Sustainable Dinner in January at Cowdray House

This was an absolutely lovely event at Cowdray House on The Cowdray Estate last week.

The event was a familiarisation trip for event planners.

It was a sustainable event and therefore music to my ears of course!

We used British grown flowers of tulips, ranunculus, scented narcissi, catkins, early blossom, snowdrops, camelia and eleagnus from Cornwall, Lincolnshire and Hampshire with a few things from our own garden.

The delightful team from the family run and super sustainable Lettice Events showcased their food and hospitality and Firebird Events provided the lighting.

The photographs are by the very talented Stephanie and Nicole

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Sustainable Dinner at Cowdray House

Local Flower Deliveries Midhurst

I hope you’re all doing okay?

It’s been a difficult year hasn’t it?

I just wanted to let you know that we are still delivering flowers locally within 15 miles of Midhurst, West Sussex on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays each week.

We deliver to doorsteps so its all very safe and hands free and the flowers will be delivered in a flower jar so there’s no wasteful packaging.

We can drop flowers each week, every 2 weeks or monthly and you’ll get a flower jar with the first delivery and then subsequent deliveries will arrive without packaging perfectly designed to drop straight into your chosen size flower jar.

We send an invoice with a link to pay by credit or debit card or Bags so that its easy for you.

Do call or email if you’d like to place an order. or you can book online here and just a gentle reminder that it’s Valentines Day on Sunday 14th Feb and Mothering Sunday on 14th March so we’re open for pre-orders now.

Best wishes

Karen

Spring Dinner at Cowdray House

Well, a lot has happened since I last posted.

Who knew when I did the flowers for this showcase dinner for Event planners at Cowdray House in Midhurst, West Sussex, that we’d be in lockdown 2 weeks later. Who knew then what lockdown actually meant.

I went to this dinner and it was such a lovely evening. I’m so glad that I did as it was the last dinner that I worked on and, for those of us in the industry, one of the last times we were able to meet and who knows when we’ll have the freedom to bring so many people together again for a wonderful dinner that isn’t socially distanced or outside!

Jacaranda Catering, who are also based in Midhurst, provided the wonderful food and hospitality for the dinner and the team from Nyetimber vineyard in West Sussex treated us to a tasting of three of their award-winning English sparkling wines.

It was a fun evening and a memorable evening and I do hope that there will be many more of these for our industry in the not too distant future.

All photos are by the very lovely and very talented Nicole Haines

The Table at Cowdray House with candelabra and gorgeous sesaonal spring flowers

Nyetimber, camellia’s and jasmine

Dining in Buck Hall, Cowdray House

Spring Florals

Spring Dinner Tablescape

Espresso Martinis which I can vouch were excellent!

Cowdray Goody Bags for guests

A Valentine's Eve Dinner at Cowdray House

Seasonal Camellia Bower

I’m often asked to provide flowers for dinners at Cowdray House and a couple of times of year these dinners are to welcome senior professional wedding and event planners.

One of these recent dinners was on Valentine’s eve and called for a very special scheme to wow the VIP’s in attendance.

We created a bower of British grown pink camellias along the 36ft of table and lined the table with seasonal spring flowers.

The dinner was amazing (I was lucky enough to attend) and the super talented team from Caper and Berry had created some incredible dishes.

The super talented Louise Adby took these gorgeous photos.

Flowers for a Dinner in January at Cowdray House

Happy New Year to you all!

We’ve hit the ground running this year with lots of flowers and bulb planters going out for delivery ,dinners to arrange flowers for and lot’s of wedding quotes, mood boards and plenty of exciting projects in the pipe line.

The photos are from last week’s lovely formal dinner for 16 people at Cowdray House.

White flowers look fresh in January so we chose seasonal ranunculus, paperweight narcissi, hellebores, muscari and ivy.

Sustainable White Wedding at Cowdray House

On last day of August we arranged the flowers for this elegant white wedding for Louise and John.

St Mary’s church, Easebourne, Midhurst was the venue for the ceremony and we dressed the outside with seasonal white flowers and woodland foliage. Inside the church we dressed the windowsills with trailing ivy, candles and clouds of gypsohilla and a large urn of seasonal white flowers with woodland greenery completed the decoration. All of the flowers were arranged into water with no single use plastic floral foam used in the mechanics.

The reception was at beautiful Cowdray House where we decorated the fireplace and the tables with ivy training from candelabra and gorgeous white and neutral shades of roses, seasonal flowers and Louise’s favourite Lily of the Valley.

British Flowers in August

Garden roses, dahlias, rudbeckia, cosmos, scabious, blackberries, grasses, seed heads…

You probably know by now that we grow our own flowers where possible but we also use other growers, farms and suppliers and this week we had a delivery from West End Flower Farm in Hampshire where they grow the kind of flowers I love; a little wayward and wild!

There’s such a huge choice of flowers available in August with garden roses are enjoying their second flush, dahlias coming thick and fast, there’s rudbeckia, cosmos, scabious blackberries, grasses, seed heads and the strongest beech, jasmine and rambling rise foliage.

I’ve used all of the above in the arrangement below in some of my favourite jewel colours of August.

The abundance of August

British grown garden roses

British grown rudbeckia

British Dahlias

Jewel coloured British flowers of August

A Spectacular Autumnal Dinner at Cowdray House with British Flowers

This autumnal dinner at Cowdray House, Cowdray Estate was incredible. Hosted by the fabulous team at Caper and Berry the event was for the leading lights in the wedding and event planning industry, who stayed at Cowdray House overnight.

We used all British grown chrysanthemums from Hampshire and believe me these are nothing like the contrived chrysanthemums you usually find in supermarkets and garages. The colours were truly amazing and they were wayward and natural. We foraged bracken and browning ferns from The Cowdray Estate and used them to dress the candelabra and the fireplace. The result was really beautiful and the planners loved it.

I actually attended the event and the food and service by the incredible team at Caper and Berry was wonderful.

These wonderful photographs of the event are by the super talented Louise Adby

What a magical evening in Midhurst!

Cowdray House Cutting Garden

We are delighted to say that we now have a cutting garden at Cowdray House.

In keeping with our company ethos we don’t use any chemicals, weed killers or sprays and all of our flowers are grown naturally. We grow through a fabulous bio-degradable matting that’s made in the UK and not made of plastic as most are.

A short 5 minute hop from our studio and Home in Midhurst, West Sussex , it’s ideally placed on the Cowdray Estate to enable us to pick flowers and arrange them in our bunches for the Cowdray Farm Shop for the same morning.

We also provide weekly flowers for Cowdray House, the Cowdray Farm Shop Cafe and the Cowdray Golf Club  where we’ll be adding some our our own flowers into the arrangements that we make.

Our weddings and events business will benefit hugely from our cutting garden and we also intend to offer some courses on sustainable flower arranging later in the year at Cowdray House. Do sign up to our newsletter if you’d like to be kept informed about dates.

Dahlia beds at our Cowdray House Cutting Garden

Dinner plate dahalias!

Fabulous burgundy dahlia

Tips on Decorating your House for Easter In The Daily Telegraph

Anna Tyzack, Senior Lifestyle Editor at The Daily Telegraph, interviewed me, as the Cowdray Estate florist,  this week for a fun and informative article on decorating your house for Easter.

They'll be lots of gorgeous Easter flowers, wreaths, bulbs planters and flowering branches available to buy from Cowdray Farm Shop on the Cowdray Estate from this week when Spring returns.

Flowers for Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday, or the week of Mothering Sunday, is always such a lovely week at This Floral Life. 

It marks the beginning of Spring for me and it’s a mere 3 weeks to Easter; another favourite flowery festival of mine. 

This year was incredible. It was super busy all week for flowers and plants and then at the weekend we were re-stocking Cowdray Farm Shop every hour in between our other local deliveries. 

I had a hunch that it was going to be a much busier Mothering Sunday week than usual for flowers and plants and I think people needed some Spring cheer after the harsh winter.  

Yellow Flowers

Okay, so I’m well aware that many people have an intense dislike of yellow flowers. I do understand this dislike but I think it stems from an historical poor use of yellow in flower arrangements and the fact that yellow was off trend for many years.

Not any more though as yellow is currently enjoying its moment in the sun and for the last few seasons has been on trend in both fashion and home furnishings. With the proliferation of dark walls in interiors and dark backgrounds in print design a pop of yellow can look fabulous.

Here are a few of my favourite seasonal yellow flowers for February. 

Mimosa

Witch hazel

Mimosa wreath

Gorse

Witch Hazel, mimosa and lilac

Autumn Dinner at Cowdray House

I really enjoyed creating the house and table flowers for this very special dinner at Cowdray House in October. It's an amazing time of year to be a florist as there is such wonderful material to work with and bringing the outside in as the days grow shorter is always appreciated by the guests.

I designed this dinner to come alive after dark when the candles were lit to create a real 'wow' factor. I used layers of candlelight that would illuminate the flowers, seedheads and grasses and although I didn't manage to photograph the table when the candles are lit I have seen photos that were taken that night; it really did look gorgeous and the feedback after the dinner was fabulous.

The Dining Room at Cowdray House

Hall Flowers at Cowdray House

The dining table flowers

Autumnal florals, ferns and grasses

I thought I'd share this little arrangement that I gathered for the house last weekend. It's a gorgeous palette and contains everything I love about autumn; grasses, bronze and pink tinged foliage, horse chestnuts, poppy seed heads, sanguisorbia, browning ferns to name just a few. Mixed with a few pale pink chrysanthemums (yes there are some really beautiful ones) and a few appropriately coloured roses in mustard yellow and apricot; I think it's a really lovely combination.

I made the little footed teracotta vase on a pottery wheel and the colours co-ordinate beautifully with the embroidery I made back in 1991. Hand thrown, hand sewn,...! 

Autumn Heather Wreaths

Autumn wreaths are now incredibly popular and this week we've been making lots of gorgeous autumnal heather wreaths for orders. Our red and orange wreaths decorated with seasonal foliage, rose hips, physalis and seed heads are still popular but the demand for our pink, red and chocolate wreaths, inspired by the heather woods where I live in Midhurst, West Sussex, has been very high indeed. We've also been making some beautiful dried wreaths which will last throughout the year. I love making the dried wreaths and they look beautiful propped on the mantelpiece or hanging on doors around the house.

This will be the last week for our autumn wreaths as we've been working on our Christmas collection which we'll launch at Cowdray Farm Shop on Saturday 2nd December when they're holding their Christmas tasting day. 

If you'd like to order a wreath for collection or delivery do get in touch!

Summer Polo Event at Cowdray House

Last Friday I had the pleasure of providing the flowers for a summer polo event at Cowdray House on Cowdray Estate.

Hosted by Cowdray Polo Club with catering by Caper and Berry there were canapés on the lawn followed by a dinner in the dining room of cowdray House.

I brought in some wonderful rhodendendrons from the gardens of Cowdray House and decorated the tables with seasonal peonies, aquilegia, hellebores, lilac to name a few of the ingredients. 

Its always a pleasure working at the fabulous Cowdray House! 

April Flowers and the Tasty Woodland Treats

What an amazingly sunny April we've had so far, the garden is in full bloom and the sun has been shining, although I hear that there may be some frost next week which I don't think we're prepared for!

I'm writing this whilst looking through the window into the garden and it's filled with lilac, clematis montana, apple blossom, viburnum opulus, bluebells, whitebells and unfurling ferns.

I live next door to the woods so the wild garlic which lines the path into the woods has also found its way into the garden and spread under a tree. It's in full flower and I've been looking at recipes for pickling the flower heads and making pesto from the leaves.

While I'm on the subject of food (for free) I've just passed a patch of wild stawberries in flower and the wild bilberries are now a gorgeous pink colour so it won't be long before the crop is ready. Living next to the woods and walking through them each day with the dogs is such a bonus!

It's so exciting to see the English bluebells all over the garden and the white bells are incredibly pretty with the unfurling bright green ferns catching the light.

The peonies are on the way soon......happy days indeed!

Whitebells and ferns

Apple blossom

Bluebells, whitebells and ferns

Unfurling ferns and bluebells

Wild garlic  

Whitebells and bluebells

Wild strawberries

Flowers for Mothering Sunday at Cowdray Farm Shop

What a lovely, sunny weekend it's been for a Mothering Sunday.

I provide all of the flowers and plants for the award winning Cowdray Farm Shop on the beautiful Cowdray Estate in Easebourne, Midhurst, West Sussex and with Mothering Sunday and the exceptional weather this weekend it's been a very flowery and busy week,.

Here are a few photos of this weekend's bouquets, planters and plants.  

Lilac, ranunculus, scented narcissi and anemones

Lilac, ranunculus, astrantia, forget-me-nots and clematis

Ranunculus, lilac, scented narcissi and forget-me-nots

Mimosa

Zinc Muscari planters

Scented narcissi, ranunculus, anemones

Hellebore Heaven

Whether as a garden plant or a cut flower the hellebore is simply incredible. 

From Dec to April these little plants brighten up our gardens with the most exquisite flowers  often when few other plants are in flower.

Plant some today so that you'll have beautiful flowers next winter, you won't be dissapointed!

Magnolia Heaven

Who doesn't love be a magnolia tree in full bloom? 

The Magnolia in our garden is spectacular and makes my heart sing every day when I drive through the gate. 

Magnolia branches are sensational in a vase and I've been selling pink and white branches at Cowdray Farm Shop this week . They're not from my garden though as I couldn't bear to pick them!