Large Urn Arrangement Recipe

May

A large Urn with May flowers & foliage.

This was a usual arrangement. And one of my favourites.

Unusual - because I don’t do much event installation now but I had worked with these clients before and they are lovely. Usually I would install these vases in situ as they are so big and I can’t transport them. I had trouble moving just the branches and foxgloves since they were over 1.2m tall in buckets! But on this occasion, I only was going to have minutes to install so not the time to create this. So, instead, I made these at the farm, then lifted the arrangement into buckets, and quickly recreated back into the vase on site. With a little preening and some extras.

My favourite - because despite the lack of time and huge pressure for this one, it was a beautiful event, and many flowers had been cut from the families gardens. I came back to the studio the day before to find the most incredible buckets of flowers. These worked beautifully with what I had already cut in the gardens. As I say, what grows together, goes together.

I just love working with people that really want to put flowers at the centre. Their flowers. They cut, gathered, stripped and prepared material from their own gardens in a generous gift. Putting the season, their local and own plants, making the decorations full of meaning and love. Whilst the final arrangements were important, what made them was not the way it was put together, but how and why; culminating in beauty beyond floristry techniques, but in meaning. Rooted in purpose, time and place.

All ingredients, materials used and how, together with growing requirements, lastly cutting and conditioning techniques for each, below in this May Floral Recipe.

Skill - Easy

Grow to Arrange Time - 3 years +/-

Vase Life - Can be prepared days in advance.

Ingredients

Urn

• Foxgloves

• Poppy ‘Royal Wedding’

• Poppy ‘Victoria Louise’

• Sweet Rocket

• Campanula persicifolia

• Orlaya

• Peonies (all came from clients garden - I don’t know what varieties)

• Nepeta

• Philadelphus

• Larkspur

• Malus (crab apple - think Malus x purpurea crimson cascade)

• Artichoke

• Centaurea purpurea (Perennial Cornflower)

• Cornflower (annual)

• Apple Mint

• Gathered grasses

• Phacelia

  

  The crab apple first in, to create the shape and overall size. The vases are huge at 40cms. These are huge arrangements.

Growing Methods & Conditioning

With only four ingredients sown in the last year, most of this arrangement is cut from older biennials (sown two or three years ago), perennials, shrubs or trees. You’ll want a mature garden for this. But once stocked and mature, will provide these flowers year after year.

1. Annuals

   Orlaya, cornflowers and Larkspur are hardy annuals, and I find best grown from seed sown in late summer and planted out in early autumn to mature over winter. Plants are small above ground for many months, meanwhile the roots are growing. These can be grown over winter in a cold tunnel or greenhouse or directly in bed. Frost will not kill them. These can also be sown from May until now for later summer flowers, but they will not flower in May unless sown the previous year. Phacelia, grown as a green manure but also a great cut flower. Sown direct in March.

2. Biennials

   Foxgloves and sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis) are sown in May or June the previous year. For larger flowering plants, sow two years ahead. Sown every year to ensure continuation.