I am so delighted to have received an invitation to the private view of the artist Penny White's extraordinary flower paintings at the John Martin Gallery in Albermarle Street, London this evening.

Penny White has organised this exhibition herself in order to raise money for the wonderful Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres which are totally reliant on private funding.
John Martin has gifted his gallery space in Mayfair for the exhibition and Penny will be donating the first £5000 of sales and thereafter half of all sales directly to the charity.

The roses in her paintings were grown on our Hampshire farm so I have sent a large bouquet of our roses and herbs over to the gallery today to help dress the space for the press and private view this evening.

Of her own work Penny says

Curiously, I do not think of myself as a 'flower painter', I am only interested in representing the flower. I try to paint the ephemeral quality of the flower, its soul, its scent, its colour, its pattern, its eroticism, that transient quality that for me is the flower.

The exhibition runs between 30th March and 10th April 2010, although it's closed for Easter between 2nd and 5th April.

Truly inspirational and worthwhile.

Simply beautiful.
Photographing roses is a joy!

Beautiful isn't it? Scented roses cascading down the candleabra...

On my recent to trip to France I visited St Emilion and driving along through the acres of wonderful vineyards which surround the town I saw for myself an ancient method of companion planting; roses planted at the edges vineyards.

Not only do the roses look beautiful but they also perform a very important role. Roses are more sensitive to the fungal diseases powdery mildew and downy mildew and by planting roses at the edges of the vineyard they serve as an early warning system to the vineyard teams as the roses will fall victim before the vines. The disease can be treated if caught in the early stages.

The roses also create an important habitat for some beneficial insects.

The Romans used this early warning system for their vines and they are also thought to have dropped rose petals into their wine as it was thought it was a cure for drunkeness!

Margaret Merril is in fine flush at the moment on our English Rose farm.

She is, in our opinion, one of the most beautiful roses that we grow in England and in terms of perfume she's unbeatable and quite unique.

Merril is the classic bridal rose, ivory not stark white, she often takes on a slight pink or peach blush to her petals depending on the weather. In bud she is a fine rose but when fully open, displaying her gold centre surrounded by flat, ivory, petals she is simply glorious.

The Real Flower Company offer Merril in hand tied bouquets, shower bouquets, bespoke wedding arrangements and as boxes of stems either mixed or with other ivory roses or on her own for brides who have friends to help make the flower arrangements.

Freshly picked from our English farm, the rose is available from June to the end of October and from our sustainable Kenyan farm throughout the Winter and Spring.

In association with The Real Flower Company and in honour of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, our friends over at Boxwish have written a lovely article featuring the top 5 fantastic floral films featuring roses.

Here are the chosen films. If you click on the links you can see the full review of the film on the Boxwish website:-
The Da Vinci Code
A rose is left behind everytime the sought after grail is moved!
Bed of Roses
A widowed man takes a shine to strong business woman, sending her roses to lift her spirits!
Youth Without Youth
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the rose is used to great effect as a metaphor for time and the cycle of life.
Beauty and the Beast
The rose is featured heavily throughout the film and the falling petals provide a clever visual reminder of the Beast's looming fate.
American Beauty
In this 1999 Oscar winning film the rose represents the forays into the sexual fantasies of frusrated office drone Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey)

Calling all men...scent is so important when sending your Valentine flowers!

Scent stirs the emotions and evokes fond memories for years to come each time the scent reappears.

We often receive correspondance from people saying that the scent of our roses brought tears (of happiness!) to their eyes when they opened the box. This is how powerfully scent is linked to memory and they often say how the scent of the roses brought back memories of their Grandparents rose garden, their wedding day or courtship.

Valentine's Day Scented Bouquet

Pot pourri has been out of fashion for quite some time now, in fact so far out that it's ripe for a revival of interest.

We make our own rose and herb pot pourri at The Real Flower Company as it looks wonderful in our little hat boxes. Selfridges home buying team are clearly on our wavelength as they recently placed an order for some large and small hat boxes of pot pourri from us and we all know that Selfridges are usually ahead of the field with new trends.

If you'd like to make some at home it's a great time of year to make it as rose petals dry really well spread out on a sheet of paper or cotton fabric and left to dry in a cool shady place for a week or so.
The dried petals do retain some of their scent but can also be refreshed with some rose oil. They can also be ground up to use as a spice in recipes but make surre that you use roses that have not been sprayed with incecticide.

Little bags of home made pot pourri make lovely stocking fillers for Christmas! Yes I know its early but the roses are blooming in the garden now!

Well what a wonderful weekend for team GB at the Olympics, I've watched sports that I didn't even know existed and it certainly becomes addictive. We've seen our fair share of medals in the last few days but as you would expect the bouquets have intrigued me. I always thought that the national flower of China was the chrysanthemum so why are the athletes presented with roses? Well a quick look at the official Beijing Olympic site revealed the answer - the native china red rose is the flower of Beijing city and elected such by the residents of the city in 1986.

As you would expect there has been a lot of thought given to the bouquets and their meaning. The flowers reach the athletes within six hours of being picked and all the bouquets are transported in special boxes and escorted to the venues by ''flower protection'' experts to make sure that they are kept in perfect condition. Among the other flowers added to the bouquet are hosta leaves, mondo grass and hypericum. The Beijing Review states that red is the colour for hospitalityand the five flowers added to the bouquet represent friendship,fairness,unity and bless the games with success. There are nine roses because nine is the most honorable number in China and all the other flowers come in groups of six because six represents smoothness. They need to be tightly bound given the amont of waving the winners are prone to!

If preparing 6,000 perfect bouquets sounds challenging then spare a thought for the flower growers who have apparently been preparing for these Games since 2005 and over 40 million plants are scheduled to bloom during sixteen days. It hasn't been an easy task in the heat and humidity of a Chinese summer but hopefully the visitors have appreciated the efforts made.

Let's hope that the Olympic Committee for 2012 have already started to think about the flowers for London as British growers will need to start planning. I've registered my interest and I'm just waiting for the tender to come up. What would be more fitting than British grown roses and herbs?

We have created a collection of images of our gorgeous garden roses.

See the whole collection

A rose is a perennial flowering shrub or vine of the genus Rosa, within the family rosaceae, that contains over 100 species. The species form a group of erect shrubs, and climbing or trailing plants, with stems that are often armed with sharp thorns. Most are native to Asia, with smaller numbers of species native to Europe, North America, and northwest Africa. Natives, cultivars and hybrids are all widely grown for their beauty and fragrance. [1]

The leaves are alternate and pinnately compound, with sharply toothed oval-shaped leaflets. The plants fleshy edible fruit is called a rose hip. Rose plants range in size from tiny, miniature roses, to climbers that can reach 20 metres in height. Species from different parts of the world easily hybridize, which has given rise to the many types of garden roses.

The name originates from Latin rosa, borrowed through Oscan from colonial Greek in southern Italy: rhodon (Aeolic form: wrodon), from Aramaic wurrdā, from Assyrian wurtinnu, from Old Iranian *warda (cf. Armenian vard, Avestan warda, Sogdian ward, Parthian wâr).[2][3]

Attar of rose is the steam-extracted essential oil from rose flowers that has been used in perfumes for centuries. Rose water, made from the rose oil, is widely used in Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine. Rose hips are occasionally made into jam, jelly, and marmalade, or are brewed for tea, primarily for their high Vitamin C content. They are also pressed and filtered to make rose hip syrup. Rose hips are also used to produce Rose hip seed oil, which is used in skin products.

The wonderfully scented Deep Secret rose.