FLOWERS THAT I LIKE. (AND THAT I DON'T)

I love..... 

Hydrangeas

So big, so much variety and so easy to fill a big jar with. These babies are not cheap (say £5+ a stem in shops and something like £3 a stem at the flower market) but if you only need a few to work in a little vase you are Romeo dunn. 

White or green ones in summer (mmmm)

Styling from me. Photos by P. Durrant 

and these reddy ones that epitomise autumn in… the autumn. Although I do think I shoved maybe one too many in this vase… naughty naughty.They also dry really nicely, so if like me you leave flowers to die a long, painful death over a weekend away, these guys stay strong in the afterlife. 

Anemones 

For a long time (since a googled it 5 minutes ago) I had no idea what the pipe these ones were called. They are very very pretty. Very delicate but also have enough structure to stand alone (and not totally floppy like poppies). I love that you can mix them with bigger blooms like peonies and also really simple tiny heads, like clematis or daisies. These, and father Christmas are about the only things that come in red that I like. Red, nah thanks. I’ve actually removed every single red book in a bookshelf before photographing (it is the colour of danger for a reason) 
 

                

     Styling by me. Pic on crappy i phone (all props from H&M Home) | via Tumblr 

Tulips

I LOVE TULIPS. so simple, so underrated, so bloody cheap. I like them floppy and loose and organic when the petals are splayed out, grabbing on for dear life and the stalks bending over the vase. The biggest treat ever was when I mixed tulips and thistles together ..… AMAZING. If you want them to open fully for say a flower shoot or something then you can blow dry them with a hairdryer. I felt liek Cruella DeVil when I did this but consoled my bleeding heart by the fact that one beaut picture will last many, many more year than those pups would anyway. 

Michelle Warren | Me on  i-phizzle 

And not so much..... 

I just don’t ‘get’ orchids. To me, they are try-hard-ers. Also anything that you can buy at B&Q and relies on a hairclip to support it is not a real flower. I’ve tried, and I don’t like. No thank. you. Sir. Having said that, Wikipedia just enlightened me that “ the number of orchid species nearly equals the number of bony fishes and more than twice the number of bird species, and about four times the number of mammal species.” so i’m pretty confident there may be 1 or 2 that I could less-than-hate. 

Get them; 

Generally New Covent Garden flower market (in Vauxhall / Nine Elms) is the only place that you want to go to buy flowers in mass. When i’m styling I will only ever go here, this is where the trade, wedding organisers, stylists, hotels… the lot, come to get their flowers wholesale. I try as far as possible to get ’seasonal’ flowers and foliage because a) it’s cheaper, obvi. b) it’s more realistic in the shoots. When there is snow outside the window, peonies look like little pink frauds. c) I feel less like someone in a very far away land has bullied these flowers into blooming at an unnatural time and crammed them in a lorry for a 10 day shipping trip to London (which is probably true of all flowers anyway). To get in is a fiver, you don’t have to be trade, you can just rock up.  

I’d advise to go to NCG market in the FOURS OR FIVES, which as far as hours go are the least of my faves. Any later and the good stuff will have gone. This is how I usually look at this kind of time. 

Columbia Road in east London every Sunday is also great - though MANIC with the London crowds which makes me very sad. Also not as cheap as Covent Garden of course.