Five Florists, Five Designs: Celebrating British Flowers Week with the Garden Museum
This article originally appeared on Culture24.
The Garden Museum is joining with British Flowers Week (15 – 19 June at New Covent Garden Flower Market) to highlight the work of five floral artist’s for a special event offering insights into fragrance, freshness and seasonality. Here they are with some of their floral designs
Stephen Wicks and Mark Welford
There is a distinct sense of the theatrical in the work of Stephen Wicks and Mark Welford of Bloomsbury Flowers. They celebrate the natural, organic beauty of flowers with their unpretentious design style with masculine twist.
Stephen Wicks and Mark Welford of Bloomsbury Flowers.© Courtesy British Flowers Week
A forest of alliums and poppyheads , salvia, nepeta, aquilegia and globe artichoke appears to grow from within the tin trunk. The design is inspired by Stephen’s memories of his father’s garden and of being packed off to White Lodge, the Royal Ballet School, with a trunk full of his possessions. © Courtesy British Flowers Week
Like mini city scapes, towers of alliums stand tall from the solid old French pot, as the contorted stems of allium ophioscorodon weave between them.© Courtesy British Flowers WeekThe work of Hattie Fox of That Flower Shop is free, loose and wild and a glorious celebration of the natural world. Her style lends itself naturally to British flowers and foliages, where no two stems are the same and where seasonality is everything. Hattie has an extraordinary feel for colour and texture and passion for an unsung hero: British foliage.
Hattie Fox of That Flower Shop© Courtesy British Flowers Week
Wild and loose and overflowing with locally-grown nepeta, delphinium, astrantia, ox-eye daisies, foxgloves, stocks, peonies offset by the green tones of hornbeam, cotoneaster, a hint of silver eucalyptus, and the yellow pop of euonymous and golden privet. © Courtesy British Flowers Week
White leaf (hornbeam), eucalyptus, variegated euonymous, cotoneaster and rosemary and frame this low retro ceramic vase and its warm tones of deep ruby red peonies, cornflowers, astrantia, sweet William, valerian and allium bulgaricum lifting to coral sweet peas and soft lilac allium. © Courtesy British Flowers WeekThe work of Brazilian born Zita Elze is imbued with emotion, romance and an ethereal beauty. There is a painstaking attention to the fine, intricate details, and a true sense of the emotion that has been invested in its creation. British flowers become works of art in her hands.
Zita Esle © Courtesy British Flowers Week
British flowers meet haute couture in this exquisite dress. The fitted bodice made with individual flowerheads of larkspur, clematis, delphinium, nepeta, astrantia, nigella and cornflowers interspersed with jewels leads down to a flowing skirt of cascading larkspur stems.© Courtesy British Flowers Week
The base itself is decorated with tiny dried scabious pods softened by trailing MOSS and briza. The vase erupts into a fountain of grasses, towering stems of larkspur, delphinium, salvias, scabious, nepeta, cornflower, ox-eye daisies.© British Flowers WeekCharlotte Slade is part of the Creative Team at Jane Packer Flowers, one of the most famous and celebrated florists and flower schools in the world. Renowned for minimal, bold, structured or understated simplicity, Jane Packer Flowers are both distinctively elegant and refreshingly modern.
Charlotte Slade of Jane Packer Flowers© Courtesy British Flowers Week
Sail bouquet by Jane Packer Flowers© Courtesy British Flowers WeekYoung florist, Jay Archer, specialises in natural, seasonal wedding floristry with an English Garden aesthetic. Her work has appeared in pretty much every UK wedding magazine and has won recognition and industry awards.
Jay Archer© Jay Archer / Courtesy British Flowers Week
Jay Archer, Riot of Spring Flowers© Courtesy British Flowers WeekBritish Flowers Week (15-19 June), now in its third year, encompasses events, promotions and competitions to celebrate the floral bounty of Britain and showcase the growing number of florists who are using it. See www.newcoventgardenmarket.com/britishflowersweek for more information.
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