Week 29 - learning the art of floristry

I have always loved flowers. There is a blatantly obvious reason why for me; colour.  But its not just about that, its the smell, the way they look and more than anything else, the way they make me feel.   Looking at a massive bunch of lillies in front of me right now (my favourite flower) its something slightly intangible, its a beauty that I can't quite comprehend, its life in technicolour and makes you feel alive and special. I absolutely adore getting given or sent a bunch of flowers, its a very, simple but lovely thing.  

In actual fact, I love to buy flowers for myself too, so it would seem utterly appropriate to do a floristry workshop and learn how to make a stunning bouquet myself.  Of course, in London, where else was this going to be but Hackney, at a rather fabulous florist called Rebel Rebel. Owned by Athena and Mairead, both disillusioned with the TV world and wanting to do something different, they started Rebel Rebel back in 2000.  I pottered along to their studio near Broadway Market this week for an evening of fun, flowers and foliage.   

The studio was crammed to the rafters with all sorts of flowers, vases, bottles, urns, ribbons, equipment and everything else making it a bit of a tight squeeze but wholly lived-in and fit for purpose.  We all stood round a large, wooden worktop with some nibbles and drinks and listened to our teacher, Lucy tell us about the flowers that we would be working with; all British and always sourced from Covent Garden flower market.  I didn't even know there was a flower market in Covent Garden but then again, why would I, when the hours of business are 1am until 9am?  Lets go raving with the florists!

We put all of our flowers on top of the workbench and started conditioning the stems.  Essentially this is making sure any leaves or stray stalks that would sit in the vase are stripped away.  This is to prevent any leaves falling into the vase of water and causing a horrendous, muggy stink as the foliage  sits and dies in the water over time.  Basically, the stems all need to be clean.

Whilst stripping the stems, Lucy took us through all of the flowers we were using for our bouquets.  I knew very few of them, only Roses and Dahlias.  We also had Scabious (sounds like a disease), Cornflowers, Bupleurum (sounds like a drug), Cosmos and Veronicas.  I laid them out from left to right.

Once the stems were all conditioned, we then went to pick some greenery to add to the bouquets.  I chose some gorgeous rosemary stalks, eucalyptus and a couple of other big bits of foliage.  We also used some geranium, which has a lovely lemony smell.  When everything was laid out bare, it looked like a botanical blanket spread across the wood.

Then, it was time to start putting together our bouquets.  Its not just simply a case of grabbing the bunch and tying it together, it is quite a time-consuming process, taking each stalk individually and  placing it in a considered manner.  The stems should be spiralled in order to create a neat bouquet that is easy to handle.  There is a multitude of colours, shapes, lengths and looks so there is certainly a level of artistry required to make something beautiful.  I sort of knew what I was doing but ultimately I didn't know how it was going to turn out. 

For some, its a really meticulous and long process and I can see why. Quite incredibly, everybody's bunches looked utterly unique even though we all had pretty much the same flowers at the start.  Everyone works through it in a very different way and has their own unique style.  I'm not sure I liked mine the best, it seemed a lot less compact than some of the others but I think thats because I chose quite large foliage.  Nevertheless, I was pretty impressed.

We then tied our bouquets and clipped the stems so they were all equal length.  You always make sure to cut them diagonally so that they soak up the most water.  We were then given some tissue paper and cellophane wrap to package up the bouquets.

Finally, we made little water baths, called "aqua packs" around the stems, to keep the flowers fresh for our journeys home.  My bouquet was pretty cumbersome and returning from East to West was not all that easy, but I was rewarded once I got home with a cornucopia of colour and life in my kitchen, which always makes me happy.