The Real Flower Girl: Bouquets, Cut Scented Garden Roses, Flowers & Herbs

Roses, Wildlife and Hurrah for the Hellebores

There is lots of activity on our English farm at this time of year and during my time there on Friday I took a few photos.
Following the hard pruning of our roses in February it's time to feed the beds with organic compost...

The roses are all grown outside but a canopy will be in place by the end of the month. This simply stops the rain from damaging the heads of the roses whilst leaving the air to circulate at the sides.

Wonderful isn't he? Just one of many forms of wildlife living amongst the flowers and foliage on the farm!

This is his lady friend...

I was really excited to see our new hellebores looking good and the first pick will be winging its way over to me at our design studio this week

They're still fairly young so we're not expecting a huge crop this year but we'll have some for our shops. I need to test them in water to make sure they last for 5 to 7 days but I think we're pretty safe to pick them after pollination when we should get the vase life that we need.

By next year we should be able to create some wonderful bouquets with them and that's very exciting indeed!

We've got some bee hives on the farm and we were delighted to spot one of the honey bees getting to work on the hellebores - that's a great sign!

Snowed Under with Glorious Roses for Valentine's Day!

Now it's not often that we get the opportunity to talk about roses and snow in the same post is it? But here it is and I have to admit that I love the romance of it particularly as Valentine's Day is so close.

Okay, it's very cold indeed; the pipes were frozen all day at our workshop and shop, but it is rather lovely and here are some photos to prove it. Do you agree?

Happy nearly Valentine's Day.

Pumkins and Posies

The windows of our Midhurst flower shop are full of freshly picked pumkins and seasonal posies this week. The carved pumkins have been a bit of an attraction and its been lovely to see the smiles on people's faces when they walk past.
My partner carved the pumkins and if you'd like to know how he did it look at the photos below...

Wonderful Dahlias Again

The dahlia's are still flowering on our English farm but they are slowing down now. They are so beautiful in all their stages of growth don't you agree?

Goodwood Revival Window

Midhurst and the road through to Goodwood was filled with fabulous vintage cars this weekend for what, in my opinion, is one of the best weekends in the local calendar; The Goodwood Revival.

Our shop windows in Midhurst featured vintage trunks filled with our scented seasonal flowers and lots of on-trend-vintage-inspired dahlias! A gorgeous 1950's dress, on loan from our local vintage emprorium Marmedukes in Rumbolds Hill, took pride of place.

Abundant August for English Flowers

We LOVE this time of year at The Real Flower Company.
There's an abundance of wonderful, seasonal flowers, herbs and foliage to be picked on our English farm; dahlias, echinacea, salvia, cosmos, hydrangea, garden roses (of course!) flowering mint (in every variety), sage, pheasant bush, blackberries, hypericum, scented geranium...there are too many to mention here but we'll keep you posted as we move through the harvest and into September and create our more sensational, seasonal bouquets.

The Real Flower Company Pop Up Shop at Anthropologie

We've launched a pop up shop at the fabulous Anthropologie on the Kings Road in London.
We hope you'll pop in to see us - we'll be there until mid June!

The Real Flower Company Shop Opens in Midhurst

We're thrilled to announce that our new shop opened today in West Street, Midhurst, West Sussex.

What a day it was! About 10 inches of snow fell in Midhurst overnight but it didn't stop us from opening. The fire was lit, the mulled wine warmed up and the scents and sounds of Christmas filled the air.
I live on a steep hill in Midhurst and, having ruled out skiing down to the shop, opted to take the fiat in its new snow socks (highly recommended!).

Thanks so much to all of the local people who came to see us today and for all your lovely comments. Here are some photos from day 1....

Winner of Sheerluxe 'Best for Flowers' Online Awards

We were suprised and delighted to have actually won the Sheerluxe Online Shopping Awards 2010 for the 'Best Flowers' category.

Thank you so much to all of the Sheerluxe customers who voted for us -may you be showered with fresh rose petals!

Real Flower Jewellery

We've been making real fresh flower jewellery!
It looks amazing on simple evening dresses or for weddings - a welcome move on from the wrist corsage don't you think?

Wedding Flowers Magazine October November 2010

Happy to have made the cover of the latest Wedding Flowers Magazine again with our hugely popular and exclusive 'antique mix'- all scented garden roses grown on our own farms.

Finalist in the Sheerluxe Online Shopping Awards

This is exciting news indeed!
We've been shortlisted as a finalist in the Sheerluxe online shopping awards. What's also lovely is that the finalists were voted for by the Sheerluxe customers.
If you'd like to vote for us please click the logo below and select The Real Flower Company in the drop down list of finalists. Thank you!

Closing date for voting is 20th September...

Days of Wine and Roses with Real Flowers and Nyetimber at the Taste Festival

Our flowers were on show on the Nyetimber Pavillion at the Taste of London Festival in London's Regents Park, this week. We were invited to work with Nyetimber's winemaker, Cherie Spriggs, to put together 32 arrangements using our English grown garden roses and herbs which complimented the award winning English sparkling wines that she has produced. The stand look wonderful and was a little piece of Sussex in the centre of Regents Park!

We used the roses Gertude Jekyll, Chandos Beauty and Evelyn and the herbs variagated sage, lavender, oregano, peppermint and rosemary.

If you haven't tried Nyetimber's fabulous sparkling wine yet then I urge you to do so - they really are fabulous and produced from grapes grown on vines at the UK's largest vineyard estate, where Nyetimber is based, in West Chiltington, Sussex.

The Nyetimber pavillion was one of the most beautiful stands at the show according to the Hot Dinners website ...and the flowers get a mention too! There's a lovely article about the festival highlights on Eat Like a Girl blog scroll down to see a great photo of Nyetimber's stand with our flowers. The stand was described as one of the 'prettiest' at the festival.

Cowdray Walled Garden Shoot for RHS Chelsea Flower Show

I was at Cowdray Walled Garden yesterday doing a mini shoot with the photographer Lisa Devlin whose work I love. She has photographed our flowers before at a gorgeous wedding at Cowdray Walled Garden.

This little shoot was to capture a lovely backdrop for us to use on our RHS Chelsea Flower Show stand. We're featuring a little wedding table and we wanted it set against a gorgeous garden.

Artist Penny White's Flowers for Maggie's

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.