Frolicking with very British flowers

Lara from Manor Farm Cottage Flowers

On Friday we welcomed Lara to the Flower School with her buckets of very British flowers to collaborate on our first British Flower Day Course.

Getting to grips with our natural hand tied bouquets

After an introduction to British flowers from a grower's perspective it was time to get hands on and create gorgeous natural hand ties as nature intended them to be. When flowers are this fresh and this seasonal, there's no need to over style - they simply speak for themselves in all their British glory!

A beautiful kind of floral chaos

Just some of our flower heroes for the day included bright blue Cornflowers, deep purple and pink heavenly scented Sweet Peas, Dahlias, Zinnias and Larkspur - all of which are at their freshest right now so if you are looking for some July floral inspiration, they are a great place to start.

A big thank you to Lara for nurturing these wonderful blooms and of course to our day students who we had a blast with!

You can see more of Lara's beautiful blooms and her styling of them via her Manor Farm Cottage Facebook page.

Where the flowers grow

Image via our Pinterest board: Inspiring us today...

So, we've been back to the drawing board this week and are making lots of exciting plans for the year ahead. Our blackboard is full of post-its and we are (trying!) our best to prioritise.

One of the things on the top of our to-do list is to attend the The Great Flower Farmer meet up next week hosted by Flowers by Clowance to meet lots of lovely British growers. We have made it our number one priority this year to source more British grown flowers. If you caught BBC2's Great British Garden Revival last night (do catch up if you missed it - it's well worth a watch), you will have hopefully been inspired by Rachel de Thame and the troop of British growers who are pioneering the growth of their industry. 

Next week is the beginning of our own British flower journey so look out for an inspiration loaded post next week as I dish all about our day and hopefully introduce you to some of the stars which will grow and supply our flowers for the year ahead!

If you can't possibly wait that long, check out The British Flower Collective for a good introduction to some of the countries leading suppliers and some lovely images of their blooms.