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.