enjoy these.

There were fruit trees and baby strawberries aplenty, and I haven’t even included the orchard, which will feature in the next post.

The gardens generally are just so beautiful. Some of them are immaculate, others are a bit wild and wonderful, most of them are full of gorgeous scents, but every one is a delight to walk around.

I think I am getting the hang of this photography lark - I'm pleased with many of my 380 photos from the day!