Shakespeare's birthday

What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet

As well as being St George's Day, 23 April is also the day that Shakespeare was born. It's the day he died as well, apparently. So here's an arrangement from the archive, before I half-killed my poor David Austin rose bush! A hat box with scented William Shakespeare 2000 roses, Sweet Williams, clematis and jasmine.

Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey will always be my favourite Romeo and Juliet, so here's the balcony scene in Zeffirelli's 1968 film. It's the play that taught me to love language and Shakespeare when we studied it at school - girls would walk around the playground reciting this scene off by heart just because we loved how it sounded!

Romeo: What shall I swear by?

Juliet: Do not swear at all;

Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,

Which is the god of my idolatry,

And I'll believe thee.

Diggin' Design: a sustainable Christmas Fair

The Diggin' Design fair at the Garden Museum bade a gentle goodbye to November, and a Christmassy welcome to December with its mince pies, wrapping paper, and woolly hats. There were so many stalls - I managed to do a quick tour before the fair got busy - with many beautiful things that you can't find on the high street.

The illustrators and designers who created cards, other stationary, and textiles were incredible. I didn't see Liz Temperley, the artist behind Blank Inside, but her friend kindly managed the stall and seemed to do a great job of selling the work! You can see her with Liz's products on the left in the photo below.

The two men at the Supermarche Studio were so friendly and enthusiastic about their work, which was so cool itself, I went back later and bought some London wildlife cards. And Sophie Richardson's pretty teapots will have made wonderful presents for some lucky people! 

There were filo mince pies being baked in the Garden Museum cafe, and carol singers entertaining us in the afternoon. They sang a song that I recognise from Love Story, when Jenny is teaching a choir of children, but I've forgotten the name of it. I had a good view of them from my stall.

I shared a stall with Annie, who works at the museum on different days from me (so we'd never met before). She chatted to me as we sat at our stalls, and she looked ever so peaceful as she knitted for most of the day. I felt like I too should have been industrious and brought work with me!

As for me, it was lovely to promote my flowers, especially as these were all British. There was a lot of surprise that all of the flowers were British, and much smelling of the rosemary, freesias and paperwhites.

I chatted to a lady with a tiny garden who would like to grow cutting flowers - I recommended two Twitter colleagues' books: Georgie Newbury's The Flower Farmer's Year and Louise Curley's The Cut Flower Patch. She bought a posy to take to a dinner she was going to and, in true sustainable style, declined a biodegradable hessian bag in favour of carrying the jar of flowers in her hand.

A little girl visited the stall with her father and shyly asked me how to make "that" (pointing at my favourite handtied). I explained the process, in simple, pidgin toddler style. I like to think she will go off and collect flowers in the spring to make a posy.

The day was made better as I had just received new business cards and stickers from Wendy Bell - the most wonderful designer (in keeping with the design theme of the fair!), who I've worked with in the past and who I can't recommend enough. She's a delight to work with, incredibly intuitive and creative, and got the essence of both my desert island flower (the forget-me-not) and me down to a tee.

At last! A Christmas flower stall.

If you cast your mind back three years, you might remember I was trying in vain to get a flower stall for Christmas with a fellow student from my floristry diploma. Fast forward three years and I finally have one! The lovely people at the Garden Museum are running an eco-friendly Christmas fair called Diggin' Design for the third year running (I should have asked them three years ago!) and I will be sharing a stall with another lady who volunteers at the museum. I'll be doing all British flower posies and bouquets.

So this morning I was at Pratley in New Covent Garden Market nice and early (on the way there I saw two ice cream vans on the road...surreal in November). There was plenty of British flowers loveliness to choose from, including a box of 200 different-coloured tulips, which was very tempting but a bit too much for my needs! In the end, I bought powder blue scabious (I couldn't believe it was still flowering), brassicas, paperwhites, and freesias. The freesias and paperwhites smell beautiful.

I also went to GB Foliage and got viburnum, berried ivy (the berried ivy growing in the garden is not that great now - the ivy is fine, but the berries are not so pretty), and mistletoe. "Is it British?" I asked. "Yes," came the reply. "We don't like the French stuff."

I also had a delivery from Tregothnan - lots of pretty Sweet Williams from B J Richards, the last of the British chrysanthemums (well, it is still November), ranunculus, rosemary, sage, and pepperleaf. I got a bag of scented pine cones too, which I've wired to add to posies and other arrangements.

Here's it all cut and conditioned and ready to be arranged.

And here are the first of the posies in upcycled jars and tins...I had to quickly take these before the sun disappeared. There are big bouquets too...but you'll have to wait till tomorrow for photos. Or better still, come to the fair and see them for yourself! The fair is from 10.30am to 5pm tomorrow, at the Garden Museum (next to Lambeth Palace). Who would have thought you could get all this from Britain at the end of November?!

British Flowers Week: Five days of gorgeousness

I know British Flowers Week has been and gone, but the summery British flowers have only just begun. My first zinnia opened up this morning, and what a summery flower it is!

I saw this photo on Twitter, and I just had to ask for permission to share it here. The stunning photos were taken by Julian Winslow, the flowers are from New Covent Garden Market, and this composite was was painstakingly put together by Okishima & Simmonds, whose antler-like design featured on Day 1 and brought new energy to the British lisianthus.

The other florists featured here are Hybrid, who used British Sweet Williams and calla lilies for a Shakespeare-inspired shoot; Simon Lycett, who made three very different designs with scented British pinks; Euphoric Flowers, who showed off British flowering foliage, including eucalyptus, oak, scented philadelphus/mock orange and lavender (well worth looking at if you want to use British flowers in the winter); and McQueens, who finished the week off with classic British garden roses. You may know how much I love both British and imported garden roses, but I didn't realise you could get Augusta Luise roses that have been grown in Britain. What a bonus!

British Flowers Week: Gallantry in Postman's Park

When I thought about the British flowers that would be available for British Flowers Week, a few leapt out for me: peonies and Sweet Williams.

British peonies are only available for a short time in the early summer, but they are so popular all year round, particularly for weddings. I once worked for a florist who would buy imported (from New Zealand) red peonies for Christmas bouquets, just because she liked them so much. They were beautiful and understandably expensive, but I thought it was madness to order them, especially as it would teach customers that it was reasonable to expect peonies in December in London.

It's interesting that they are so popular for weddings as their symbolic meaning is bashful shame. I guess, like lavender, they are too beautiful and sweetly scented for people to mind what they have represented in the past.

Sweet Williams are beautiful flowers, with a sweet, clove scent. They are from the dianthus family, like carnations and pinks. Sweet Williams and pinks were both the subject of special photoshoots organised by the market and some very talented florists.

Sweet Williams symbolise gallantry, but also finesse and dexterity. It's gallantry that I thought of as I planned to create a floral spray (like a funeral sheaf) to photograph in Postman's Park. I ordered the Sweet Williams from Tregothnan and bought the peonies from the market.

Postman's Park is in the City, close to St Paul's Cathedral and not far from Cannon Street and Blackfriars train stations. My friend Francesca took me there years ago when we had one of those casual, walk-around-town days. It's a lovely green space, usually filled with people sitting on one of the many benches. It got its name from the postal workers who worked nearby, and who would take their breaks there.

Once we got to the artist G. F. Watts's Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, I realised I had seen the park before (on screen, at least) in the film Closer. Closer is one of my favourite London-set films. It's quite vicious and miserable at times, but tender and funny at others, as you'd expect from Mike Nichols, the director of The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Watts's Memorial was based on the artist's suggestion for a gallery to commemorate people who had sacrificed their own lives trying to save someone else. The idea wasn't taken up, so he made the gallery himself, using ceramic tablets inscribed with the name of each person and details of the heroic act that killed them. Each tablet is so beautiful and there is something touching and haunting about the language used. For example, Henry James Bristow, an eight-year-old boy, "Saved his little sister's life by tearing off her flaming clothes but caught fire himself and died of burns and shock". There are a few sisters and brothers who tried to save their siblings, but also people who tried to save strangers, neighbours and colleagues. If you ever need a reminder of the potential kindness and selflessness of people, visit this memorial.

So for British Flowers Week, I made a floral spray using Sweet Williams for gallantry, Sarah Bernhardt peonies (just because they were in season and would add impact), alchemilla mollis and eucalyptus which both symbolise protection, cornflowers which stand for delicacy, rosemary for remembrance, poppy seed heads (the flowers represent consolation) and hazel for reconciliation. When I took the photos, I saw that someone had left a red rose there.

I also made a lonely bouquet with William Shakespeare 2000 roses, a peony, Sweet Williams, poppy seed heads and alchemilla. I left it under Alice Ayres.

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.