October’s four and a half weeks have been intense!

This year, I’ve really felt the shortening days affect my mood more than previous years. I wouldn’t say it’s true Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) - a type of depression that follows the seasonal pattern which hits worse in winter and lifts again during spring - but there’s a certain heaviness that co…

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Filling the garden and the house with fragrance and ephemeral beauty, with a bit of planning it’s possible to have narcissi blooming from late February right the way through til May. Named for the handsome but vain youth in Greek mythology, he cruelly spurned many a romantic advance, and his punishment by the Gods was that he fall in love with his own reflection, transfixed by it in a pool until he withered and died, and in his place a flower sprang up the following spring, its nodding head resembling his constant gaze at the water. A touch bleak, but I do love the Greeks for an out of proportion crime to punishment ratio, for us, narcissi are a staple of spring, reliably coming back year after year with little fuss or trouble. Normal bulb planting rules apply, aiming to plant the bulbs at a depth of around 3 times their height, and as we’re on clay I’ll try and add a little grit to the planting hole when planting, but I’ve also planted them in trenches without any amendments and they’ve been fine.

Split in to 13 divisions, there are many a narcissi to choose from, but most of the ones great for cutting come from the Jonquilla and Tazetta divisions (divisions 7 and 8 for those interested), with fabulous fragrance and multi headed blooms, giving us the longest vase life possible. Within these divisions you can stagger the bloom time with different varieties, and as one begins to fade, the next will take the baton and give you a succession of perfumed glory.

Superb as a cut flower but requiring a little special treatment when harvesting and conditioning, they have a sap which can irritate the skin so gloves are often recommended whilst harvesting, and the sap will also stop other flowers from drinking in the bucket. To remedy this, pop them in their own bucket or vase for a couple of hours whilst the cut wound seals over, and then they’ll be fine to be mixed in with everything else, but if you recut them to a different length for an arrangement they’ll need the same process. It can feel like a bit of a faff but once you get in to the routine of it it’s fine.

Another challenge when using them in the vase is that they’re incredibly straight, so trying to get them to feel like they have movement in them is tricky. For this reason, I’ll often use them grouped in their single varieties in bud vases (above left) as it feels like it shows them off to their best, but when I’d like to use them with other spring beauties, I’ll make sure I have some time to play around with different angles, as trying to get them to sit anything but vertically can take some patience. A final thing to note when using them in arrangements is that the stems will often tear on a normal pin frog, but I’ve popped a link to special one here stocked by florist and grower extraordinaire Milli Proust, which uses more of a grip system where you trap the stem between layers of metal rather than secure it on to spikes.

On to the flowers….

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Coming in to flower at a time when an injection of life and colour are desperately needed, spring flowering bulbs guide us gently out of winter to welcome the season ahead, and with most appearing incredibly delicate, they’re more robust than you might think.

For seasonal floral design, bulbs help give us an earlier start to the year, as they make up the bulk of focal flowers in arrangements, installations and bouquets. It’s the same in the garden, as aside from the hellebores at the start of the year, there really hasn’t been much floral bounty by this point.

Whether in the border or pots, crates or trenches, now’s the time to get them in the soil to help them do their best, with tulips able to wait until November and December to give them the best chance of dodging tulip fire. Eager to please, these spring beauties will still flower if planted later, just perhaps not as fully. Last year I planted narcissi in January, and whilst the stems were short and stocky, they were still usable for design work which helped ease my guilt about being so late to plant them.

The timing of this activity feels like it sits well within the year too, as with the days getting shorter, planting bulbs for next spring feels like an act of hope to get you through the darkness of winter. There are so many different families of bulbs out there, that I thought for this article I’ll focus on a handful of some favourites, as the shopping and planting list can soon feel like it spirals out of control with so much choice on offer.

One of our favourite ways of planting bulbs is in a pot in a ‘bulb lasagne’, a term I first heard through Sarah Raven. The premise is planting a layer of the latest flowering bulb (usually a tulip) at the bottom, then a layer of compost, then a layer of the previous bulb to flower (usually a narcissi), then another layer of soil, then topping off with a layer of something early flowering like a crocus or muscari. This means the one pot is in flower for months, rather than weeks, giving you a great display and more bang for your buck in getting more use of your pots, as the large terracotta ones definitely add up! You can go for whatever mix of bulbs you like - all tulips, all narcissus, or a mix of different types but the rule remains the same - the latest flowering and largest at the bottom, and reverse the order of bloom time as you work your way up the layers. We top our pots either with grit so they look neat and stay weed free, or with autumn sown violas or chard if we’ve been particularly organised with our autumn sowing.

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It took me a while to get in to ornamental grasses when I first started floral design, instead always naturally gravitating towards the blousiest blooms, but growth is a wonderful thing, and the more I freelanced for experienced florists and saw their skill in using them, I’ve learned to love them and I’m so glad I have.

In the garden, they’re some of my favourite and least demanding plants, and I’m grateful for the vast amounts of growth they put on every year, forming a gently swaying backdrop for the flowers surrounding them. Photographically they’re fabulous, as filming or photographing through them creates instant depth, and with such visual lightness you can shoot your subject through them with ease whilst they create a gauzey blur in front.

For design work, I think they work best when grouped together, especially when working on a larger project, as they can get easily lost if spread too thinly and can be appreciated and more impactful arranged in a group. Straight as a post, they can sometimes look a little angular and break any flowing lines of movement that I’ve managed to create, so it can sometimes take a few attempts to find the right place for them in an arrangement, but with stems so chic and thin, you can thread them through multiple times and change your mind as you fancy without causing too much damage to the placement of any other flowers.

I love the texture they can bring, and in a smaller arrangement sometimes just one or two stems are all that’s needed to shift the vibe and ground it in something that feels present.

Below are my favourite selections that I grow at the field, and I’m so looking forward to expanding this collection as the seasons roll on.

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Taking the baton from late August and guiding us with floral beauty through to the end of autumn, asters are a valuable plant in the garden and the vase, and I’m enjoying adding to my collection year on year, speaking to other growers about which varieties are doing well for them and scouring nurseries around the country for gems to add in to the field. Reclassified in the mid 1990s when botanists realised through research that this large family didn’t share as much DNA as previously thought, the majority of plants I grow are now under the family names of Symphyotrichum or Eurybia, neither of which roll off the tongue quite as easily as ‘aster’. If I were being strict that’s how I would be referring to them for the rest of this article, but a two syllable, easy to read word feels like a better fit for me, so for now, asters they shall remain, however when detailing specific varieties, I’ll give their full names so they’re easy to find if you’d like to search for them to be able add them to your garden.

As with many plants, they’re not all made equal, but this always comes down to a matter of taste. For me, I’m drawn to the varieties with a more delicate form and softer colour (quelle surprise). I also feel that proportionality comes in to play too, as those with a smaller centre and longer petals work better for me visually as there’s a little more air in the flower itself, as I find the larger centred with shorter petals combo can lead to it all looking a little stout and blocky. Personal preference as always.

Fuss free and happy in most soils, the main issue I’ve found at the field is a little mildew, which isn’t surprising given the stress of the summer, but it’s pretty mild and easily wipeable of any foliage still visible in an arrangement. Some varieties have been bred to be more mildew resistant than others, and with a good mulch they’ve generally been unbothered by the heat of the summer. I grow a full range of asters, with some having more of a woodland origin so like the soil to remain moist, and others which are more suited to drier conditions, so it’s nice to know that there’s an aster out there for the full range of growing conditions, sun or shade, that you can tuck in to a garden.

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I love September. It’s shaping up to be one of my favourite months. The light is incredible and atmospheric as it streaks across the field, the heat of summer begins to ease, and the ground feels workable again as attention and focus turns to next season. I also think the anxiety of keeping everything going lifts, as with decent planning from earlier in the year, autumn flowering perennials now arrive to take the baton, requiring minimal attention but coming to give you a final, enthusiastic push towards the final stretches of the growing season. There’s produce aplenty; tomatoes, chard and squash for us at the field, and seed heads crisp up to either be cut down and sown for next seasons plants, or left as forage for birds and havens for insects over the winter.

It’s also been a brilliant month for events, which might be adding to my bias and love for the month, with weddings and dinners full of colourful foliage, textural grasses and pops of colour from the hardworking dahlias. I return to dancing at the end of the month, so I packed quite a lot in to Septembers 4 weeks, making the most of being available to do floral work, as once rehearsals start, my weeks will be split between the rehearsal studio and the garden, getting the show up and running for tour, and prepping the ground for its winter dormancy and planting bulbs full of hope for next spring.

I’m planting an additional 15 types of narcissi this autumn - for several reasons. The first simply being, can one ever have enough variation of this perennial and fragrant spring workhorse? Never! The second being they help to deter rodents, and we have a lot of rodent pressure at the field, so I’m interplanting the rose and semi shade areas with narcissi so that the perennials and shrubs there can put on some good growth over the next few years, and they can then better withstand the endless tunnelling and mounds of soil that pop up around them. The jonquilla family are my favourite group of narcissi, with a strong, heavenly scent and smaller, delicate flowers than some of their larger headed relatives. They’re also multi headed, which aids with longer vase life as you can carefully snip them off as they fade. Members of this family include ‘Pueblo’ (a classy pure white), ‘Lieke’ (small faced with a pale lemon yellow centre), ‘Sweet Love’ (sickly name but very pretty with white petals and a yolkier yellow centre) and ‘Beautiful Eyes’ (white petals with a warmer orange centre). I planted narcissus in early January last year (this year!) as I misplaced the box they were in, and I can happily report they still flowered this spring, so there’s plenty of time, but anytime over the next month or so will help them establish well.

A perk of having such fabulous growers nearby is that you can buy things you don’t grow and get to create with them. As you know, I’m generally a perennial guy, so when events require it, I like to buy in some select annuals from other talented growers. I’ve never had huge success with annual phlox - phlox drummondii - they fair better in polytunnels and the heat and protection from wind and rain helps them produce much longer, superior stems, so every time I’ve bought from Jade and Russell at Hook Heath Flower Farm this summer, I’ve asked for some in my order, as they grow the most stunning varieties with characterful, curving and strong stems. They’re one of the ultimate gestural flowers of late summer for me, added in at the end of this pink megamix to soften the harsh lines of the dahlia and zinnias. I also don’t grow malope (however have purchased the perennial lavatera seed which I’m hoping will serve a similar purpose), so to buy in a few wraps from James and his team at Stem and Green in Hampshire was a pleasure, particularly for their saturation of colour. I didn’t end up using them in the wedding I ordered them for, the pink too intense, the green too vivid for what I had planned, so thoroughly enjoyed creating with them here as they formed the backbone of this arrangement, using them to sketch out the shape, before adding in the dahlias and zinnias to create an even distribution of floral heft. A final couple of stems of rosa ‘Plaisanterie’, it’s fleeting pinky peach flowers at the perfect stage of ‘just clinging on’, and the arrangement was complete.

When queen of bulbs, Sarah Raven, asked in April if I’d come to Perch Hill to create a tulip collection, I couldn’t quite believe it. I’ve been a fan since my mum gave me my first dahlia tuber and we visited Perch Hill together multiple times before she died, so it felt incredibly special to now be going in a more professional capacity. On a sunny morning in late April, I arrived in East Sussex and spent a glorious few hours scouring the tulips around the garden, piecing together my collection. A top priority for me was that they perennialise well, and certain families of tulips do that better than others which helped to limit the overwhelming choice that was there. The first I chose was from the viridiflora group - ‘Artist’ with it green flecked petals blending to a warm tan infused orange, reminding me of the florists favourite ‘Belle Epoque’. Adding to ‘Artist’, I then chose ‘Dom Pedro’, a heavily cupped tulip with a light, delicious fragrance, that presents a deep mahogany brown with a veil of burgundy, and finally the lily flowered ‘Sarah Raven’ to offer contrast to them both and a different flower shape.

I had the pleasure of chatting to her recently on her podcast Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange, not only discussing the new tulip collection I created for her, but talking about finding balance when you have several careers that you are lucky to go between. It’s a surreal thing, having a public conversation with someone you’ve revered for years, but she was warm and generous, and I loved the way she explained how you can tell if a tulip is successfully starting to perennialise, where you see sporadic, grass like shoots near the flowering bulb, it means that the bulblets are forming and putting on growth for future years flowers. Link to the collection here, and podcast ep here.

The final wedding of the year was a good one. Old Sessions House in Clerkenwell has been on my list of venues to work at, so I was thrilled when this wedding came in for a lovely couple, with the dream brief of ‘these are the colours we like, but we love your style so we trust you.’ HEAVEN.

We settled on a staircase, loosely running from dark to light, full of seedheads, grasses, autumn foliage and delicate flowers, which would act as the main focal point for the day, their ceremony happening at the top of the stairs and the staircase being the first thing you see as you come through the door.

For the tables, we decided on brass bud vases full of lighter, gestural flowers - clematis tangutica, agrostemma and nicotiana. We piled grapes and figs high, weaving them between taper candles and tea lights, with the candlelight reflecting off the brass, offering decadence to combine with the dilapidated and peeling plaster of the dining room.

I’m lucky to work with wonderful freelancers who continue to say yes when I send them dates through, and this was no exception. A small team of three of us was all that was needed, so a huge thank you to Krystal and James for a truly excellent day, and their beautiful, exceptional work. Another stroke of luck was that I knew the photographer as we’ve worked together before, her work also excellent, and I’m so looking forward to seeing her pictures when the couple are ready to share.

Thanks as always

The entry point for me with this arrangement was Bidens aurea ‘Hannay’s Lemon Drop’. It’s just started to come in to flower and is new to me this year, and I’m immensely impressed with how quickly it’s bulked up and formed a sizeable clump, and with plenty of stems thrown skywards, it’s reaching a respectable 1.5m. As I approached for closer inspection, I was delighted to discover that the small, simple flowers had a soft vanilla, almost honey like fragrance. I think this point in the year can sometimes feel a bit devoid of scent, so it’s always a happy day to discover a new find. Bright lemon yellow tipped with white, the flowers are quite saturated in colour, and my initial feeling was worry that it’s all a bit jazzy and jolly for me. Will’s always saying I need to push myself out of my pure pastel comfort zone, so this is the first in a series of trying to see how I can blend this vibrant colour with other ingredients. The stems have superb shape, softly curvaceous yet strong, and light enough to behave and hold where you put them on a pin frog. The buds continue to open in the vase, giving excellent vase life as it’s easy to snip off the flowers that have gone over without losing any of its elegance. With everything going for it, let’s see how this first trial goes, as on paper, this is an super addition to the late summer/early autumn arrangement. If the colour proves too vibrant, then luckily the native form Bidens aurea is a softer, gentler yellow, and you can rest assured that come spring I shall be planting a few plants of that, as who doesn’t love choice?

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Flowering for this group of plants is triggered mainly by photoperiodism, a process where the plant registers that the nights are getting longer so it’s time to start blooming. All the plants listed here are doing well in my open site in full sun, and are also all excellent for pollinators too, with flowers ranging from wide open discs which act as a landing pad for insects, or tubular flowers where the nectar is still easily accessible. By leaving some of their statues and seed heads up over the winter too, their seeds can also provide a vital source of food for birds - a win all round!

Boltonia asteroides

Reaching near 2m, this lofty plant is excellent for providing height, either at the back of the border or in larger scale arrangements, but without dominating due to its airy habit. I’ve staked it lightly as we’re on such an open site, but to combat this you could Chelsea chop this tall and generous beauty (cut back a third to half of the plant in late May) which will delay flowering and produce shorter, stockier stems. As it being the first year in the field for me, I left it to grow uninterrupted as I wanted to see how it behaved but I’ll try the chop next year. It started gently flowering in August, but is flowering with more enthusiasm now that we’re in to September, and should keep on going for the next couple of months. Simple white daisy shaped flowers with open centres, they last upwards of a week in the vase.

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Now that they’ve finally started to get going, this felt like the perfect week to reflect on this years dahlias. At a couple of pounds a tuber, they offer huge flexibility in colour and shape, and they’re a great way of injecting floral heft in to late summer and autumn designs.

I plant them directly into the ground around Chelsea week - mid to late May as the ground is warm, workable and the risk of a killing frost has safely passed for us in London and Hampshire. A handful of manure in the planting hole to give them a good start and a thick mulch and they’re ready to go. Back when I was just planting a couple of tubers just for the garden at home, I’d pre sprout them in a pot a month or two earlier, keeping them in a greenhouse, which would meaning earlier flowers. However, with everything else I have at the field I don’t really need them much earlier than late August/start of September, so this timing works well for me, and it’s less compost, pots and work so happiness all round.

I’ll lift them this autumn once the frost has knocked them back, as where they are is prime irrigated real estate, and I like to have a shuffle around to change and improve the layout of the field. Last winter, I left them in as a trial and around 50% came back, which given my heavy clay soil wasn’t bad at all. After chatting with Arthur Parkinson last week who’s dahlia knowledge is superb, I think that with a thicker mulch my odds could have been improved and more might have made it through - he does a barrow load of straw on top of each one, creating an undulating, mole hill landscape, each one insulated from the cold and winter wet.

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With the welcome recent dip in temperature, I’ve finally felt able to get out in to the field to do a decent amount of work and gardening. Gone are the days of unbearable heat and the dance of 45 minutes outside before the heat gets too much and I have to retreat back in to the cool of the pavilion. The plants look better for it too, with the dahlias finally starting to flower, the cooler nights more closely echoing their native Mexican setting. It’s been a month of variation which always sits well with me, too much of the same thing can make me feel restless, and August saw a mix of weddings and events, teaching and writing, some travel and even a visit to Sadler’s Wells to see talented friends being fantastic and incredibly sexy in the summer run of the Car Man (touring the UK til November, I highly recommend a visit if it’s coming to a city near you.) Here’s a look at what else has been going on this month.

Iris day

I adore visiting wholesale nurseries, an opportunity to see growing at scale by teams of professionals who can offer advice and inspiration when it feels most needed, and Howard Nurseries in Suffolk is no exception. A family run nursery set over 150 acres with just over 40 full time staff, they specialise in bare root and container grown perennials of exceptional quality, and I’ve ordered from them over the past few years as I’ve slowly built up my plant selection in the field. They’re also one of the leading wholesale nurseries for bearded iris, so when they emailed customers offering an opportunity to spend a morning with them to show how they lift, divide and replant these early summer beauties, I jumped at the chance and booked a spot. Up with the sunrise, I made my way across the top of London and out towards Diss, and was warmly greeted by Managing Director Christine, whose father had started the nursery in the late 60s.

Growing for sale is of course different from growing in the garden or for cut flower production, and I was taken aback at two things: the first being how closely they plant their rhizomes. Guidance is generally 30-45cm apart, and these plants were no more than 20cm apart as they’ll spend a maximum of two years in the ground before being lifted, either for sale or for division, meaning they can get away with this tighter spacing. The second was the planting depth. It’s well written in iris lore that you leave the rhizome uncovered at soil level so it can bake in the sun which is needed for flower production, yet the iris here were planted a couple of inches deep, their rhizomes well and truly covered by soil. Christine acknowledged this was unusual, however they see no impact in the vigour of flowering come May, and by planting at that depth they help to prevent wind rock and damage as they’re on such an open and exposed site, and it prevents a very healthy bird population from digging them up and flinging them across the field.

When a plant is an expensive purchase, it can feel daunting to lift and divide it, especially for the first time, so I was grateful to watch a pro give a masterclass on how it’s done, and in a surprisingly rough way. It was mesmerising watching someone who does it day in day out and divides thousands of plants, and seeing their skill and precision with how they took a giant clump of a plant and speedily whittled it down with just a knife. Cutting sections of healthy rhizome off, the took the leaves down to 6 inches and cutting the roots back to a similar size, and it gave me confidence that when the time comes to lift and divide mine over the next month or so, I needn’t be nervous, as these plants are tougher than they look.

Parham

Arthur Parkinson and I had a wonderful two days teaching at the stunning Parham House and Gardens in Sussex. The first time I’d co-ordinated and organised an event, I was thrilled at its success as we sold out twice, both times we went on sale. Getting to share our love of naturalistic and garden style floral design with home grown flowers was a joy, and my friend Freddie provided a delicious lunch for our guests before they had the opportunity to explore the gardens of this incredible setting whilst it was closed to the public.

The field

At the field, prep for autumn gardening continues, and I’m strimming back beds which have gone over or been completely over run with weeds, covering them with landscape fabric which will help speed up decomposition of what’s underneath, so they’re either ready for planting again in a few months or can wait until spring. It’s a lot of plastic, and environmentally I know it’s not ideal, let alone the visual aspect too, but it’s all from a recycled source and reused year after year, and I think it’s one of those moments where there has to be some give and take. As for the majority of time it’s just me working at the field, it’s been the best way I’ve found to keep on top of weeding and grow the things that I actually want to cut, rather than have the docks completely take over the beds.

Plant orders are in with two fantastic nurseries, and the perennial seeds I sowed earlier this month are just starting to germinate, so my aim is to get them in the ground by the end of October, giving them the winter to get their roots down so they’ll have a better shot at survival next year if they’re to face the same heat that we’ve all just endured.

Asters and grasses are really starting to come to the fore, and I love this time of year for the texture it offers in the garden and in arrangements, the August light stretching through the fluffy, slivery plumes of Miscanthus sinensis ‘Graziella’. It’s the first season for this magnificent grass, but it’s already offering up a decent amount of flower heads, and I’m very excited to see it stride up and out in seasons to come, reaching an eventual height of 2-2.5m.

Wishing those in the UK a lovely bank holiday weekend.

Thanks as always

My god has this summer been a challenge. Every grower I know has battled relentlessly with the heat, striving to fulfil orders and live up to clients expectations, and yet plants always amaze me with their resilience. The late summer flowering perennials and heat loving annuals are thriving, reaffirming their standing that they deserve substantial bed space, with many more planned to be sown and planted next year.

The asters (Symphyotrichum) have just started to flower, their stars of mini perfection held aloft thin wiry stems. A designer and gardeners dream, they give a fresh surge of beauty as we leave the peak of summer behind. They started as the initial ingredient of this arrangement for me, and I walked the field holding a stem of ‘Coombe Fishacre’ - the first of my asters to come in to flower - next to other blooms to see how its colour would match, blend and contrast.

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Growing from seed for me has to be easy, otherwise it doesn’t warrant the effort and time needed. The combination of dancing, floral jobs and keeping what’s already at the field alive - especially during heatwave after heatwave - can make me feel slightly ridiculous to be thinking of creating more plants to look after, but one of things I love about gardening and growing is that there’s always the next season, and using what I’ve learnt from the season before and adapting as we go is such a joy. Sowing seeds for the coming year always fills me with such hope - the promise of new plants in a small brown envelope, either collected from the field, a fellow growers coveted plant, or a speciality seed grower or nursery. Over the years, I’ve thankfully managed to trim down the purchasing (Will would argue that it’s still on the excessive side…if only he could see the basket before it’s trimmed down!) as I’m afraid to admit the volume of waste has been staggering - old seed packets sat unused in boxes, over sowing and ending up with more plants than I could take care of, seedlings dying due to lack of time to keep on top of watering…all very useful things to bring ones ambition in to check!

What’s worth sowing is different for everyone, so for me, a packet of seed has to fit a few bits of criteria before it ends up being purchased.

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This month has felt a bit more balanced than the mild chaos of June, with a bit of a holiday, a bit of flowers and a bit of dancing, all scored by Olivia Rodrigos latest release, helping me to relive my teenage heartbreak fantasy - so much so, I barely registered that the World Cup was on. Apparently we did quite well?

The first half of the month was spent in Japan. Will was dancing out there and I managed to use my points and tag along. Based in Tokyo for two weeks, I stole him away from the theatre to get in long weekend’s in both Hokkaido in the north and Okinawa in the South. Our main reason for travelling so far north was to visit the Tokachi Millennium Forest, an incredible place which we both loved and found utterly inspirational. I wrote about it earlier this month, and you can read the article here if you’d like to see more.

On returning from Japan, I finally succumbed to putting out the irrigation. I’d held off for as long as I felt I could but with months without substantial rain it all just started to feel a little impossible. I have a system that can cover all the rose beds, but they’re actually doing better than expected without it already gearing up for their next flush, so I had a shuffle around and moved it to the dahlias instead. I’m teaching a workshop with my friend and floral author extraordinaire Arthur Parkinson in August, for which I’d like to take buckets of said dahlias to, so it feels justified.

I did an experiment and left all of last years dahlias in the ground over winter, seeing how they’d fair spending the cold months in my clay soil. I piled on barrow loads of wood chip in November to help keep them warm, and was more than pleasantly surprised when around 50% of them came back at the start of June. Now, what might fill the rest of that prime real estate of irrigated bliss? Next years biennials! I’ve been waiting for a dip in the heat to plant out the foxgloves and sweet rocket and this week, temperatures dropped just enough and I managed to slip them in.

I’m incredibly proud of them; they’re the healthiest and most robust foxglove plugs I’ve ever grown, and I think a big reason for this success is that I sowed them much earlier than I normally would, right in the middle of May. I worked backwards from when I knew we were going away and made sure they’d have a good 8 weeks of being at home to bulk up, as usually, I’d sow them in the middle of June, then either work away or go on holiday and at that point, they’re just too small to fend for themselves and they’d perish, and I get very sad and frustrated. Galvanised by this new success, I wanted to keep giving them such care so they can continue to put on good growth throughout the summer before lifting them to intersperse them amongst the roses in autumn, so I’ve turned this new free space into a nursery bed, lining them up along the irrigation, hoping this will be enough to get them through August. It all sounds a bit labour intensive now that I’m writing it down, but I love a foxglove, and the vision of creating my own homage to Sissinghurst with their spires piercing through the domes of roses sustains me when I think it’s all going a bit far. Fingers crossed.

The tender annuals are doing exceptionally well, basking in the heat and seemingly unaffected by our lack of rain - tagetes, cosmos, coreopsis, amaranth - all doing excellently. Long time favourite Rudbeckia ‘Sahara’ and new mix ‘Sherry Brandy’ are pumping out stems of lusciously coloured daisy flowers - caramels, rusty browns, coppers and vibrant reds, the petals all surrounding perfectly formed teddy-bear-nose centres. Along with the zinnias they’ve been my top annuals this year, and I wouldn’t be without them. They’ve been joyous to create with, weaving them amongst stems of fragrant fennel and textural grasses.

A fail which I really thought I’d gotten on top of this season is managing the docks and thistles. They’ve been my nemesis since taking over the site 2 and a half years ago, and this year, with an increase in regular mowing and deadheading I really thought I’d nailed it, or as close to it as possible to be able to turn the tide on this relationship. It turns out that even if you cut both plants down once they’ve started flowering, even if they’re only flowering a tiny bit, they’ll still dry and go to seed, meaning I’m currently surrounded by floating white thistle seeds and crunching dock seeds underfoot. It’s my error for not being better with my housekeeping, as I thought leaving the cut stems on the path would be fine, and feeling pressed for time with a long list of jobs to do, I thought what I was doing would be sufficient. As my punishment for not keeping everything as tidy as it should be, I’ve been collecting wheelbarrow upon wheelbarrow of seed heads this week, and even though the damage has been done and I’ve resigned myself to more weeding over the next few months, I’m hoping next year I can do better. Even though I’m not touring at the moment, I still feel time is the thing I could do with an endless supply of.

I am however hoping I’ve saved the hellebores in time from a thistley fate. I’d put up some shade cloth to offer some woodland planting some relief from the sun, but in doing so, blocked my view of the hellebores which are nestled underneath the hornbeam hedge. I hadn’t noticed how bad the weeds were around them (so bad there wasn’t a single hellebore plant to be seen!), but an hour of weeding quickly sorted it, before realising how dry they had become. I was hoping with my thick mulch and dappled shade from the hedge they’d have been in a better state, but this prolonged drought has really taken its toll. I’m very much a ‘plant and fend for itself’ type of gardener, however, hellebores are an investment, a 2L potted plant being on the more expensive side, and they flower at such a vital time of year that I’d really like to keep them going, so out came the hose and another barrow load of mulch, and I’m hoping they’ll soldier on through.

Design work revs up again in August which I’m very much looking forward to, alongside some perennial seed sowing which I’ll share more about next week.

Thanks as always

It always feels a little nerve wracking leaving the field and our garden at home to go on holiday, and even though I still work away a lot dancing, it’s rare that I won’t make it to the field a couple of times a week. As I checked the 14 day forecast on the way to the airport and saw we were set for another heat wave whilst I was away, I could feel my anxiety rising, but my logical side quickly jumped in, as I knew that from the other side of the world there would be very little I could do, and besides, trying to control the weather is utterly futile. I let go, and thought it will be what it is, and I’ll see what I’m faced with when I get back.

You can then imagine my joy when I drove gingerly through the gate in to the field and saw rows on rows of healthy flowers, and that even on deeper inspection, there were no substantial losses and everything by and large had survived. A win for sure.

Hitting its stride in midsummer, fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is one of my favourite plants for this time of year - both in the garden and the vase. A generous producer and self supporting, its chartreuse umbels offer a zingy sharpness that can help cut through the heat of July with freshness and vitality, and with the added bonus that the side stems can have a lovely movement to them too, what’s not to love? Last weekend we went down to the Gower in Wales to visit Wills mum, the fennel en masse on the walk down to the beach in an environment it clearly loves, and as we made our way across the sand to jump in the sea, an arrangement started to form in my head.

Rudbeckia hirta is one of my most loved annuals. Now as you know I’m a perennial man through and through, but there are some annuals that I’ll always try to grow, with Rudbeckia being top of the list. Sahara is my favourite seed mix, a blend of caramels, rusty browns, coppers and vibrant reds - delicious. This year I’m trialling Sherry Brandy too, it’s flowers a little pinker in their colouring, the browns flecked with raspberry and a deep cherry red. Both now have a place in my heart and I’d grow them again together, both have good stem length and I’m enjoying the increased range of colour available to use. They take a little while to get going, so I sow them with a some bottom heat in February around my birthday (14th Feb if you’re wondering, gifts always welcome, I’m an excellent gift receiver), and although they need to stay in a cold frame or greenhouse for a couple of months before being planted out in May, there’s something about the promise of flowers to come that can really help get me through a cold and gloomy chunk of the year. There’s not many annuals I’d put that much care in to, but the flowers are so beautiful, for me they’re worth it.

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One of the perks of being in a relationship with a ballet superstar is being able to tag along to his work trips abroad. Ballet has always been global and popular around the world, particularly in Japan, where Will has been out to dance nearly every year of his career. I’ve been lucky to work out there a few times when it’s been on our international touring route, but never for a holiday, so when we pulled out our year planners last Christmas to look at the year ahead and saw we had a rare alignment in our calendars, I quickly set about scouring the internet for the best flights to travel out to see him whilst he was out on tour with the Royal Ballet in Tokyo. Taking advantage of a BA sale and using all my points, I managed to book my flight out there, and busily got to planning our down time, taking advantage of the few days off here and there he’d have between shows and rehearsals to book in some trips, escaping the heat of the city, and seeing more of what this incredible country has to offer.

High on both our lists for a several years now has been the Tokachi Millennium Forest, nestled in the centre of Japans most northernly island, Hokkaido. A project 30 years in the making, the land was purchased by media mogul Mitsushige Hayashi as a way of offsetting his carbon emissions, and 20 years ago he brought landscape designer Dan Pearson on board to help steer the ship and design a space that would connect the gardens to the wider landscape, helping to regenerate wildlife and floral diversity after it had been used for intensive agriculture for many years. Flight and car hire booked, we managed to carve out 48 hours to whisk Will away from rehearsals of Giselle to get in a visit to this foresty paradise.

One of the reasons why we both love the work of Dan Pearson is that he has an ability to create spaces that feel so creative, but also like they’ve been growing there without human intervention, grounding the gardens he creates in to their surrounding landscape with such a strong sense of place. He also possess excellent articulation when talking about plants and gardens, and I’m currently rereading his book “Natural Selection’, a collection of his columns from 10 years writing for the Observer, for perhaps the 3rd time, as its so crammed full of information and ideas, but presented in the most effortless and evocative way.

Speaking of books, it must be said there’s an excellent one published in 2020 written by Dan and head gardener Midori Shintani that I’d highly recommend if you’d like to see more of this remarkable place. It’s coffee table level in the beauty of its photography, and a gardeners dream as they share at length the design process, planting plans and matrix’s, even going as far as providing a plant list for each garden with three columns - original planting, additional planting, and removed/failed - generous beyond belief. Link here to take a look.

The Design

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Many a designer I’ve admired has participated in this event, and it feels a little like a rite of passage, knowing that you need to create something that will survive for 5 days, and will be seen not only by the public but by your peers, as a statement as who you are as a designer…no pressure there then! Thrilled to be asked but slightly daunted by the reality of what I’d signed up for, any nerves were quelled when I found out who my fellow designers were - Vervain Studio, Elder and Iris, Cynthia Fan and Nate Moss - all incredibly talented, but most importantly, really lovely and supportive people.

Inspiration

Our brief was Benton End: A Paradise of Paint and Pollen, coinciding with the reopening of Benton End in Suffolk. As I started to explore this wonderful brief and began to research the world of Cedric Morris, I found I was really drawn to his friendship with Vita Sackville-West. During the 1950’s, Sackville-West was a frequent visitor to Benton End (although apparently never staying the night as it was too filthy!), and they traded Morris’ irises for her roses from Sissinghurst, and I loved this plant sharing from two visionaries who prioritised a naturalistic and wild aesthetic, whilst still heavily curating their plant selection. Now, I grow around 65 varieties of roses in my field, and with this installation running in mid June when they would be reaching their zenith, I realised this would be my connection to the brief.

Gardener designer Sarah Price was also someone who’s work I was keen to look at again after being captivated by her gold medal winning garden for Chelsea in 2023, which incidentally was created for a permanent home at Benton End. She describes the joy of using Morris as an inspiration, particularly his use of colour:

‘…taking inspiration from the plants that Cedric Morris bred – the moody grey poppies and irises with colours that are really hard to describe, such as copper, strange off-yellows and grey-purples. It’s really exciting to have that palette to compose with.’

My idea was to take the colours from the Benton irises he’d bred, and match them with their rose counterparts, with some needing at least 3 roses to try and get close to what he’d managed to achieve in his irises. To try and recreate the stunning colours found in the iris Benton Olive (pictured above), you might need to use Colonel Mustard, Honey Dijon and Mokarosa to achieve the same golden, greyed yellow, purple tinged coffee hues.

The final aspect of research I wanted to include was the work of gardener Jenny Barnes, as the patterns she makes when pruning and shaping roses are, for me, complete works of art. Her work felt like a natural inspiration to include in this installation, bringing in her twists, coils and patterns as the framework for the base of my design.

Bringing all this together, my aim was to use my knowledge of shape, sculpture and form whilst lean in to my romantic tendencies, and align it with Cedric’s use of colour and paint found in the roses from the field, and also to feature single and wild roses, both in flower and as foliage to include a nod to pollinators, therefore hitting the brief in a way that felt genuine and connected to me as a designer.

From sketch to reality

When designing, I like to sketch without any limitations, feeling what I think I might like to create and then stepping back to figure out how to make it after. By just using one material, I knew I’d have the creative capacity to focus on playing with how it sat in the space, and make a sculptural installation with twisted foliage, celebrating colour, shape, form and scent.

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I was recently asked at a panel event, ‘How would you describe yourself and what you do?’ There have been a few iterations, all intertwined and supporting each other in various way, but I thought if I’m sharing work on here, it’d probably be a good idea to figure it out in a more structured way...

I started working as a dancer in 2012, and through some grit, determination and luck have been fortunate to have a full and varied career, whether that be touring on stage or dancing on film.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, theatre took a really long time to come back. Whilst the company that I danced for couldn’t offer us financial support due to us all being self employed contractors, a generous donor stepped forward and offered bursaries for us to go and retrain in something else. I was running in Regent’s Park a lot at the time, trying to keep fit and grateful for my one hour allowed outside as relief from my lovely but small studio flat I shared with my partner Will. It would always be a joy to run through Queen Mary’s Rose Garden and to finish up at St John’s Lodge Garden - a garden paradise, much looser in its design than your usual park garden, its entrance a tunnel covered with cascading wisteria and honeysuckle. I initially thought about horticulture - I’d always loved being outside, and whenever we were on an international tour I’d drag any willing friends with me to the nearest national park, often hiking up mountains, totally ill-prepared, some of them wearing flip-flops and floral skirts, but loving it none the less. My mum was also an excellent gardener, with a keen eye for colour, loving dark and rich dahlias and tulips, so it seemed a good fit. I began researching courses, debating applying for something academic in garden design, or maybe an RHS level 2, but neither felt like the right thing, and I realised without being able to dance I was yearning to do something creative.

We’d also started having a twice a month delivery of Freddie’s Flowers, and I noticed it brightened my spirits. This seemed to point to studying floral design, combining my appreciation for plants with a new found joy of arranging cut flowers. I approached two ex-ballet dancers via Will, Stephen Wicks and Mark Welford who ran Bloomsbury Flowers in Covent Garden, asking if I could join them for some work experience to see if I could test out if this was a path worth following. They were incredibly supportive, but said that I’d need to go and take a course so I at least had some base knowledge before coming in to a busy flower shop, and they suggested a couple of schools to look at. One of these was London Flower School, a place heavily influenced by the work of Constance Spry, where they matched floral design with creative expression. Everything was approached as an artistic exercise, so rather than learn how to do a traditional flower arch, they led us in a creation of one inspired by Dante’s Inferno, using paintings and art as visual stimulus, forming it out of branches, moss, trees and rocks. I was hooked, and 4 blissful weeks later I graduated from their career course.

At the same time through the wonders of Instagram, I’d begun to discover the slow flower movement, both in the US and the UK, and it blew my mind that anyone with some outside space could grow cut flowers and use them creatively. They made it look idyllic without shying away from the truth of what it took to grow such beauty, and I read all the second hand books I could find, with the works of Erin Benzakein, Sarah Raven and Milli Proust becoming bibles, obsessively reading and rereading their books and blogs to learn about seasonality, growing from seed, successional planting and conditioning flowers.

To match this passion for growing with what I’d learnt creatively at LFS became my quest. I started to volunteer and then work on flower farms in and around London, whilst continuing to learn as much as I could about floral design working as a freelance florist on events, seeing how to work at scale from masters of sustainable floral designer - whether that be a wedding at Soho Farmhouse, or a dinner at the V & A, seeing these artists create and their process from sketch to reality was really inspiring.

As the passion grew, Will and I started to visit more and more gardens. He’d grown up with horticulture being the family business, his parents running a plant nursery in Swansea, Wales, so although his base knowledge was already excellent from being around it all the time, it was lovely to see him rediscover this part of his life and upbringing, but this time together as more of a shared interest. Seeing the jungle of garden rooms with the tallest fennel I’d ever seen and walls covered in cascading clematis at Great Dixter, or the rose gardens at Sissinghurst with their arching stems dripping with blooms and foxglove spires piercing through for the first time were life changing, and I began to study the writings of Christopher Lloyd, Beth Chatto and Dan Pearson - garden designers and authors who wrote about plants and places with such expression and clarity.

Throughout all of this, my mum was battling ovarian cancer, and it felt special to have my new obsession join with her existing passion, sharing something that celebrated life and all that’s beautiful in the world offering as a distraction whilst she was plugged in having chemo, whilst also bringing to the forefront the cycle of life and its fragility, seeing from seed to bloom to death within one season. Her council was always welcomed and valuable, being the first person I’d share news with or ask for advice, not knowing what I’d get back but knowing it was what I needed, delivered with a big dose of wit and a lot of love.

My mum died in the summer of 2022, the grief feeling all consuming and at times pretty immobilising. I went back to work in hindsight sooner than I should have, and ended up with two big injuries back to back which meant I had to leave the tour I was on. Desperate for a shift in place, I went to the US to volunteer at Saipua, now Worlds End Farm with Sarah Ryhanen, a pioneering florist, flower grower and farmer, working at their farm in upstate New York, assisting on their floral residences along with normal farm duties. Being away helped feel like I had some room to think, and feel my way through to find the next right step. Never one to do things by halves, when I returned home I started a three pronged approach to begin healing with three incredible women. Every Thursday I would have physiotherapy, grief counselling, and sports psychology sessions, returning home exhausted but knowing that hitting the physical, mental and emotional aspects of what had happened, I was starting to process the events of the last year to be able to figure out what I could do next.

After a good year and a half of rehab, dancing came back in a greater way than I imagined, so in breaks between contracts I’d juggle friends weddings and bouquets for the Opera House, either working out of our living room or the garden studio, being very grateful to Will for his patience with the buckets and buckets of flowers which would dominate our flat. I also carried on taking classes and freelancing with designers whose work I adored - Jess and Ally at Aesme, Shane Connolly, Frida Kim and Wagner Kreusch - still now I can’t believe that I worked for, and still sometimes do, for these floral megastars. Seeing their styles up close and their tenacious work ethics left a mark, so that when I started to get larger jobs of my own, I felt equipped to handle them and knew they were always at the end of the phone for advice and guidance if needed.

A big part of the journey has been embracing my own style and trying to not get side tracked by thoughts of ‘should I be doing something this way or that way’ and trying to lean in to my natural romanticism (I’m a sucker for the blousiest of flowers), and valuing the skills I already have. For me with floral design, being able to bring my dance background and knowledge of space to my work is an aspect of it I really love, but it took time to feel confident to share it, thinking that if I told clients about my other career they wouldn’t take me seriously as a designer. Of course, its been this aspect of my work that people find most interesting and how I’ve got a lot of my jobs, but realising that bringing all of myself to the work took time and a lot of practise. I think my background in dance pulls me to explore different parts of design - how to create movement within an arrangement or how to use negative space to frame a particularly exquisitely shaped stem. This is one of the reasons I love to use flowers I’ve either grown myself or from another local grower, as you get so much variation, whether that’s in shape due to relaxed staking or a flower twisting, reaching for the light, the discolouration of a leaf that’s been bleached by the sun or shaded out by it’s neighbour, or even using something that’s on the tipping point of going over and dying - that’s when I think you can get the most beautiful, blendable colours, and it’s only as I spend more time with the plants and watch them grow that I see the vast variation in how they can be used.

As the scale and frequency of the design work grew, I realised that I needed to try and find a bigger space of my own and take the plunge and try to grow more flowers. The link to that story is here, but to bring it back to the initial question of ‘how would you describe yourself and what you do?’, I think the common theme throughout it all has been creative expression, whether that’s been on stage, in the garden or in the vase, so I think now I would proudly say that I’m an artist.

I first started growing flowers on a north-east facing balcony in central London, and even though I only managed to squeeze out a couple of blooms from the dahlia (Zundert Mystery Fox - a tangerine, terracotta beauty,) given to me by my mum, I was absolutely hooked.

I quickly learned that dahlias need substantially more sun, and as the urge to grow flowers intensified, we lucked out and were given an allotment in Walthamstow by a brilliant grower who I’d been working for, who’d recently expanded and was generous enough to let us garden on her unused plot. Neat rows of annuals, some bare root roses and shrubs in 2L pots went in and confirmed the bug, and we spent two years growing cut flowers on this tiny London plot. We soon moved from our studio flat in central London to Stratford, where we created our first proper garden together. Realising that this space had to not only serve my growing floral design business but also my shared home with Will, I knew that eventually I’d need to look for a bigger space that I could dedicate to growing at scale.

It took time to find a site close enough to London to rent, with my aim to find between a quarter and a half an acre. After over a year of dead ends with councils and fruitless cold calling, I was all about to give up hope, when through the power of instagram I met a new friend who knew someone who’s brother was an estate owner and put us in touch. Being in east London at the time, I’d initially been looking at Essex, Hertfordshire and Kent, so when this site came up in Hampshire I was hesitant and wondered if it would be too far. However, I took Will with me on our first visit and as soon as we saw the field we knew it was too good an opportunity to pass up - there was a building with power, a water source, and more space than I could have dreamed - 3.5 acres - even if it meant 2 and a half hours to get there. Knowing eventually we’d try and move west due to both our families being this side, it was all about biding our time and putting up with the drive whilst setting it up. Many a podcast and countless hours of Lady Gaga sustained me across 3 motorways for 2 years, until we eventually had saved enough to move to Twickenham, west London, cutting my commute down to 45 mins. Bliss.

Now, transforming an empty field in to a garden and flower field is no mean feat. Creating an open, exposed site in to somewhere flowers will grow and thrive takes planning. Luckily, I’d worked on several flower farms both here in the UK and in the US, learning what these experienced growers had had success with, and hearing what they would have done differently if they were doing it again.

Sorting out the boundaries was the first task. My landlord (thankfully) agreed to share the cost for a 6ft high deer fence, and even though the investment felt huge, it seemed the only sensible path forwards, as what was the point of growing these beautiful flowers if they were just going to be eaten as soon as they were planted? After the fence went up end of January, I knew I wanted to get a load of hedging plants in asap, to slow down the wind that sped across the field, to help break up the space, and to give me a year round supply of foliage.

I chose blossoming and fruiting varieties - amelanchier, beech, hornbeam, wild rose, maple, crab apple, hawthorne, elder, willow, wild cherry, wild pear - these whips were barely shin height and now as they hit their third summer some of them are taller than me. It’s been a test in patience and self control, as I’ve tried to leave them to it to get their roots down and settle before gingerly starting to cut from them, and this year the viburnum and wild rose being the two varieties I’ve been most drawn to. I interplanted the three bulkiest species - maple, wild cherry and crab apple with wild clematis to save me scouring the Hampshire countryside for some to forage, and I’m hopeful this year will be the first year I can harvest it. Win.

My aim when designing the layout of the field was to bring together everything I’d learnt over the previous couple of years working for other growers, and to fuse a productive cut flower field with the magic of a garden. In theory - excellent, in reality - tricky. I was still dancing full time so I knew I’d be balancing my time between the two careers. Because of this, focusing on shrubs and perennials felt like the most sensible option, as once planted, with a good water and thick mulch, they’d need a lot less tlc than annuals, with the trade off being they’d take several years to hit their stride. Another benefit on focusing on these two groups of plants was that if I missed it’s flowering season due to being away dancing on tour, they could just die back and be used again next year, saving a lot of waste had they been annuals. I’ve attached the initial design below, showing grided blocks of beds, with a separate area for roses and peonies, all surround by a double mixed row of hedging. I then imagined curved sweeping borders and trees to break up the view, creating the blend of a efficient flower field with the mystery and interest of a garden. I started with the blocks of beds, and soon realised that as it’s just me looking after it all, the vision of the garden with its beds and trees would have to wait, as even keeping the plants that I’d sown or planted alive and weed free in 1m wide beds was a challenge.

Over the last couple of years, it’s changed and adapted a lot, as I’ve learnt more about how to use my time sensibly and how to look after the field. Last autumn, I shift the size of the beds to 25cm wide, planting much closer together and mulching heavily with composted wood chips. This has been a game changer, making everything much easier to look after, so much quicker to weed and everything planted in these beds is much happier and healthier. This spring, I lifted what had survived from the larger beds and moved them in to the new, narrower beds, and it’s honestly been the best thing, making me feel slightly more in control and less defeated seeing a whole bed of docks and thistles where there should be flowers.

The area I’m particularly proud of is the rose garden, and having thrived since their first year, the amount of growth has been staggering, with each season producing a hugely generous amount of flowers. More on them in good time.

Tasks for the rest of 2026 are to add in more climbers to create some shaded areas, to finally get round to building a compost bay (please God let this year be the year where there’s time), and to generally continue in this new, concise and more efficient way of working. I have aims to build a dry area for plants which love good drainage and would thrive in our ever hotter summers, but as I’m on heavy clay, it’ll take a good amount of building, sand and grit so in reality I think that’s going to be 2027, and alongside the first phase of the orchard, I think next year is already looking like it’s going to be a good year.

Looking forward to sharing more as the years go on.