Beautiful British flowers
arranged by a beginner (me) at CommonFarmFlowers

Up early to head off to Somerset with flower friend to learn how to make a hand tied bouquet and jam jar posies at CommonFarmFlowers with Georgie Newbery. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was there to learn about flower farming. That was a full day’s intensive course packed with useful advice and was excellent. Today’s course was just a few hours long and more leisurely, but still full of things to learn and excellent too.

Growing flowers and learning about how to do it is hugely exciting for me and the more I learn the happier it makes me feel. Arranging them? Not so much…

But I want to grow flowers to sell at my local farmers markets and don’t think I can just rely on the kind help of my confident and artistic friends. Previous courses and attempts have not helped. Tangled up in stems, I have become even grumpier than usual.

Today, after Georgie’s clear and accessible demonstration of how to do a hand tied bunch I had a surge of optimism that this time it was going to be different. Then it was time to begin and blank anxiety set in for just more than a moment. Everyone was jolly and Georgie was encouraging and so I decided just to get on with it. My bunch turned out to look like a bunch of beautiful flowers.

Lots of lovely flowers to take home

Though not as aesthetically lovely as some others it is looking natural, fresh and bright on my kitchen table.

On kitchen table

We also learned how to make jam pot posies with the lovely flowers which were left over and these miniature bunches were just as beautiful and, as I was working on a smaller scale, less daunting.

Now I just need the flowers to get growing, though I can’t imagine they will be as perfect as these.