How a Royal florist builds a seasonal British bouquet at home

Today I'm going to show you how to make this simple tied bunch using ingredients that I've cut from my garden and a few flowers from British growers. Hello my name is Shane Connolly, I'm a florist, I have had my own business for over 30 years and our speciality is seasonal British gorn flowers. Our emphasis is on sustainability, trying to make as little footprint by what we do as possible. When you're choosing flowers for an arrangement, for a bunch, for an event, for anything, we are inclined to half go with what we can get, that sounds very random, but the best that the growers have to offer. So don't be obsessed with the variety but rather the colour palette and the other half is really things that go beautifully together. My personal taste is not to have huge contrasts and so today I have chosen these creme brulee flocks. Well I didn't choose them, the grower sent them, so that's an even nicer serendipity. But then when you pick things in the garden you can have in your head the colours of those flocks. So I have Cotinus, that lovely sort browny coffee coloured fluff. I have this shrub which is called Holodiscus and again has that just unusually brown colour. I've got some lint, some chocolate lint, somehow picks up the purpley colours here. And I've got other foliages in the form of this lovely species rose which is Roxbogeae, grown for its hips. I personally feel that the foliage is really important. If something is just all flowers it looks like it came out of a flower shop. If it's got the lovely combination of interesting textures and foliages it feels like it came out of your garden and there's a much more personal touch to it. So the very first thing I like to do when I'm starting to make a bunch is to lay my ingredients out in front of me so I can see them. So I'm going to start with the hardiest of them all which is probably this foliage. Now the interesting thing, if I cut a piece that size that's roughly going to be the size of the bunch. If I cut a piece that size that's going to be the size of the bunch. So you have to decide how big you want to go looking at what ingredients you've got and also what you want it to be. Do you want it to be a bunch to give someone? Do you want it to be something that a bridesmaid carries down an aisle? Maybe that'd be a bit too big. Or do you want it to simply be a bunch for your house? So I think I'm going to go medium. And when you get something like this you could choose to take that bit out and be left with that lovely shape and then edit it. You don't need all the leaves. You want something that feels light and beautiful rather than heavy and overwhelming. So I'm going to leave that one as my take off any knobbly bits. I also picked a few sprays of this spindleberry. The spindles are not yet ripe. When they are ripe they're a very different colour. They're bright bright orange and bright bright pink. But at this stage they've got a rather beautiful shape and a sort of delicate colour which I think goes with with what we've got going on in this in this design. So now moving on to the flowers. These creme brulee and actually you don't need to do a lot to this particular one because what you want to make sure is that you've got a clear stem and if you've got something at the top like a very young piece of growth it's probably worth taking it off because it's just going to go limp and it's never going to open. So any little new growth will never open. I'm ready to start. I've got all my ingredients. I've sort of made an executive decision about which flowers I want. I'm enjoying the foliage elements so much so much that I am actually concentrating on them so that it feels even more garden-like. But you know we can add more things if we suddenly think this looks like it needs more things. We can add more floral things if we think it needs more floral things and that's the real secret. This is a chance for you to enjoy the things that grow in your garden and to reflect that and to use things that you find interesting. It's not about a fashion or a trend and also when I do tie bunches I wasn't taught to do them in the spiral method that so many florists use. I was taught to do them in freehand way which I'm about to show you. I like to pick a few bits of shapely foliage, put it in my hand as if my hand was a vase. So very simply holding it as loosely and comfortably as possible and this is why having everything spread in front of you really helps. You can see the shapes and you can see the interesting bits and decide where you would like to put them. Most floral techniques that I taught today with bunches are this spiral method where you add flowers and foliage all together. I really love this way of doing it. It feels much more liberating to the ingredients. So I'm making a shape before I worry about anything else. Add the spindle. Your hand becomes a container rather effectively actually and the whole aim at this point is to keep everything loose. It's not to tighten it up. Again spirals sometimes just tighten everything up. I'm not going to add some bits of the mint simply because that gives a good base and holds the placement of the twigs together in a very nice simple way. So I'm trying very much to keep different heights just like it would be in a garden that everything feels free and at this point it is free and I can release it. I could well it's actually holding together quite nicely but my hand is completely loose completely loose and I can change things very easily if I wasn't happy. So I want to get it in the right place. If I was doing a spiral technique I couldn't do what I'm doing now and choose the place for it with its friend in there. It's the opposite of trying to create a dome or trying to create something that isn't natural. It's the complete antithesis of that and so some people think that's not floristry and maybe they're right. I'm delighted it isn't. I've got this lovely holodiscus. I think I grew it because of its name. The joy of this technique is that if you think oh I haven't put that in the right place it's very easy to take it out again and look and think do you know a bit higher that's what I want to do. The mint is giving this such a lovely scent and I think people remember scent so much more than they remember anything else. It's the thing that links you to your childhood the scent of you know tomatoes in a greenhouse the scent of sweet peas. So don't underestimate scent. Increasingly I get to this point and I think I don't need flowers. I really like it just as it is and the real joy is that nowadays there are British growers who are growing these sorts of ingredients. I mean I've cut half of this from my garden but there are growers who are growing these things and there's a new appreciation for natural things and shapes and an awfully overused word textures which just give an interest you know that feels like it didn't come from a shop it didn't come from a greengrocer's it certainly didn't come from a supermarket it came from a garden. I am now going to put in these these beautiful elderberries. So now I've gotten the foliages in I'm going to start on the flowers and the joy of this technique is that the flowers have been separate from all the the thump beans and thudding so they are protected in effect and they're going to be the last ingredient to go into this so they'll be hopefully pretty perfect. The other lovely thing about using British grown is that there are no straight stems everything's got a lovely natural shape to it which means that you produce a bouquet with character. I love the way these colours are blending in together and that's where your own personal taste can come in you know if you like subtle go for subtle if you like bright go for bright though it's much nicer if you're bringing it as a gift for someone to think what they might like I So you can feed stems in and when they come through you can pull it through to the height you want so I'm adding a little cluster there's just a nice spot for and easier said than done keep looking at the bouquet and when you think you have enough stop like adding salt to a dish don't keep adding it taste it think with all flowers the negative space is just as important as the positive and also not getting obsessed with rules that you have to have a focal flower and I can't even remember half the names that people have invented for the different flower types it can be all insignificant flowers like this if that's what you like I personally do like it doesn't have to be great big roses or peonies every single time there's a real joy in the season dictating what's good and the joy is I can do exactly what I want I could add these with becky's but they they bring they bring a much more solid colour so I'm just going to leave them out or more to my liking I could add these which seem to not fight or for attention they seem to be much more in much more of the same quality as the flowers already here so I'm going to just try a few yeah I like that so now I feel I've got enough of this you can look and see are there any bits there's a bit of a gap just here and that's very very easy to fill with a bit of mint or any foliage if it's for if if you're making bunches for a wedding it's really really important to check at this point that there are no gaps ugly gaps it's different from space ugly gaps which are going to be caught on the camera nowadays so much is photographed so for instance just there I could put that in and that hides those bare stems I think that feels finished to me I love that it isn't symmetrical so that it feels that I haven't arranged it I'm going to tie this bunch off we use completely biodegradable natural jute twine so it can be thrown in the compost heap as it is after after you've enjoyed it hold it with those two fingers and go around once and go around again so now that it's tied it's completely completely firm I haven't tied it too tightly because I want to be able to let the flowers not be strangled then you've got to decide how long to leave the the stems if this was for a bride or a bridesmaid I would want the stems to be quite short because I don't think it looks nice to see someone struggling with a pile of stems if I was giving it to a friend I think I would leave them a bit longer just so that it fits into a vase of water more easily remembering where your finger is on the other side that you don't cut it off too so I've basically cut everything to roughly the same length straight into water so now that you've made it and tied it and cut its stems and put it straight into water that is the most important thing to take away flowers need water I know it seems obvious but don't leave them hanging around before you put them in water the stems especially of these little soft things like the phlox they just steal over so put them in water and keep them in water as long as possible until you're giving them to your friend or if it's for a bridesmaid until it's delivered