Love in the London Outback

I did some flowers for a lovely couple who got married today in a fabulous venue. Guess where? The outback...in London Zoo! There's a beautiful light-filled pavilion by the emus and kangaroos (rather fitting as there was an election in Australia on the same day), and the couple wanted a mixture of white flowers and some pink.

I enjoyed doing these flowers so much! I will write more later...a bit sleep-deprived at the moment! But for now, I'll leave you with some photos.

Wherever you're going, I'm going your way

Last autumn, I had the pleasure of doing wedding flowers for a lovely couple, Zula and Jody. They had their wedding in a barge on the River Thames, and it was my kind of wedding – a cool and intimate venue, lots of personal touches, and family and friends helping out. Jody and his friends did a great job of setting up the venue, including an inviting-looking sweetie table and a show-stopping cake table. Jody’s mother brought a lovely tea set with her for me to fill with flowers on the morning, and although it’s a bit of an adrenalin rush, as reception flowers often are, there was such a warm atmosphere and it felt like a privilege to be amongst the good-humoured family, friends and the (surprisingly calm) groom in the exciting few hours before ‘I do’.

Although I spoke to Zula on the phone and through emails to discuss the flowers she wanted, I never got to meet her. Jody and his friends told me what a lovely person she is, and that’s certainly what I thought when I corresponded with her. I was delighted when she sent me photos taken on the day, and I could finally see the beautiful bride whose flowers I had so enjoyed doing!

Here are some photos of Zula and Jody’s big day - the first five are by their photographer and the last seven were hastily taken by me! I wish the couple a long and happy wedded life together. (This post title is from the song Moon River. I had the song in my head every time I looked at photos of this wedding - I guess because it was on a river!)

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

I used to steadfastly stick to a 'no Christmas talk before December' rule – I wanted the Christmas season to feel short and special, and that wasn’t going to happen if there were mince pies and carols two months before. Now that I’ve entered the world of floristry, the goal posts have shifted a bit. I made my first Christmas arrangement yesterday. And on Wednesday, when a friend from my floristry course and I hopefully manage to get a pitch at a market, I will have made several more.

For this little table centre, I used fake snow-covered thistles, bright red hypericum berries, beautifully glossy ilex leaves, a little gypsophila, and a few spray carnations that have the marvellous name ‘Mr Rooney’. I had a candle disaster, and ended up using a scented candle that is a little too small for this arrangement. But hopefully my friends, who this is for, will forgive me!

I used a few broken stems of hypericum, a thistle, and some ilex leaves to make myself a buttonhole. I know corsages are meant to be for women and buttonholes for men, but just as I sometimes prefer to wear men’s trainers (they are better for playing football, albeit badly), I also prefer to wear buttonholes. I felt suitably Christmassy wearing this one as I caught up with friends at the beautiful William Morris exhibition at 2 Temple Place today.

And in other news, I got a lovely surprise when I walked around the garden last week. Firstly, there were a couple of very late roses that had blossomed. And secondly, my snowdrops have started shooting. I’ve heard that they rarely flower in their first year, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Let it snowdrop!

Yorkshire Pudding: The Wedding

L-R: Best man Andy, bridesmaid Melanie, groom Mike, bride Jo, bridesmaid (and cake-maker) Helen, and bridesmaid Laura. Photo by Pete.

The best Yorkshire pudding I’ve ever eaten was with my friends in York, about sixteen years ago. It was massive. I was about to leave the table once I’d finished it, when I was told, ‘That was your starter. Your dinner’s nearly ready.’

Ok, now that I’ve got the tenuous link between an American teen-flick and an English delicacy out of the way, I can talk about the wedding.

Jo and her family are my oldest friends. They moved next door to my family when Jo, her brother Pete and I were very young, and we’ve stayed good friends, even after they moved back to York. I remember running outside to say hello when I saw their van pulling up – they barely had time to get out before I was getting under everyone’s feet, asking them nosy questions and telling them gossip about our neighbours! One vivid memory I have of that day is sitting in their front garden with Jo, silently making a ‘bird’s nest’ out of leaves, rose petals and snapdragons. It was funny, because I’m a few years older than her, but we had the universal language of flowers to unite us.

Jo, Pete and I outside the Sidings, dressed a little better than we were in the 80s.

Fast forward twenty-five years, and I am standing in her grandparents’ kitchen in York, arranging flowers for her wedding. I still cannot believe how much fun my first experience of doing wedding flowers was, and just how lucky I was to have done them for Jo, who I now describe as the anti-Bridezilla (or the perfect bride). It was lovely to spend the wedding eve and morning with Jo’s family and friends in York, many of whom I’ve known since childhood, and create arrangements for someone I really care about. Jo and her bridesmaids Melanie, Laura and Helen provided some much needed company and lots of tea, and Jo and Laura helped me out by getting buckets of water and giving me feedback on my work as I went along. Jo’s grandparents let me use two big tables in their kitchen as my workbench, and Jo’s grandfather cut some gorgeous ivy from their garden for me to use as table decorations.

The wedding colour scheme was pink and green, although Jo and her groom Mike wanted mostly white for the bridal bouquet and the buttonholes. After bouncing some ideas around, we decided on white Blizzard roses, white bouvardia, a few pink Heaven roses and some green ivy for the bridal bouquet; a Blizzard rose, bouvardia and ivy leaves for the groom’s buttonhole; a Blizzard rose and an ivy leaf for the buttonholes for the best man and Jo’s father and brother; and Heaven roses, pink and white Mimi Eden spray roses and ivy for the bridesmaids. I used dark green satin ribbon and white lace for the bridal bouquet and pink satin ribbon and white lace for the bridesmaids.

I used huge, fluffy, pink Lolly Pop hydrangeas, variegated ivy trails and a few pink snowberry stems for the tall vase arrangements either side of the wedding cake; and green ivy from Jo’s grandfather with pink beads and snowberries for the table decorations.

As the wedding reception was held in a beautiful hotel and restaurant that comprised a central ‘station’ room surrounded by old railway carriages, right next to a working train line, I attached wedding ‘luggage tags’ with the names of the flowers used on the day and their traditional meanings to the arrangements.

The Sidings was a beautiful venue, with ample opportunities for train-spotting.

'Can I have that big cake on the top?'

And if the sight of those lush lemon cupcakes and chocolate top tier cake is making your mouth water, then have a look at Helen York’s other cakes. I can assure you that they taste as good as they look – I was one of several guests who went for up seconds!

If you are curious about the traditional meanings of the flowers used in Jo and Mike’s wedding, here they are:

White roses: Purity, new beginnings

Pink roses: Joy, gratitude, admiration

Bouvardia: Enthusiasm

Ivy: Marriage, fidelity, friendship

Hydrangea: Heartfelt emotion, gratitude at being understood

Snowberry: Fate

The girl next door is all grown up! Photo by Pete.

Buttonholes and botanical names

I started my Level 2 Diploma in Floristry a few weeks ago, and I am enjoying it so much. My tutors are lovely and give us lots of feedback, often making us do a design again and again until it’s better. I’m glad I started reading my huge RHS Encyclopaedia over the summer, as we will get tested on the botanical names of flowers and foliage throughout the year, although there are some names that I just can’t remember. Waxflower is ‘the one that begins “Cha”’, I say, but apparently that isn’t enough information. It’s Chamelaucium uncinatum, in case you were wondering.

Here are a few of the designs I’ve done so far. A line arrangement, a natural-tied posy, a table centre (‘It needs more flowers,’ my tutor said, ‘but it’s ok, because we know you had to make do with what we gave you’), and lots of buttonholes. I seem to have got the knack of buttonholes, which is a relief since I’ll be doing my first wedding next weekend. Eek. And if you’re concerned about the dishevelled look of the bottom gerbera in the first picture, that’s because I had to take it home on the train during Hurricane Katia. If someone was paying for them, I would have packaged them better!

This is south London

Last weekend, people from Lewisham and neighbouring boroughs came together for the Chinbrook Meadows art and craft fair. The fair ran for both days, and what glorious, sunny days they were. Children laughed and ran, adults and toddlers played football together, a lovely lady called Jo Jo bought chips for everyone to share, and music was provided by Alioune and his African drum.

There were stalls selling homemade jewellery and greeting cards designed by Ved Yilkan of V Seven Designs, photography by Lisa Hafey of Lemonade and Lamingtons Art, African clothing and art by Alioune and Helena Samb of SAMB Arts, as well as a charity tombola for Dementia UK, face painting, and portrait painting.

V Seven Designs

Lemonade and Lamingtons Art

And I did a flower stall for the first time! I absolutely loved it. I enjoyed the learning experience of seeing what people liked and what they were less keen on (everybody likes roses, especially when co-ordinating colours are massed together.) I also learnt which cut flowers can stand the sun (single stem roses, chrysanthemums, hypercium berries) and which are a bit more delicate (dahlias, spray roses) – I was spraying all of the flowers with water every hour, which prompted one man to nickname me 'The Reviver'! I made my first buttonhole with a Blizzard rose on Saturday, which reassures me that I'll be able to do the same for my friend's wedding in October!

One lady wanted small posies for her kitchen, and another wanted roses and flowering mint to thank her friend for babysitting. Jo Jo kindly bought all of my remaining bouquets and posies at the end of Saturday for herself and various people at the fair, including Carol who organised the fair and had been working flat out in the cafe all day.

Friends from Chislehurst, Bromley, Croydon and Blackheath came to visit me – one minded my stall while I ran home to get sundries that I’d forgotten, and another entertained us with his drumming and footballing skills.

I’m grateful to them, Carol for organising the event, and the other stall holders I met. But the biggest thank you goes to my dad, who helped me enormously, took lots of photos, and was pretty good on the drum.

The day after the London riots last week, people from towns that had been badly affected grouped together to clear up the mess and help locals restore their businesses and homes. Young people in particular wanted to prove that they should not be stereotyped as trouble-makers in a broken society. Lewisham at 9am on Tuesday did not seem ‘broken’ at all. And last weekend, it was idyllic. If only the world had seen these pictures instead.