The storm before the calm

The year whizzes by, the month zips along, and now it is less than a week until Christmas Day. I usually end up blogging more at Christmas during the calm after the storm...that week between Christmas and New Year is a time of reflection for me.

I went to a Christmas service at the end of November - which feels like ages ago now. It was a remembrance service for people who were bereaved, and it was intended to be a candlelit service held outside, by a Christmas tree. Unfortunately, the gale-force winds meant that the candles wouldn't light, so people took the candles with them to light quietly in their homes. It's the only service I've been to where we sang Once in Royal David's City and You'll Never Walk Alone, but it was lovely. In fact, I'd never sung You'll Never Walk Alone before, and I didn't realise what a moving song it is.

Now the weather has shifted again, and walking back past the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree last night, I realised it was 9pm on the week before Christmas, and I wasn't wearing a scarf or gloves because it was so mild.

I hope your Decembers are going well, and if it's stormy for you now, that there is calm ahead.

British flowers at the Summer Tumblr Eco-Design Fair

I had a stall at the Summer Tumblr Eco-Design Fair at the Garden Museum. It was like the Christmas fair, but summery!

I had buckets of British flowers from the garden, from a friend's garden (she let me raid it with a bucket and scissors), and from Pratley and Dennis Edwards at New Covent Garden Market. Summer is certainly the best time to buy flowers - the prices are cheaper and more things are local. You can't get outdoor-grown sweet peas in January, and if you could (like imported peonies at Christmas) they would cost a bomb!

I got lovely, small poppy seedheads from my friend - the cultivated ones at the market are great for bigger arrangements, but are too dominant for smaller ones. I also snipped some feverfew (which means protection in the language of flowers) and scented dianthus (aka carnations).

Pratley was full of boxes of beautiful flowers...but the heat was getting to some of them. Even though the market is temperature-controlled, of course if it's hot outside (it was like a furnace outside on Saturday morning at 6am) it's going to seep indoors, particularly with doors opening and closing all of the time. I bought pale blue delphiniums, powder blue scabious (which I love to buy, in case you hadn't noticed), and white, lilac, and pink larkspur. Delphiniums symbolise levity and larkspur, their annual sisters, lightness. I was told that the (boxed) larkspur weren't happy with the sun, but I took a chance and bought some - hoping that several hours in water, flower food and a cold shed would perk them up (which it did).

Dennis Edwards (where you can buy David Austin cut roses and Withypitt dahlias) had British stocks, peonies, veronica, garden phlox, sweet peas, and alchemilla mollis. I bought pale peach stocks (which were in water and seemed much healthier than the stocks I sometimes see in boxes) and veronica.

This is how to condition garden hydrangeas - upside down in lots of water. Their delicate petals tend to wilt if they are not properly conditioned, and I guess it's hard work for them to suck up water from their woody stems if you condition them the usual way. After a few hours like this, I turn them upright.

I had a calamitous morning on the day of the fair, with a nosebleed ruining my outfit and my face, and my two left feet tripping up the stairs twice. But after that, there was calm (followed by a downpour of rain).

I made lots of tall bouquets in buckets that people could cut down as they liked when they got home, rather than aqua-packed handtieds with shorter stems. I made up bunches of flowers, from gorgeous seedheads to hydrangeas that are at that pretty, pastel pink-pale green stage. I made small posies in tins and bigger posies in posh coffee tins that I've been saving for years.

And I had some plants grown from the seeds that were given to me as a thank you for doing some funeral flowers last year - these are Impatiens balsamina.

The most popular seller? My friend's poppy seedheads!

And the posh Fortnum and Mason coffee tins of scabious and veronica.

I had a wonderful day, made even nicer by family and gardener friends from the museum helping out or stopping by to chat. And at the end of the day, two lovely things happened. A Swedish woman told me that the word for carnation in Swedish is the same as the word for clove, because of the scent. Ooh, what about stocks, I asked - they smell like cloves too. She smelled some stocks and smiled - oh yes.

Then a family bought a plant to give to a friend, and were going for a tea in the cafe and picking up the impatiens later. I was about to start packing away, but I had a small bucket with larkspur trimmings. So I made a posy with these and tied it with yellow ribbon. When they came back to pick up the plant, I gave the posy to their little girl. The shocked look on her face reminded me of when I went to Dickens and Jones (an old House of Fraser on Regent's Street) with my mother when I was a little girl, and a sales assistant gave me two perfume samples, which I thought were real bottles of perfume. At the stall, the girl's mother said, "Oh! You look like a flower girl," and the girl said a shy "Thank you" to me.

And that's what flowers are for.

Last call for Valentine's Day! Flowers for partners, friends, or yourself.

As it's less than a week until Valentine's Day, here's a quick reminder in case you still need to order flowers (for delivery to BR1, BR7, SE6, SE9, SE12). Please email me by Tuesday evening.

I will include springtime British flowers as well as other European flowers in bouquets and posies. I'll also use the Victorian language of flowers to make these arrangements thoughtful and different from other Valentine's flowers.

Two sizes again (bouquets, which will be aqua-packed, and posies, which will come with jars/tins of water), and three themes: romantic, platonic (for friends or family), or self (for yourself).

Here's a reminder of last year's to inspire you!

Romantic: Red tulips for passion, veronica for fidelity, rosemary for remembrance.

Platonic: Pink tulips for graceful love, hellebores for relieving anxiety, bouvardia for enthusiasm, fern for sincerity.

Self: Scented narcissi for self-love and new beginnings.

(Mostly) British Grown with Love

At the beginning of December, a group of British flower farmers and florists were on a mission. The mission was to find an alternative to the imported red rose for Valentine's Day.

#Britishflowers hour is a community that shares ideas on Twitter about British flowers most Mondays from 8pm until 9pm. There is usually an agenda for each week, which has included suggestions for plant suppliers, Christmas flowers, and dealing with unseasonable weather (which is, sadly, particularly problematic for growers now). The next one will be on 24th February, so do join in if you like the sound of it! The title of the post was the result of a British flowers hour discussion about a slogan to use for Valentine's Day.

Back on Monday 9th December, there was a flurry of Valentine's Day talk, which may have confused some people, barely able to focus on Christmas! There were discussions about what would be available on British flower farms in early February, the symbolism of the alternatives to the red rose, and which colours represent love. It was a great way to plan ahead for growers and florists.

The suggestions included bulbs such as anemones, tulips, narcissi, hyacinths and snowdrops, pussy willow, viburnum, hellebores, blackthorn and myrtle, and planted gifts such as rose plants and planted bulbs. Purple was a popular colour as an alternative to red, and I think purple anemones, hyacinths and tulips would make a passionate and enchanting bouquet of British flowers!

This year, I decided to take the challenge, and told my customers I wouldn't be using imported roses for Valentine's Day...as much as I love them. Fortunately, they trusted me, and I even had a few orders for 'platonic' Valentine's bouquets and posies for customers' friends. I used delicate, creamy-yellow, scented Cornish narcissi for everything, except for one posy of tulips.

The romantic bouquets and posies had red Lincolnshire tulips, and Japanese quince blossom and flowering viburnum from the garden. They also had asparagus fern, blue flowering rosemary (I don't know where this was from, and the men at the wholesaler were rushed off their feet, so I didn't bother to ask), white bouvardia and hot pink veronica.

The platonic bouquets and posies had pink Lincolnshire tulips and South London viburnum, and the bouquets had 'Penny's Pink' hellebores that I've been sheltering in the greenhouse (scared that the wind will damage the beautiful flowers), while the posies had a few stems of lily of the valley. I attempted to grow lily of the valley from scratch a few years ago to no avail, so this winter I cheated and bought some plants. I got quite a rush when I put those famous, tiny, precious flowers in my basket and took them to the counter...other women might get a similar rush from diamonds or expensive shoes! I was sad to cut both the hellebores and the lilies of the valley...but they look wonderful in the arrangements and of course lily of the valley smells exquisite.

I had thought about the symbolism of the flowers when the subject came up for discussion in December. I decided against anemones and snowdrops, despite their seasonality and their beauty - anemones mean 'forsaken' and although snowdrops represent hope, it was considered a bad omen to bring them indoors as the white flowers resemble a shroud.

But tulips are a declaration of love - as with roses, red denotes passion, and pink is a more graceful love. They were brought to the rest of Europe from Turkey at the end of the 16th century, the name taken from the Turkish word for turban which the flowers were thought to resemble. The popularity, especially in Holland, resulted in a tulip market crash in 1637! The north of England and the Midlands particularly took to growing tulips - in fact, The Garden magazine for April 2013 had a feature on the Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society.

"Here tulips bloom as they are told;

Unkempt about those hedges blows

An English unofficial rose."

Rupert Brooke, The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

Narcissi represent new beginnings for me, but on this occasion that other meaning, 'self-love', doesn't sound so bad. Personally, I think it sounds rather unbalanced to have loads of love for someone else but none for yourself, so narcissi are a nice way of balancing out the tulips, and representing the give and take of a relationship (whether that's a romantic one or a friendly one).

Fern is a sign of sincerity, and although I bought the delicate, wispy foliage on a whim when I saw it at the wholesaler, remembering the flower meaning from when I had planned to use it for my wedding, I read more about it last night in Mandy Kirkby's wonderful book, The Language of Flowers. Apparently it was used in Victorian Valentine's posies to show that one's love was true - hurray! I used viburnum as it is one of the few things flowering and glossy in the garden at the moment; I can't find the meaning in any of my books. Rosemary is for remembrance (just think of Hamlet's Ophelia), and the tiny blue flowers at this time of year are pretty.

Bouvardia stands for enthusiasm, so I used it for most of the flowers. Looking at the photos now, that's one thing I might have changed - I think red bouvadia for the romantic flowers and pink for the platonic ones would add a bit more colour.

Quince symbolises temptation, so I used it in the romantic flowers! The quince blossom didn't flower this early last year, but this photo was taken a couple of weeks ago. I also used hot pink veronica for fidelity.

Hellebores stand for different things, as many flowers do, but I like the meaning 'ease my anxiety'. It's what friends do. And lily of the valley, which usually flowers in May, means the 'return of happiness'. There is a legend connecting lily of the valley to St Leonard's Forest in Sussex many centuries ago, where the flowers are said to grow wherever St Leonard spilled his blood while fighting a dragon.

As Mandy Kirkby says, the Victorians "would be aghast if only red roses were sent on Valentine's Day, and quite horrifed at the modern belief that the showier and more expensive the flower, the stronger the feeling conveyed." Hopefully, some of these posies would be more pleasing to them?!

I had a Tiptree Lincolnshire blossom honey jar, which I couldn't resist using for the posy of Lincolnshire tulips. Other Tiptree jars were used for the platonic posies, and dramatic red Tate and Lyle treacle tins were used for romantic ones. One golden syrup tin was used for a simple posy of narcissi, and I think the colours tied in nicely.

I did receive one unexpected surprise yesterday. The postman brought me an envelope, with writing I recognised, which made me smile. My friend Grace had sent me a card. As she said, Valentine's Day is a load of nonsense, but it is big enough to include the love of close friends. The card she gave, with colourful irises, reminded me of the book she bought me for my birthday when were out charity shopping. It's a sweet RHS book called The Lore and Language of Flowers by Anna Trenter, with flower fairy drawings by Cicely Mary Barker, an early 20th century artist from Croydon in South London. I left the price on...it's a habit I have with books and CDs! I looked up the meaning for iris in the book, which is helpfully arranged by season. It means 'I have a message for you'.

The book and the card are wonderful reminders of a friendship I am lucky to have. When my bulbs and seeds flower, I'll be able to deliver some kindness back to Grace. And they will be entirely British Grown with Love!