A memorable day!

A day in the life of this flower grower and designer that I will never forget! 

What a thrill it was to get a 'phone call asking me to take on a commission to design and create a flower arrangement at Eton College for the Flower Festival being held to celebrate the College Chapel restoration.   Each house at the College was represented and I was to base my design on the lives of Horatio Chapple and Sir John Gurdon from Cotton Hall House.

Horatio Chapple was the inspiration behind Horatio's Garden at Odstock Hospital in Salisbury, Horatio volunteered at the Spinal Unit and created a questionnaire to discover what the patients needed and what an amazing space has been created with Cleve West's  stunning garden design!   When visiting a friend at Odstock, who had tragically broken her back, we used to sit in the car park to have our picnic with her little terrier chasing anything he could find, what a difference it is now to have new life emerging in the garden during the seasons. So therapeutic for patients to escape the ward and be in the fresh air, giving them time and space to come to terms with their injuries, surrounded by the beauty of the garden (rather than the barren tarmac of the car park!!)

How to interpret the incredible achievements of Sir John Gurdon, a Nobel prize winner

in medicine or physiology for his pioneering work on cloning?  I puzzled over this for some while - cloning and DNA - what did I know about them?  Thank goodness for the internet!  My design evolved - I used a large piece of oak for the base, a symbol of strength and courage, dried allium heads and the wire which flows up to the top linking the base to the flowers  (this exploded in my hand when I was about to unwind it and formed a wonderful shape in the mock-up, the only challenge then was to recreate this in the Chapel!) 

and this is how it evolved- using a stand that my lovely Mum had had made 30 years before (which was so special for me, as she would have loved to think it was being used here at Eton)  the base in place,  the foliage in, my structure created and then wonderful British flowers, most of which were grown here on the Plot to finish the design

 

  
what a fabulous day I had, doing something I love, 'serenaded' by a wonderful choir, who were rehearsing for the Thursday evening Service and organ music that pulsed through the Chapel when one of the students was having a lesson.  It was an emotional experience, representing two talented and inspirational people in this most beautiful Chapel at Eton College.

‘My design, inspired by Sir John Gurdon and Horatio Chapple, grows upwards from the oak base, symbolising strength and courage; scattered stones representing walls built from broken pieces; the tangle of wire from which emerges the complicated processes of nuclear cloning.
The alliums sitting in the wire link Horatio’s Garden and Sir John Gurdon; the dried allium heads conjuring up an image of the structure of part of a DNA double helix and the fresh alliums that were a striking element of Horatio’s Garden on my first visit. The wire winds upwards linking two inventive minds:– both culminating in beauty and hope. If you look closely there may just be a frog there somewhere!’


 

It's been a fun weekend creating the flower displays for the Members' Marquee at the North Somerset Show, held each year at Wraxall on our beautiful showground that originally formed part of the Tyntesfield Estate. 

 Now that North Somerset Show is over I can look forward to another couple of busy weeks with a wedding and a christening this weekend and then...... I am so excited by my next project - a commission to design and create a display for a wonderful organisation.   The brief was quite challenging initially and it took me a while to work out my design, but once I got onto a theme, well, the ideas have just been fizzing in my head at all times of day and night! To represent such inspirational people is an honour and I am so chuffed to have been asked.  I will reveal the venue in a later blog but it is a great achievement for me to get British flowers in such a prestigious location that I can hardly contain my secret!

I have added this photograph as there will be lots of alliums used in the design and I am out there each morning talking to them - asking some to speed up and others to sleep a little longer - the pressures of having just the right flowers on the day - it all adds to the fun really?!  When I first visited..whoops! nearly gave it away then, there were beautiful alliums planted in waves throughout the garden and purple is an important colour to be used in my interpretation. Oak leaves are also another symbolic feature so I will be using a base of oak which symbolises courage and strength.

 For me, it is poignant to be using one of my Mum's flowering arranging stands, she had this stand made by the local engineering workshop and I found it dumped in the nettles a couple of years ago down at the farm, knowing that it would come in useful 'one day'.  I am so glad I did!  Hopefully she will be watching over me as I create my 'work of art in flowers'.

What an exciting day Valentine's Day was this year not only with orders to complete, but also to get ready for ITV West to come and film me.   They were interested in whether customers care where their flowers come from and do they prefer to buy British.   Laura was a great reporter and put me at ease, which is not easy as I am not one for being in front of the camera! These anemones were some of my home grown flowers for Valentine's Day bouquets that appeared on ITV West News

 I was more nervous watching the News that evening than I was during filming but the flowers looked amazing and lots of compliments flowed in after the programme and my autograph has been asked for a couple of times!  My flowers were supplemented by Narcissi, Tulips and Alstroemeria sourced from Cornwall, we have lovely Pussy Willow growing in abundance on the farm which together with Catkins gave a wonderful feeling of Spring.

Spring, it doesn't feel as if we have had a Winter yet, but it is the time of year to think of sowing seeds and my order of new Dahlia tubers will be arriving soon.  This gorgeous 'Yankee Doodle' dahlia, appearing here in a competition entitled 'Tea at the Ritz', was one I grew from seed.   Growing dahlias from seed is great fun as you are never really sure what you are going to get, so if you know you want a specific colour it is better to buy the tubers of a named dahlia.  When I first started I couldn't resist sowing some Dahlia seeds called 'Clangers Mix', the name appealed because I am very good at dropping clangers!  They flowered so well in their first season with good stem length and the element of surprise of what each one was going to look like led to some fun, creative bouquets.

This arrangement shows a few of the 'Clangers' dahlias in an old milk carton covered in fabric, I do love to up-cycle whenever I can and either make or find unusual containers for my flowers. Well that's another whole story and maybe next time I will be able to show you some of my ideas.  For now, I have to concentrate on planning the new cut flower beds and sowing seeds in my new greenhouse. It's not quite finished yet but still a wonderful treat after managing in a shed with a plastic roof for the last couple of years!