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.
It’s the first day of Spring and it’s hard to believe it but ‘Leckie’, our all electric van, is covered in snow.
We’ve had ‘Leckie’ since August and we absolutely love him. He fits perfectly with our company values and since we bought ‘Leckie’ he’s really helping us to achieve our goals of running a sustainable, eco friendly business. We can deliver flowers, plants and bespoke arrangements within a 20 mile radius of Midhurst so do call if you’d like to book a delivery as we always have a gorgeous range of seasonal flowers and plants in stock as we do daily deliveries to the Cowdray Farm Shop (literally 5 minutes from our studio) where we supply all of the flowers and plants.
We no longer use floral foam in any of our work as we’ve worked hard to achieve amazing floral displays without using this non biodegradable, single use, plastic.
This year we’ll be growing more of our own flowers and we’ll also be running some flower courses for anyone who is interested in learning how to create glorious, seasonal, eco friendly arrangements.
Sign up to our newsletter on our home page if you’d like to be kept informed.
This was a very special dinner at Cowdray House in December.
It was glamorous, festive and fun and in addition to providing the flowers and dressing the Buck Hall for Christmas I actually went to the dinner.
The food was absolutely sublime and provided by the fabulous Caper and Berry. What a great evening it was!
Thank you to Cowdray Estate for letting me post these lovely photos of the event taken by a Chris Orange Photography.
Well, we’ve been flat out again since the last event I posted so I’m trying to play catch up again!
This event was very special as it was a dinner for motoring journalists and VIP’s to celebrate the launch of the new Audi A8 in the UK.
We created a large central autumnal tree and decorated the huge fireplace with a garland of autumn leaves and berries. The tables formed a cross shape and were filled with a runner of autumnal flowers, hips and foliage with decorated candelabra to co-ordinate.
I hope you like the photos!
Amy and Andrew married at Cowdray House in Midhurst, West Sussex on November 18th 2017.
Candlelight was really important to Amy and Andrew and over 300 candles were used to create this fabulous romantic wedding.
The ceremony took place in the cathedral like space of Buck Hall and we decorated the huge fireplace with ivy, seasonal greenery and white hydrangea heads. Candles were used on top of the fireplace, in the fireplace and lining the aisle; it looked absolutely stunning and so did the gorgeous Amy.
We stayed on site to turn the room around for the dinner with the caterers, Caper and Berry. The guests retired to the drawing room for canapés and champagne and within an hour the room was transformed with candleabra, white hydrangeas and hundreds of candles along the 108 foot of banqueting tables.
I can’t wait to see the official photos by Hajie as mine came out a little pink for some reason when it actually didn’t look pink!
Buck Hall dressed for the Wedding ceremony
Buck Hall dressed for the wedding dinner
Macaron tower by Sylvia’s Kitchen
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,...!
I realise I've got some serious catching up to do on my blog posts to get everything up to date!
Back in a June we worked with lovely Mauricio and his team at The Admirable Critchton on a fabulous birthday banquet for their clients who were staying at Cowdray House for the weekend.
The colour theme was rich reds and oranges with an abundance of candlelight and the tables were set in a horseshoe shape around a dance floor.
As we left Cowdray House a team of actors were rehearsing their steps for the murder mystery game that would be unfolding throughout the evening. The stage looked set for a really fun evening and I understand that the clients had a really fabulous time.
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
There are so many incredible, beautiful, seasonal, native flowers around in the Spring.
Keeping it strictly seasonal in floristry is so easy in the Springtime and we're absolutely spoilt for choice.
Here are just a few of the fabulous home grown ingredients I've been using this week in my bunches at Cowdray Farm Shop.
Hellebores, forget me nots and muscari
Frittilaries, ranunculus, hellebores, paperwhite narcissi
Snowflake snowdrop
Green Iris
There usually comes a point at Christmas when the wreaths slow down and the bouquets, table decorations and bulb planters take over. Not this year though, we're still working on wreath orders through to Christmas Eve and we're busier than ever with the other flowers and bulb planters.
I'm not complaining though, it's such a joy to be a florist at Christmas and help people to decorate thir homes; I love the interactions and chats with clients, I love the true creativity of bespoke floristry and I love the challenges of working with real seasonal materials.
Happy Christmas to all my wonderful customers and thank you for helping me to live This Floral Life!
Well, it's a floral time of year and the last few weeks have been incredibly busy for us at This Floral Life.
We've been making lots of wreaths, table decorations, planters and flowers for the Cowdray Farm shop and decorating trees, houses and shops for Christmas. It's been really hard work but so lovely and beautifully festive. It's a great time of year to be a florist!
We've worked on some gorgeous events recently and this weekend we set up gorgeous Christmas tablescape for a private dinner at Cowdray House, Midhurst.
The dinner was in the fabulous Buck Hall and with the huge Christmas tree, balcony fireplace garlands that we installed last week, the room looked amazing. With the fire lit and hundreds of candles around the room, the stage was set for a magical Christmas event.
I really enjoy taking photos and I'm surrounded by so many fab photo opportunities all day long. With close up photography you get to see so much more detail and I find it fascinating.
Take leaves as an example. Just photograph one leaf selected at random and you get to really study how amazing nature is....
I've been looking forward to October as, apart from the amazing Autumn flowers, foliage, seedheads that appear, I've also got an action packed month of weddings, dinners and parties to arrange flowers for in addition to some lovely family celebrations to look forward to.
The weather has been incredible and although we've had some heavy rain in the last week we've also had many glorious days with bright blue skies, sunshine and sensational sunsets.
Shorter days, turning leaves, cooler evenings, a garden full of fabulous hips and berries and gorgeous grasses; Autumn has finally arrived.
Autumn flower urn
Some of the ingredients I'm using this week at Cowdray Farm Shop
Autumn Dahlia
Lanterns
It's been an incredibly busy start to the year but I always make time to photograph my flowers. I love capturing flowers in season and have been documenting some of my favourite spring flowers. I've been using all of these in my bouquets at the Cowdray Farm shop.
I've been documenting some incredible tulips, recently.
I'm in awe of their beauty, colours and the parrot tulip in full flight are incredible.
Parrot tulips at home
It was an incredibly busy March in the flower studio with Mothering Sunday in the first week and Easter in the last.
These events are huge 'peaks' in the flower business and although it's exceptionally hard work it's also really enjoyable. I loved this year more than any other as in addition to the fabulous variety of spring flowers I get to play with for my flower bouquets and bunches I also get to design planted bulb arrangements which I absolutely adore.
Magnolia blossom
Bridal Crown Narcissi and Muscari planter for Cowdray House
Planted willow basket with Bridal Crown Narcissi for Cowdray House
Bringing the outside inside is even more important when Easter is cold and wet, as it was for at least some of the bank holiday weekend. Watching the bulbs grow and unfold their flowers and witnessing the flowering branches of forsythia, chaenomelis, cherry blossom and magnolia burst into flower is sheer joy.
I've lost count of the number of Easter 'trees' I've made this year for the displays at Cowdray Farm shop and Cafe, clients, friends and myself. Branches of contorted willow, birch branches with catkins, real painted blown eggs and sweet little birds make fun Easter arrangements and, after Easter, you can remove the eggs and enjoy the branches which will burst into leaf heralding the arrival of Spring.
One of my all time favourite Spring flowering bulbs is Fritillaria Meleagris.
You may have heard them referred to buy their common names of Snakes Head Fritillaries, Dropping Tulip, Chequerboard Daffodil or Chess Flower; all rather accurate descriptions of these gorgeous little nodding flowers.
Unlike most Spring flowering bulbs which like well drained soil, Fritillaria Meleagris like damp conditions and are happy to be planted at the edges of damp woodlands or in wild flower meadows and will flowers from March to May.
The exquisitely beautiful native wild flowers are members of the Lily family and their colours range from pink and white, purple and white to plain white. I love the purple and white chequerboard ones.
I've planted up some Fritillaria Meleagris in lovely zinc bowls to sell at The Cowdray Farm Shop, on The Cowdray Estate, here in Midhurst where I provide all of the cut flowers and plants. I'm also including the cut flowers in the bouquets I sell as I love to surprise and delight customers with something unusual and seasonal.
I have a little bunch of these glorious cut flowers on my own kitchen table as I like to test the vase life of all of the flowers I sell. I'm happy to report that they are looking fabulous on day 5 and they look set to continue for at least another 5 days!
It's a floral life!
I grew up with parents who adored gardening and growing their own fruit, vegetables and flowers. Our garden was small but really beautiful and full of delicious scents and textures and there was an allottment a short walk away which was a fun place to go on a Sunday afternoon. The shed had curtains and there was always a whistling kettle and kale-a-plenty. My grandparents had the 'plot' next door to ours and it really was a home from home.
My Mother always had flowers in the house and and I know that she, like me, found them fascinating and intoxicating. She trained herself to be a florist by reading library books on floristry techniques. She was a very creative person; a talented dressmaker, excellent cook, artist and writer.
They say the apple never falls far from the tree and my interests turned out to be very similar to hers; the seed was planted very early on.
