Pots of Fun!

My quest to find my creative bone continues. I'm sure I have one, -  so far no luck, but I'm having a lot of fun trying! There's nothing I like better than being elbow deep in glitter and gunge, and if my efforts so far have not been all that could be desired - well, so what? I'm having a ball, and friends and family are terribly polite about their lumpy, misshapen gifts, so I have no intention of giving up just yet.
Yesterday my search took me to Bunches and Pots in Putney, to try my hand at flower arranging. Well you never know - maybe I'm a master florist at heart! Anyway surely it's just a question of jabbing flowers into a pot - how hard can it be? My lovely friend Sophie Flowers came with me. (I only realised just now how funny that is. How wonderful! That will keep me amused for a while). Anyway, over the course of the morning I discovered there was rather more to the business than I thought.

There were only five of us in the class, which I thought was perfect - though actually it transpired that three people had failed to turn up. Maybe it was because of the snow? Well, it was their loss. Unsurprisingly we were all women, as were the lovely florists training us, and there was a lovely girly atmosphere in the training shed from the beginning, despite the weather.

After a brief safety training we began by dunking our oasis - I love oasis! -  in buckets of water and plant food. "Don't push them into the water! Let them sink by themselves or they'll develop air pockets." I watched as Sophie impatiently stared at her floating oasis, before surreptitiously poking hers to the bottom. What do you know? A tell tale little air pocket. "Oh well." said the phlegmatic Sophie. "I'll just shave it off." Indeed, we were now expected to shave our oasis into the required rounded shape with stanley knives. I hate those things.  Everybody else's was carefully and delicately shaved - mine looked as though it had been gouged by a mad five year old. Never mind, I shall cover it with greenery.

After we had strapped the oasis safely into its pot, here indeed came the greenery.

Because I'm rubbish I can't remember for the life of me what the first lot of beautiful green leaves was called. I really should have written it down but I was far too busy enjoying myself creating a "collar" of fronds to hide the pot and the sides of the oasis. I think maybe it began with R. Anyway it's very lovely, and was made even lovelier when sprayed with magic spray which makes the leaves all shiny! Plant polish!

Before -

After -

Um. Well, you'll just have to take my word from it that it looked A LOT better after the spray, which apparently also helps to preserve the leaves. I learned that when you cut stalks you need to make sure to cut them on the diagonal, and absolutely not on the knuckle, or they don't drink properly.The stalks then have to be pushed about an inch into the oasis, to get at the water.

I remember the name of the next lot of leafy stuff, because it was Eucalyptus! We were told that we could either layer the two types, or just randomly mix them up. Guess which I chose.The contrast of the dark and light leaves was just magical, but I started to worry at this point that my bouquet looked a bit straggly. Especially looking around the table at the neat little pots in front of the others, but they very kindly assured me that mine looked "natural" Hmm. I've been told that about my hair before, and it's never been a good thing. I tried a bit of trimming but it made absolutely no difference, so I gave up and decided it would be transformed once the flowers were in. And here came the flowers!

Glorious roses and lilies- these were our statement pieces. The idea being that we should use maybe four or five to draw the eye in our final bouquet, before the filler flowers were added. I am a sucker for anything orange, so I picked some gorgeously tropical lilies - with buds, I want my arrangement to last as long as possible - and orange roses. Ta da! 

Ok, still messy but better. I thought that the filler flowers would be tiny delicate little things like gypsophila, but no - hot pink carnations, red berries, powder blue thistles - a riot of colour. We were told to use these to cover the rest of the arrangement, to make sure there was no oasis showing. Well there was no chance of that - after getting thoroughly carried away with our greenery and statement flowers the challenge for all of us at this point was to actually find a spare patch of oasis left! Apparently the thing not to do is to keep changing  your mind and moving your flowers once you've poked them in, as the oasis can start to fall apart which would obviously be disastrous. In honour of my marvellous Scottish boyfriend I went for some blue thistles, to make a contrast with my vibrant orange flowers. I think I may have caught a few dubious glances from around the table at this point, but I was far too excited to care and continued blithely ahead with my artistic efforts. 

And here it is. Hurrah! Ok I'm not sure I'd even be able to sell it at a coffee morning, but what the hey, I'm proud of it. 

In the interest of fairness, I feel I have to show you Sophie's stunning bouquet too, though I'd far rather not as you'll only make unfair comparisons. What can I say, she's artistic! 

Perfection achieved, we were given a quick tutorial on how to make a buttonhole or corsage. This was actually a lot harder than the big arrangements, involving a lot of physical exertion, wire and florist tape.

  I had no idea how much work went into these tiny little sprigs of pretty, but I'm genuinely thrilled that I know how to make them. I have every intention of demanding to make them for every wedding I attend in the future, whether they want me to or not. 

So here we all are, exhausted but happy and proud of ourselves. I can thoroughly recommend these courses at Bunches and Pots; the content is just the right level; easy to follow without being patronising, and when you leave you really feel as though you have learned something useful. The ladies are fun, kind and they really know their stuff. They certainly don't skimp on the materials either - straggly or not my arrangement is whopping, eye-catching and I think it is utterly glorious, almost putting my shabby coffee table to shame. What a wonderful way to spend a snowy  Saturday morning. http://www.bunchesandpots.co.uk/