Happy New Year!
What a freezing start to 2009. It always amazes me that during such extreme temperatures there are plants and bulbs flowering. In my own garden this morning the fabulous Mahonia is looking very lovely with it's wonderful yellow tassles dazzling in the morning sunlight. The snowdrops and crocus's, of which there was no trace before Christmas, are close to flowering and the daffodils on the bank are now a good 6 inches tall.

Spring is just around the corner!

What a busy day we've had in our workshop!
The flower girls made literally hundreds of door wreaths, garlands, table decorations and bouquets for what was our biggest dispatch day this Christmas.
We waived the last batch of green boxes off at 6pm and, having arrived at the workshop at 6am, we're all looking forward to a well deserved rest.
The scent in the workshop was magnificent and the Christmas bouquets looked gorgeous. We hope they make hundreds of people very happy when they are delivered around the country tomorrow.

A simple, chic and fragrant place setting of fresh Lavender and Rosemary!

I love our worm sheds, they're a fine example of worm composting on our Kenyan farm. Our left over roses are scattered on top of soil containing thousands of worms who work their magic while having a fragrant feast and turn our roses into liquid fertiliser. Our rose bushes are then fed with this wonderful organic liquid which helps to keep them fabulously healthy!

Here is a little insight into how we test our of cut scented garden roses on our Kenyan farm. After picking they go into our vase life testing room. We simply put them in a vase of water without any flower food and then we leave them there to see how they perform.

Well things have been rather busy since we opened our shop in Selfridges. Our new shopfit was finally installed a few weeks ago along with our 'tasting' wall of white bird boxes. The idea is that we have a different rose variety displayed in each box so that customers can choose their favourite scented roses by name. Although they look terribly cute in white the idea was always to paint them and the project is in work as you can see! Aiming to have them filter through to our shop in the next couple of weeks now....

Bird Boxes





Bird Box Jasmine

Do you still have roses blooming in your garden now and have a lovely bud that is showing colour but hasn't started to open yet? Then you might want to try something that my Mother used to do each year (although I think she probably did it in the summer months). Simply pick and freeze them.
My Mother used to put the roses into plastic containers and put them into the deep freeze. She used to take them out to thaw on Christmas Eve and we had garden roses on the table on Christmas Day. I admit that I've never tried this myself, having access to a fresh supply of roses from our farms, but I think it's worth a try. Let me know how it goes!

The Real Flower Girls love creating wonderful wedding flowers and this summer has been an exceptionally busy time in the workshop much to our delight.

As I write the workshop is buzzing with activity as more wedding flowers are being prepared and the air is filled with the intoxicating scent of roses and herbs.

I thought I could offer an insight into some of the new trends in wedding flowers and I plan to share some of my favourite venues and suppliers with you in the coming weeks and month's. If you're getting married next year there's plenty of time to plan ahead and collect ideas.

We get so many last minute requests for bridal flowers that this seems to be an emerging trend although I suspect that this might also be a result of a very poor summer this year when the plan to collect flowers from the garden has sadly been dashed (along with the flower heads!) by the driving rain.

Actually, while I think about it, I also suspect that it is owing to the trend for using flowers that are in season - but if you use a good florist who can advise what is in season each month you can still plan ahead and use seasonal (and sustainably grown, low carbon etc.) flowers.....but more about that later.