I’ve just spent a truly joyful morning cutting early summer flowers for a funeral later this week. The flowers came from a real gardener’s garden – rambling, slightly wild and completely magical. I was caught in the act of exclaiming “Oooooh!” as I pulled into the flower fringed driveway on arrival at the 1970s house which sat wrapped around by mature trees, meadow grass intersected with mown paths, scented roses and self-sown columbines. It held secret floral treasures at every turn.
Judy’s daughter found me via my website and luckily was only a few miles away, so we were easily able to fix up a date for me to visit the garden with scissors and flower buckets in hand to collect ingredients. When I arrange to visit gardens to do this, I never know how much material I’ll leave with – tidy gardens with well pruned shrubs often offer surprisingly little as they’re bushy with somewhat amputated, stubby growth. Such shrubs don’t excite me when I walk into an unfamiliar garden. But Judy’s garden took my breath away. Everywhere foliage grew long and leafy on trees, on shrubs and in the flower beds. Roses rambled and reached for the clouds, lacy spirea frothed in the hedgerow, columbines seeded in crevices and daisies waved their sunny faces as I wandered past like a child in a sweet shop wondering what to cut next.
Loveliest of all, I was accompanied on much of my visit by Judy’s six year old grandson, complete with tiger t-shirt (and occasional roaring from behind the bushes), and we chatted about flowers, assorted cousins, his dog and various other topics as he delightedly dashed about with his own secateurs and a spare bucket which I gave him to fill with the flowers he liked for his grandma.
Judy obviously loved her garden and I discovered loads of plants we have in common. It had a wonderfully wayward charm and I loved the way it had slightly escaped control to create such a natural, welcoming space. I can’t think of any nicer way to remember a passionate gardener (no-one has a garden like hers if they’re not – it would be any low maintenance enthusiast’s nightmare!) than to use the flowers she loved and nurtured. Having her grandson chattering and picking alongside with me on a glorious sunny morning, and meeting and talking with her daughter was an absolute delight. It’s been one of those days when in spite of everything else going on with Covid, weddings and restrictions, I feel so lucky to be able to do the job I love and vindicated in my determination to offer people an alternative to ‘mum’ writ large in chyrsanthemums as a send off. I’ve a feeling Judy and I would have seen eye to eye on that one as well!
If you’re a florist reading this and you’d like to join the growing number of people wanting to bring funeral flowers into a more personal and eco-friendly present, visit my Green Funeral Flowers online course. The world needs you!