The Year of the Blossom!
Hello, hello, all you flower lovers! 😊
I can’t believe it? Is it the end of summer already? Much has happened at Flower Friends in this magnificent year of the blossom. Garden and wild flowers have gone berserk, the amazing weather conditions making it just right for their plan to take over the earth!
So far this year we’ve given over 260 tins, vases and bouquets of flowers to the residents and staff of Methodist Homes’ Lawnfield House, and to survivors of domestic abuse at our Spring flower arranging workshops at the Asian Women’s Resource Centre (AWRC) as well as to local people in a demo at the Harlesden Town Garden Spring celebration in May.
We have enjoyed the continued support and commitment of our partner community garden donors who grow and donate flowers to us, including Brent Mencap, HTG and Salusbury School Greenspace. Special thanks to Gill and Beth at HTG, Ian and the Brent Mencap garden team and to our wonderful Flower Friends volunteers – Jeanne, Christine, Beth, Gill, Ros, Karen, Charlie, Verena, Jillian, and Lucy. Thank you so much for all your hard work. We couldn’t do this without you. The feedback has been brilliant and it’s been wonderful to see the happy smiles on the faces of residents when they’ve received our special birthday bouquets and of staff when given our little token of floral gratitude.
We’ve also made some big changes, including handing over the management of our Chiswick plot to volunteer Karen, who’ll be growing flowers for us and for her new floristry business Wilder. You can follow her story as an emerging flower farmer here. We wish Karen lots of luck and many beautiful and productive days by the river! Meanwhile, we’ve found new homes for our plants in the gardens of other volunteers and have received wonderful blooms from them throughout the season.
Life collecting flowers for our bouquets has certainly had its fair share of delights and challenges and some curious encounters with invertebrates and farm animals along the way! I’ve had tonnes of fun, as well as a few scary moments, like the time my two buckets of flowers from HTG tipped over in the exit of the 266 bus, causing chaos and an emergency stop, and when a herd of bullocks, a mother cow and her two calves came over to tell me what they thought of my trespass of their field in Buckinghamshire! Yikes, the things we do for love! 😊
The summer also brought great excitement when our volunteer garden designer Charlie Jackson was invited to be chief plantsman for garden designer Kitti Kovacs’ show gardens entry in the BBC Gardeners’ World Live Show 2025 in Birmingham and Hampton Court Garden Palace Garden Festival 2025, both of which won top awards, including Best Commercial Garden, Platinum and Silver. Congratulations Charlie, just don’t forget Flower Friends in your stratospheric rise to fame!
On a personal note, I’ve spent many happy hours walking in the beautiful countryside and spent gorgeous moments communing with magnificent red kites in the Chilterns. Whatever is going on in this crazy world we can always be sure to find calm, peace and hope in the beauty of nature.
On the other hand, it was with huge sadness that we said ‘au revoir’ to our lovely Flower Friend, Victoria, who sadly lost her battle with cancer in the winter. I miss you Victoria and will always remember your smile, your kindness and your beautiful roses. Auf wiedersehen pet xxx.
So now the days are closing in and the flowers are waning, we enter the autumn season with bunches of pretty dried blooms for the residents and staff at Lawnfield and look forward to the joy of making extravagant Christmas wreaths! Till then, I leave you with this musical reflection by Chafa, called ‘In bloom’ about flowers, of course…..