This week is British Flowers Week, an annual national celebration of British flowers, plants, and foliage founded by New Covent Garden Market in 2013.
June and July are sensational months for British flowers - think sweet peas, daises, and cornflowers. The week aims to shine the spotlight on the growers, wholesalers, florists, and designers in the supply chain for the flowers, plants, and foliage we enjoy in Great Britain. You can read more about the event here.
You can get involved by trying your hand at home grown flower arranging, visiting an open garden, or attending a workshop at a local florist. Use the hashtags to take part: #bfw2023 and #britishflowersweek2023. And don't forget to tag us in your photographs throughout the week @emma_bridgewater on Instagram.
“Anyone and everyone who loves British flowers is encouraged to get involved by decorating their windows with British flowers to mark the week. Whether it’s with a single stem, a bouquet made from garden flowers or a spectacular display, a decorated window will signal support this June.” - @marketflowers
Extract from Emma’s book Pattern & the secrets of lasting design
One of the very best ways to appreciate flowers is from a car. On neglected roundabouts, on verges all over the country, by the windiest of lanes or a whizzing dual carriageway, and even on the embankments of the motorway, you will see how carelessly, abundantly, beautifully and with no planning at all the wild flowers of England fling themselves about, star the mown grass, tangle the hedges, and most especially how they lavish themselves in utterly perfect ever-changing versions of the best ever herbaceous borders. Of course, the councils and authorities are always intervening, sometimes with benign effects, I will concede, but more frequently with disastrously destructive mowing programmes- for example, slap in the middle of the nesting season, just so that we can all speed slightly more foolishly on to the next thing.
I know that the motorway embankments are not au naturel, they are strimmed, and also their trees are cut down in swathes just as they come to maturity lest health and safety guidelines might be breached. I am aware of successful municipal planting schemes along our roads – in Norwich the splashes and pools of the crocuses between the carriageways of the ring road in February are an especial pleasure. But notwithstanding these interferences, the wildflowers burst out- -they recall the lost bucolic past, and they grab their chances wherever the soil is turned over; they redeem the heartlessness of how we live with their boundless grace and loveliness. They constantly heal and restore the land and make it beautiful.
Pick Of The Bunch!
Sit back and watch the miraculous transformation of the world around you, as hedgerows buzz in to life and gardens hum with activity.
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