Pershore Flower Club

Chairman Janis welcomed members and again six visitors. Janis reported that we had received a letter of thanks from the “Air Ambulance” for our recent donation. Members were reminded of the “Lonely Bouquet” day on the 6th May and encouraged members to place a small posy of flowers in a public place and advertise NAFAS and in particular our own club. Janis also asked for members to sign up for the Summer Outing on August 17 to Ashwood Nurseries near Kingswinford.

Having done the formal notices Janis then introduced our demonstrator for the evening Lucy Ellis from Bath whose title was “To the Manor born” and we were certainly in for a spell bound evening.

Lucy is not only a National demonstrator and Judge but was part of the gold winning team at Chelsea Flower Show in 2015, which she admitted was great fun to do but took up an awful amount of time and preparation. During her demonstration she regaled us with her funny stories about Chelsea but also about her own life which started out with being christened Caroline and she become a qualified mechanical engineer which is not what you usually expect from a flower arranger – good for her.

All the arrangement were set around the Manor House, starting with an arrangement depicting a typical jump in the countryside which the horse would have been expected to encounter every day. The basis of jump was a horseshoe shape of twigs with the hedgerow being depicted with conifer, common ivy, verbina, choisya “montana”, dogwood and skimmia, For flowers she used longi lilies, white snap dragons (to depict fox gloves) white veronica, small spray white roses (depicting the dog roses) and lovely hellebores. Added to these were lovely pink “monton” tulips and a cerise spray carnation called “new velvet”. The final effect was beautiful. To add to the stables effect were two wooden boxes, a saddle rack and riding boots.

Next came afternoon tea in the drawing room and Lucy had a lovely large 3 tier cake stand on which she arranged two placements which included pussy willow, eucalyptus, flowering current, dark blue flowering rosemary, conifer, hebe “black knight”. Senecio which Lucy reminded us is one of the few pieces of foliage that does not need conditioning. Flowers were purple spray carnations and pink roses named “wild look”. Lucy told us how in years past the aristocracy did not catch as many illnesses as the other members of society because eating with silver cutlery they digested very small amounts of silver which enhanced their immune systems.

Lucy had taken some classes in watercolour painting and her instructor had taught her to use dark purple to enhanced the light and dark aspects of the painting and produce a 3D effect, which she now brings into her flower arranging, so ladies start using deep purple.

We then went on to Cocktail Time. Lucy had a lovely very large (at least 2 ft.) black Martini glass which she used to represent her 1920 cocktail. Lucy explained about the ice houses which very large house would have had in their gardens in the 1600's in order to prolong the life the their meats which lay on top of the ice blocks and was then covered in straw . Cocktails came about in the 1920's in America during prohibition when the home made moonshine was not very palatable so they introduced various fruit juices to make the moonshine more drinkable and hence the cocktail was born. Our cocktail made up with fatsia, manipulated variegated aspidistra leaves, conifer and hebe and phoenix palms. Avalanche white roses were used with white carnations a lovely anthurium white with cerise tips, topped with two very long purple straws and a lovely Japanese style parasol.

For her fourth arrangement Lucy showed members how to make a modern rustic hand tied bunch using contorted willow, pussy willow, green chrysanthemums, orange gerbera, orange poppies and avalanche roses.and green “Anastasia” chrysanthemum. Obviously the size of the bunch related to how much you can hold in your hand. Start with three main stems interlocking, and add individual stems on a cross over pattern. To tie off double the cord in two and pass the your hand through the loop, which will enable you to pull the cord tight and tie off. Cut stems straight in order to make the bunch stand unaided.

For Lucy's final arrangement we moved into the Manor's sitting room where she had a very large fire basket complete with firedogs. She had placed gold material in the base to represent the heart of the fire, to which she added three lovely large date palm spades which had been sprayed a warm amber colour. At this point Lucy gave us some tips on painting techniques using spray paints and water.

For her arrangement in the fire basket she had invented a new design which she hoped would be in future called “Lucy's Inverted Triangle”. The foliage was garryaelliptica, laurel, Euonymus “emerald”, magnolia “granda flora”, to which she added a lovely peach/gold rose called “base alchemy”, purple spray carnations and finally a wonderful very large cymbodium amber coloured orchid. Everyone could just imagine the grand room in the manor house and sitting there roasting in front of the fire – what a lovely way to finish an evening

Sheanagh Hickson gave the vote of thanks to Lucy and said how very much we had all enjoyed the evening. Her foliage and flowers were used in such a way as to produce stunning arrangement which were accompanied with Lucy's wicked sense of humour and amusing stories.

JILL MILLARD