I love flowers. I love flowers arranged in jam jars, all mix matched and messy looking, none of that neat primped looking arrangements here. Just artfully chucked in the jar! Bouquets of wild hedgerow flowers perhaps they have just been picked by your beau or your eager child wishing you love.
My Great Grandmother, Elsie, had a bouquet of wild flowers on her wedding day. Picked that morning by my Great Grandfather, Lenny, before the ceremony. My mum has an old sepia photograph of them standing there, just wed, with this gorgeous bouquet of ox eye daisies, cow parsley and red campion. So romantic isn't it? I have always wanted the same for my own wedding... one day!
I know it's naughty to pick wild flowers, so I have a solution. Every Winter, I dream of having an abundance of blooms to pick and arrange, filling the house with colour and scent. In reality I tend to fail at this miserably. My garden, a tiny courtyard, has a couple of rose bushes, several clematis, ferns, hostas, geraniums... but no room for the wild meadows I long for.
At the allotment this weekend, I looked at the space in different eyes. Why am I trying to fill it with potatoes, when I can sow masses of wild flower seed mix? Flowers for me, the birds and the bees too. How amazing will that be?... and how beautiful will it look too!
I've done some research and Sarah Raven does some wonderful mixes, that include Cosmos, Love in the Mist and Poppies. I plan to sew the mixes down the side of our plot and to give over a bed entirely to flowers. For the garden, I am going to plant a couple of peonies and plant another pink Dicentra (as it died last year in the snow). And perhaps poppies, ranunculars and dahlias too.
I'd best get on with it! Not long til summer and picking time! I will show you the results.... all ready for our Nature in the Home. Soon my lovelies, soon!