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.

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