Anyone who knows me knows just how buzzy the bee in my bonnet is where green funeral flowers are concerned. They’re one of the things that pushed me off down the flowery path after seeing people’s responses to the wild garden flowers I arranged for my brother-in-law Steve, an ecologist, twitcher and conservationist, whilst I was still working as a teacher.
When searching for inspiration for these, my first ever funeral flowers, I was, quite frankly, horrified at what I saw – anything termed ‘funeral’ was just too regimented, stiff and formal to be right for either Steve or for my sister. And later, as I looked at his wild bushy hedgerow of flowers outside the crem, attended by the odd hoverfly and bee, in the midst of a sea of floral letters, shapes and pictures, they really did seem to be flowers which were swimming against the tide. As his co-workers at the Norfolk Wildlife Trust stood naming all the different ingredients they could spot as they chatted, I started to think that it wasn’t just me and my mad relatives who wanted something different for funerals. And so a seed was planted which, a few years later, grew into Tuckshop Flowers.
My passion for funeral flowers has only grown since then. Over time I’ve woven so many different family experiences and strands of life stories into these final flowers and it’s one of the creative challenges which I love best. Working with fabulous local undertakers A Natural Undertaking (Kings Heath) has meant that I get plenty of these challenges as Carrie and Fran, who run the company, help people to create just the kind of funerals they want. Some of my best and most original ideas have come from their clients, like arrangements that you can take apart into tied bouquets to share with family and friends. Ideas so lovely that I’ve gone on to make them part of my funeral repertoire.
I’m always shocked when I go to crematoriums, to see just how much floral foam is the backbone of the current funeral flowers industry and surely in this age of plastic reduction, this has to start to change? Once the flowers are over, this foam does not biodegrade and goes only into landfill where it breaks down into micro plastics – not the best legacy a funeral can leave.
For the past 4 years I’ve run practical workshops on natural funeral flowers which look at both the arranging and business aspects of this work. For nearly as long it’s been at the back of my mind that this would make a great online course because I’m often contacted by people who can’t make it to Birmingham to attend the workshop asking if there is any way they can engage with it via distance learning.
As a teacher, I always loved materials writing, so the notion of putting together an online course has always had strong appeal, but as my business has grown with weddings and workshops, the time to write the course was in very short supply. Lockdown has changed that, with the postponement of weddings to 2021, so I’ve seized this quieter spell as an opportunity to finally commit my workshop content to an online course format and am pleased to say that on Saturday I push the magic button that says “PUBLISH” !
I’ve done a couple of online courses myself (in photography, and one in arty floristry) over the past two years, partly because I’m interested in their content, and partly to research what it’s like to be an online student: the one thing I’ve loved is being able to study at my own convenience, fitting the lessons in around work and family life, and having course projects to escape into as a treat – whilst all the time moving my practice on.
The social distancing restrictions imposed by the Coronavirus crisis also mean that I can’t currently offer group workshops so this new model seems the perfect way to help people meet and engage with like-minded folk via the accompanying Facebook group where they can go to share their work and compare notes – the next best thing to being in a room together!
I’m looking forward to welcoming all those who have already signed up to the world inside my head on Saturday, and if you’d like to join them or see more details about the course visit the Green Funeral Flowers for full details.