Autumn equinox: flowers during chemotherapy

As it's the autumn equinox today, I thought I'd postpone the last instalment of the Florist on Tour to share autumnal flowers from last week.

It is now estimated that one in two of us born after 1960 will get cancer at some point in our lifetime. It's a sobering thought, which feels more real if you have loved ones with cancer. In the last few years, it seems like more people I know have had the disease, and it has hit young friends as well as older relatives. In my work at a hospice, I hear stories about the effect cancer has on people's lives - those bereaved as a result of it, and those currently dealing with their own or their loved ones'.

So when I was asked to do flowers for someone whose cancer treatment has affected their sense of taste and smell, leaving them unable to enjoy the sweet things they used to - simple pleasures such as cake, biscuits, and floral scents - I was only too willing. I did "roast dinner" flowers: a pumpkin from a local allotment, filled with my sage and rosemary, autumnal-hued peony leaves, and non-scented flowers. There were asters, sedum, and a single dahlia that have all flowered again this year, and hypericum from Blooming Green. I have to thank Simon Lycett for the tip about peony foliage - I have never thought to use it before.

I delivered them on a beautiful, hot day last week, and warned that they probably wouldn't last long - the combination of vegetables (fruit and veg give off ethylene, which speeds up the flower-wilting process) and hot weather wasn't helpful. But they were gladly received, and smelled without any horrible nausea. On one of the hottest days of the year, we all craved a roast dinner.

Simple pleasures. They don't cure cancer, unfortunately. But sometimes they are all we can turn to, to help to ease us through the rubbish that life throws at some of us.

If you have or care for someone with cancer, there is advice available here. And if things feel really difficult, the Samaritans are available 24 hours a day on the phone number 116 123 if you are in the UK.

Leave it to compost

I had a wonderful English Literature tutor called Mark Loveridge when I studied at Swansea. It was he who decided I could do the undergraduate degree despite my inadequate A-level results,  he who had the sort of brilliant energy and sense of humour  that I'd only ever seen in films. And it was he who, when I felt like submitting a first draft of an essay, told me to, "Leave it to compost for a few weeks," before tackling it again.

Leave it to compost.

For someone like me, who overthinks, overplans, then gets frustrated and disappointed when things don't go to plan, or when I get tired or bored, this piece of advice was invaluable.

So, as much as I've felt guilty about not blogging over the summer, despite being on holiday from my current uni course and technically having more brain space to write, I think it was necessary to have a break. I've never been great at the regular, frequent side of blogging - as you can probably tell, it's more feast or famine with me. But the point of starting this blog was to enjoy it, and there's nothing enjoyable about feeling guilty!

So there are lots of things I could share here, and I will share some of them and let the others sit there. Maybe they'll compost for another four months and it'll feel good to share them at Christmas when it's wintry and gloomy outside, and we need a reminder of sunnier days.

In July, there was a surprise party for a lady who went out and bought herself pink peonies the day before. Luckily I was told before I went to the market! These flowers are a mixture of market flowers (pale pink phlox, snapdragons, white gentian) and home grown ones (red phlox, panicum/fountain grass, nicotiana, jasmine and sweet peas). I was given most of the containers to fill, and it was fun using unfamiliar vases.

Particularly this autumnal one.

And these beautiful, tall bud vases.

My Australian cousin was visiting briefly last week, and asked to go to the flower market. It was wonderful to have someone to help me choose, and to help me carry! As well as the market flowers, there were also buckets of sedum, roses, physocarpus, panicum and herbs from the garden, and foraged berries. It was also nice to use September flower in September.

Last weekend, I used the flowers for several bits, including this bouquet for a beautiful woman who liked the moody colours and chocolate scent of cosmos. This bouquet included one of my rare, homegrown dark sunflowers - which, unlike many of the sunflowers I've grown, has long enough stems to use in bouquets.

And of course, there were leftovers to enjoy. The chocolate cosmos scent fills the room - it's incredible that such a strong fragrance comes from such a dainty flower.

When these flowers die, you know where they'll end up? That's right - on the compost heap.

Happy 2015!

Happy new year! Hope your year is full of happiness, health and peace.

Here are eight flower-filled milk bottles in lieu of eight maids a-milking for the eighth day of Christmas.

Harvest flowers at the Garden Museum

I've recently started doing some flowers for the Garden Museum. I wrote about the London museum in March, when I visited it for the first time - it's such a lovely place, it's a joy to do flowers there now.

This week, the flower cart needed to look especially bright and beautiful, so I cut, collected, and foraged as much as I could: conkers from Greenwich Park, purple grasses and pretty ivy trails from Hither Green Station embankment (thank you Lewisham Gardens for the invite), and berried ivy, mystery tree foliage, jasmine, cotoneaster, lavender, sedum, zinnias, cosmos, borage and nicotiana from the garden. I also cut a bucketful of prettiness from the museum's cutting garden: rosemary, euonymus, more zinnias, verbena, grasses, Michaelmas daisies (appropriately, since it is almost Michaelmas), tagetes, and a beautiful blue flower that I still don't know the name of. Finally, I bought sunflowers, celosia and carmanthus for the bold "autumn flowers" and artichokes, radishes, peppers and fresh dates for the "pretty harvest".

With some help from a kind assistant, we made a couple of wooden boxes, and drilled holes in half of the conkers. I wired some of these conkers and made a garland with the others. I mossed up a wire wreath frame, and decorated it with conkers, dried hydrangea heads (thank you Sara Willman for prompting me to dry my flowers), sedum and wired radishes. I also made a garland with berried ivy, mystery foliage, hydrangeas, sedum and snowberries.

And today I put it all together, along with more arrangements for the cart.

One of the loveliest things about doing flowers at the museum is the visitors; many stop and watch and have a chat about the flowers and why they are visiting. It's wonderful.

Today a few people commented on the conkers, saying that children don't seem to play with conkers anymore, so it was nice to see so many of them!

Sunflowers: reminding us that despite the cold nights, it's not winter yet!

Chocolates for Juliet

I did some pink and chocolate brown bouquets a few weeks ago. It's one of my favourite autumn colour combinations (see this post a few years ago), but I added the peachy tones of Juliet David Austin roses this time.

I used dark cotinus foliage, pink snowberries (my autumn favourite!), astilbe, and sedum, cosmos, cleome, panicum and euonymus from the garden.

I love the mixture of textures here. (The first photo was taken in the evening and the second photo was taken in the morning - it makes a big difference to peachy Juliet!)

Speaking of Juliet - here's a leftover rose, opened up.

And more leftovers here.

Autumn isn't just about Chinese lanterns and falling leaves, you know!

Here Comes the Sun

The mildest winter I can remember seems to be coming to an end...although, this being Britain, there could be a late freeze on the way! In my optimism, I have begun to sow some zinnias, fountain grass, and cleome in the greenhouse.

In the first half of February, there were still roses and juicy-red rosehips, sage and viburnum.

The crocuses almost drowned in the swamp of a winter garden, but there were enough to add some colour to the grey and brown, and to cut for a tiny vase.

Now they've gone, and the narcissi and hyacinths are about to take their place. The hyacinths have lasted three years and several moves.

My muscari looked like they were going to flower months ago, but there has just been a lot of leaves. Now the narcissi and tulips have caught up, and many of them look on the cusp of flowering. I'm hoping the Bridal Crown narcissi (front row, middle) flower - I saw them at Chelsea in 2012 and they looked beautiful, but mine didn't flower last year...probably because I tried to force them indoors in a freezing cold flat!

The Honeymoon tulips didn't flower last year, so I'm ever so excited to see this now. And the beautiful, variegated foliage of the Chinatown tulips offered so much promise last year, so I am hoping they deliver flowers this year! Most of the bulbs were bought at the RHS Wisley show in 2012, from Bridgend-based Pheasant Acre Plants.

In other news, the Moody Blues nigella (from Sarah Raven) are still looking good, and in the last week, the Higgledy Garden Nora Barlow aquilegia have grown a little more. The cornflowers are looking decidedly ill though. so I don't think I'll get any flowers from my autumn-sown seedlings. I'll have to try my luck with spring sowings instead.

The autumn-sown sweet peas are looking ok, and hopefully they will fare better than the spring sowings I attempted with no joy last year. I know it's too early to move them outside, but I got impatient looking at my sweet pea pots, which are all ready for new plants, so I planted a couple. I'm just curious to see what will happen!

There are two hanging baskets filled with forget-me-nots - blue in one and pink in the other. They are from the wonderful Shannon's Garden Centre in Forest Hill, and the idea of forget-me-not hanging baskets came from Seedball.

I bought a few pots of bluebells to see how they grow - one pot of English bluebells and one pot of pink Spanish bluebells. The Penny's Pink hellebores are still doing well. And finally, I spotted lots of new growth in the garden, including these sedums. Come on, springtime!