Workshops at Tuckshop Flowers
Wondering what’s it like to do a 1:1 floristry workshop here at Tuckshop Flowers? Read all about Chloe’s day spent with me practising statement arrangements, talking business and capturing her handiwork.
Chloe contacted me early in the new year to ask about 1:1 floristry workshops and as soon as we chatted on the phone to discuss the specifics of what she wanted to practise during the day I knew that we were going to get on. Based in Leamington Spa, she works from home and grows flowers in her garden and allotment to add something special to her floristry business, Honesty Flowers. Sounds like my astral twin!!
Choosing the flowers
In early March my garden doesn’t yield lots of ingredients as we’re at the seed sowing end of the year rather than the picking bucketloads stage but I did have twirly stems of honeysuckle foliage, wispy branches of spirea dotted with bright green emerging leaves, sunny daffodils, chunky stems of lime green hellebores, the denser foliage of Portuguese laurel and yellow studded forsythia branches to add seasonal touches to the selection of commercial flowers which included bright double tulips, Cornish ranunculus and dainty white leucojum and a stunning white allium which took my breath away when I spotted it at the wholesale market.
Choosing the vessels
Chloe fell in love with one of my vintage vessels (aka a prize charity shop find) and using chicken wire to support the flowers, she proceeded to make a stunning urn arrangement with an unerring eye for bright colour combinations. The great thing about workshops is that you can explore techniques and combinations, talking aloud with others as you work, free of the pressures of time and design involved in producing an arrangement to order. It’s the ‘treat’ aspect of floristry which people imagine fills the days of self-employed flower folk. In reality it’s one of the creative and lovely parts of the job which gets you hooked and is a compensation for the more prosaic fact that you spend more of your time on websites, accounting, sweeping up, bucket washing, lugging things about, digging, weeding and writing quotes! But when you can create arrangements like these using the best of the season, it puts a huge smile on your face and a spring in your step like no other job.
What we talked about
It was great fun to chat about flowers all day with Chloe and to compare the joys and pressures of working from home, of growing your own flowers and of turning your passion into a sustainable business both in terms of ecology and in the financial sense. When you work on your own it’s so good to have the opportunity to share ideas and skills with other people and also to talk your head off about the stuff that fills your brain – it’s a delight to spend hours with chatting someone who ‘gets it’ rather glazing over at the first hints of small business discussion, growing notes or floristry tips!
Photographing flowers is a key part of marketing so as well as being a topic which I cover during workshops, I also share any images I capture of my visitors at work and their beautiful creations so they have them at their disposal to use on their own websites and social media to show off the loveliness they create! Chloe’s urn made me grin and take more pictures every time I caught a glimpse of it from a different angle as I moved down my hallway! I think you’ll agree that she did a fantastic job.
Interested in learning more?
If you’d like to practise a particular aspect of floristry and would like to discuss a bespoke 1:1 floristry workshop, just get in touch. We can work out the practicalities of what you’d like to cover, costs and possible dates.