I have always found it fascinating to learn how other people arrive at their chosen career paths so I thought I would share mine. Working with flowers was not something I had ever considered but it’s funny how sometimes we stumble into things only to realise that they completely make sense. Growing up as an only child I was very curious about the world but also very shy. I would spend hours studying plants, flowers and insects, I loved their patterns, shapes and textures. I remember spending hours drawing foxgloves in our garden and my Gran’s strange dried flower arrangements. My ambition was to be an Artist and I have a strong memory of always wanting to have a different life from everyone else. I wasn’t sure how it was going to happen but I knew that having the freedom to follow my creative whims was a driving force.
Fast forward to my early twenties and after studying for my degree 3D Crafts at Brighton University, I set up as a silversmith/goldsmith and made precious metal jewellery, working to commission and selling at galleries throughout the UK. All my designs were based on plants, seed heads and patterns found in nature. After a particularly stressful commission I decided to take a full time job that I had been asked to apply for, teaching art at a leading independent school in Cambridge. I left jewellery behind and focused on teaching, aiming to inspire my students to study art beyond A level. I loved teaching but was also desperate to pursue my own creative path so I managed to persuade the headteacher to let me study for an MA in illustration whilst continuing to teach part time. This was all in the pipeline until I found out I was pregnant with identical twins. What a shock! My partner and I had only just got engaged and were planning our wedding and a lengthy honeymoon travelling around Scandinavia. We wanted to have children but a few years down the line and twins were definitely not part of the plan.
We got married a few months later at Wandlebury Country Park and we were on a tight budget so I decided that I would put the flowers together myself. I had no prior experience of working with flowers and it was pure naivety and a handful of YouTube videos on making a handtied bouquet that got me through. Looking back at photos of the flowers now I cringe but I was really pleased at the time and spending the day before our wedding making table arrangements and bouquets is one of my favourite memories.
After our wedding I felt really inspired to do more floristry but my twin boys Kasper and Griffin were born two months early and unfortunately Kasper had to be transferred to Great Ormand Street for a life saving operation. The pregnancy had not been easy and the prospect of loosing one of my babies and not being able to see the other one as he was still in hospital in Cambridge took its toll on my mental health. I suffered what I describe now as a breakdown whilst we were in London but the wonderful nurses and psychologists helped me enormously while we were there. After both boys were eventually discharged from hospital, it was full on. I was recovering from the trauma of the previous few months whilst being exceptionally sleep deprived and trying to deal with two very hungry babies. The idea of ever doing anything remotely creative again was completely alien to me, I felt cut of from everyone. How could I think about making art whilst knee deep in nappies and baby paraphernalia, if I managed to eat some healthy food and get more than three hours of sleep a night then I was winning.
After a couple of years things started to get a little bit easier at home, the boys were healthy and I was much less riddled with anxiety. Friends started to ask me to put their wedding flowers together for them. It was mainly bouquets and buttonholes but I loved it, it felt wonderful to be doing something creative but also doing something helpful for someone else. After this I started to look for a floristry course I could go to in the evening. I managed to find one locally and loved every Wednesday evening learning about flowers, how to care for them and how to create simple arrangements. I was still working part time as a teacher at this point but was desperate to leave, juggling motherhood with the demands of working in a prestigious school was too much for me. One evening I sat down with my husband and worked out if we could afford for me to give up my job, we knew it would be a struggle but agreed I should do it.
I started to buy flowers in small quantities and practised making up bouquets and arrangements, I then spent time photographing them and sharing the images on social media. I began to get enquiries about weddings quite quickly from this point and things just grew from there. It still amazes me that I somehow manged to grow a business out of seemingly nothing. I had a strong belief that I could do it and somehow that got me through. I have learnt so much along the way and have picked up lots of tricks from other florists which I am so grateful for.
As well as drawing on my knowledge and experience of working with flowers I also use my art background. I still think about composition, tone, colour and texture when creating with flowers, it’s just in a different form. I am inspired by art, interiors and fashion but I find inspiration everywhere, a rusty drainpipe on the side of a building or a pile of logs I spot out on a walk. I also really love working with a natural, fragile material. As soon as a flower blooms it is in the process of dying so I only have a short amount of time to use it. This is perfect for a chronic procrastinator like me as it forces me to get started. I also really appreciate the impermanence of flowers, I don’t have a stack of paintings or sculptures lying around that I have to store. I can take a photo which serves as a memory but apart from that they are gone and I can start afresh with a new bunch.
The past year of living with a pandemic has been very hard in terms of running a business. Weddings and events have been cancelled or postponed which has been tough. From a personal perspective though, the time away has been very creative. I have so many fresh ideas for how I would like to use flowers outside of a floristry context. Hopefully I will be able to bring some of these ideas to fruition over the coming months. Flowers are the material I love to work with but I feel like I am only getting started in exploring what I can do with them. Floral installations in unexpected places are something I really want to make in 2021 so watch this space.