Last Monday I went on a natural floristry workshop at The Flower Orchard in Layer Marney, which is owned by Karen and the workshop was run by Denise from The Garden Gate. The workshop involved five florists - me, Kelly from Miss Fleur Floral Design, Tasha from Azur Flowers, Sian from Flowers by Sian and Alana from Alana Sinead flowers. We also had Grace Hill come along to take photographs of our arrangements and Sophie Curson came to model our bouquets.

We used all seasonal, British grown flowers, which is something new for me but I can definitely appreciate the benefits over buying wholesale - the ranunculus especially had a much larger head and a lovely scent, as did the narcissus. And a week and a half later some of them are still hanging in there! We made a foam free table arrangement and a natural hand tied bouquet over the course of the day and as it was a new style for all of us it was great to learn together and give each other feedback. Everyone did a great job, I've made some lovely new friends and we're already planning our next workshop!

Links below:

The Flower Orchard: www.theflowerorchard.co.uk
The Garden Gate: www.thegardengate-southwold.co.uk
Miss Fleur Floral Design: www.missfleurfloraldesign.co.uk
Azur Flowers: www.azurflowers.com
Flowers by Sian: www.flowersbysian.com
Alana Sinead flowers: www.instagram.com/alana_sinead_flowers
Photography by Grace Hill: www.photographybygrace.co.uk

I flowered a wonderful wedding in Bournemouth this weekend - that of my Uncle Rob and now Aunt Viv! So as well as doing the flowers I also attended as a guest. They wanted the garden/wildflower look, so I used a combination of delphiniums, nigella, antirrhinums, sweet peas, tanacetum, ammi, eryngium, lisianthus, waxflower, veronica, eucalyptus and asparagus fern, plus forget me nots, cowslips, epimedium, forsythia and bluebells cut from the garden. It made for a beautiful combination of flowers and colours!

​They got married at The Langtry Manor hotel in Bournemouth, which I actually stayed in last summer with my boyfriend so it was nice to go back! We had champagne and canapés at the hotel before moving on to a pub for a buffet and live band. My whole family was invited so as well as my parents my three siblings came, along with my brother's wife. There are some photos of us all at the end, in case you're interested (my dad really enjoyed being roped into carrying the flowers to the pub!) 

I had a good chat with the photographer (Tell Your Story Photography) so I'll share some of their photos once they're ready. But for now here's some of my photos, hope you like them!

Hi I'm Hannah, and welcome to my blog and website! Here I will keep you updated on all my flowery goings on but please also follow me on social media (links below).

So...a bit about me. I got into floristry three years ago when I was in a dead end office job and unsure what to do with my life. I'd studied Graphic Design at university and achieved a First Class Honours Degree, but this didn't really materialise into a career so I started working in the office just to have a job. My brother then got married in September 2013 and I helped do the flowers for the church and the venue. It was then that I realised that I loved working with flowers. I'd always liked looking at them but it had never occurred to me to work with them as a career. My mum suggested that I should combine my creativity with my love of flowers and study floristry. She's a pretty wise lady so the next week I started on the Intermediate College Certificate evening course at Writtle College. It all happened really fast and I was completely unprepared for the first week. However I soon realised that I could keep up with the other girls who had all done the Foundation course the year before, so if I could work at their level with no prior experience then I figured I would be pretty good at it.

Fast forward three years, I'm almost at the end of the Level 2 Diploma in floristry, I have a job working two days a week in a florist shop and my own business is up and running, working out of the workshop at the end of my garden. I've worked on some fabulous weddings so far and I have bookings for 2016 and 2017 coming thick and fast. Its been a bit of a whirlwind few years but I've loved every second of it and I'm so glad I listened to my mother! Oh and I like to blow my own trumpet a bit (we all should every now and again) so as a little brag...I've achieved a distinction in every single assessment set at college over the last two years (must be at least 40 of them by now), which is something no one else in the class has done. So I think it's fair to say that I am pretty good at this. 

So if you would like to chat wedding flowers, order a gift for a friend or just say hello...head on over to the contact page and send me a message :)

In case you were interested, here are lots of photos of my face. There are some flowers in there too, to keep it relevant you know.