The Midnight Garden for British Flowers Week

11/7/2018

This year's British Flowers Week fell between 13 and 19 June 2018, and in honour of the occasion I paid a visit to The Midnight Garden Flower Farm with a group of other florists for a tour of the walled garden and a #nofloralfoam workshop using flowers from Cathy's beautiful garden.

When we got there Cathy gave a short presentation about her garden, her design style and outlined what we would be doing that day. We then went for a tour of the garden and got to suss out some of the beautiful flowers she had growing.

Some of those flowers included ammi, cornflowers, nigella, poppies and sweet peas.

There were also a number of stunning rose bushes, which had clearly been there for years and years judging by the size of them! This one below was growing up and over an old derelict greenhouse which carnations used to be grown in, and it just looked amazing! Cathy thought the only reason the greenhouse was still standing was because the rose was holding it all in place, but clearly would have been really beautiful when it was in use. Another greenhouse on the site had been restored to its former glory and that made for a really impressive building so I'm sure this one would have been no different.

There was also this beautiful red rose growing up this old brick wall which made for a great contrast. Unfortunately it didn't have much of a scent!

After finishing the tour we had a quick lunch and then it was on to making our urn arrangements! We chose a bucket of some flowers that had been prepared in advance and then Cathy let us cut a few bits from the garden to compliment them. I went for a pastel mix of white and peach, with a few pops of bright pink and some blue cornflowers. We used chicken wire to make a framework that sat inside the urn and which the flowers were then arranged into. Cathy gave us free reign to design the arrangement however we liked, and it was so interesting to see what everyone came up with!

Sneaky photo caught of us working on our arrangements - that's a strong look of concentration on my face! Either that or something wasn't going where I wanted it to go!