We finished off our last meeting before the summer break with a demonstration and workshop with Donna Read with help from her trusty aide Annie Allen.
Donna and Annie went up to New Covent Garden Market the day before and purchased a car load of lovely British grown blooms such cornflowers, delphiniums, peonies , hydrangeas, larkspurs ,scabious and many more.
We started off the evening explaining about conditioning flowers and suggested some varieties to grow in our urban gardens to attract bees and other beneficial insects.
After laying out the flowers in groups on their tables, I gave a short demonstration of how to tie a hand tied bouquet. We started off with the ‘bridesmaids’ flowers and foliage, which the tall willowy amni majus and the delphiniums and larkspurs. Holding them loosely in the lefthand we turned the bouquet round adding in more foliage and willowy stems. Then we added some scabious and then the “brides” flowers, the main blooms which were the peonies and hydrangeas. Finally adding in some shorter stems of cornflowers etc and finished off with some gorgeous alchemilla mollis. We tied off the bouquet with twine and trimmed the stems. Voila! Everyone had made their own hand tied bouquet to take home and enjoy.
