Putting on a show

The tulips have been marvellous this year. Here they are placed in a simple vase - they make their own show with their constant growth and movement. Spring is a great time for workshops. As you all know I don`t use floral foam (otherwise known as oasis) which doesn`t work well with spring flowers because they have delicate stems and they need lots of water. It can be a bit of a challenge thinking up ways of making arrangements in water that don`t just look like vases, jugs or jars. A few weeks ago I ran a workshop to create a rectangular design in a pretty crate:

The spring flowers we used were ranunculus (red and white), tulips, several kinds of narcissi, bluebells and yellow iris.

The results were splendid - the crates were robust, beautiful and perfectly rectangular! Here are a few of them.

Perhaps the best kind of flower show is at a wedding. I ran a really enjoyable and productive DIY wedding workshop in March. The participants were two mother and daughter teams - both daughters getting married on the same day in August. They had already planned their colour schemes, so I was able to source flowers in their chosen colours to really give them a sense of what their wedding flowers would look like. The first colour scheme was a vibrant mix of bright colours:

The other was very different - just classy white and greens:

We made posies, bouquets and buttonholes and experimented with flowers in bottles, teapots and jam jars. I was so busy working with individuals on their designs, I had no time to take any photos. But Shirley, one of the participants took a few - so a big thank you to her for sending me these pictures of everyone hard at work.

All the participants produced gorgeous results and went away feeling confident that they could do their own wedding flowers. Hurrah! Here is a little taste of what they made:

Finally, a couple of pretty jugs that I put together for my home. First just narcissi and bluebells. Then a jug filled with abundant, glorious spring flowers.

I can`t sign off before giving you a sense of the brilliant show that our garden has produced this spring - you can see tulips, hellebore, narcissi and blubells. It has been simply wonderful.