Flower School: Day One

Going to flower school has always been one of those things on my wishlist and I'm glad I finally had the chance to try it out. Last week I attended a three day taster course at The Covent Garden Academy of Flowers, a very pretty flower school/shop in St.Martins Courtyard... 

The entrance to the Covent Garden Academy of Flowers: On the ground floor there are lots of flowers and cute gifts for sale (almost like you're in someone's boudoir)

The classroom is on the Lower Ground floor: Flower arrangement on the front right is by some students from the Classic Course.

Day One:

There were ten of us in the taster course, coming from different countries and all walks of life: an accomplished young florist from New Zealand, a  costume designer from Singapore, a manager from Germany, a  teacher from Argentina..... It was very interesting to see how flowers brought ten very different ladies to the same place. 

On the first day we were taught by Madeleine, a specialist in bouquets (she has even made bouquets for the Queen!). Madeleine made it seem so effortless to create a beautiful bouquet. In reality I really struggled with grasping the whole bunch of flowers and foliage and arranging the stems into a neat spiral.

I planned to take photos as the class progressed but unfortunately I'm no good at multi-tasking and had to concentrate fully so I only have pictures of my finished work...

 A hand tied bouquet starting with a 'frame' of foliage - mainly Salal and Eucalyptus leaves, combined with white and light pink peonies, two-toned pink roses, white roses and white agapanthus.

White shutters = perfect background for flower photos!

Sorry for the overload of photos of the same bouquet, really couldn't help it, with a round bouquet it just looks very different from different angles. Besides, this is also my favourite arrangement from the three day course so I've decided that it deserves to be featured more on this post. 

In the afternoon we made a boutoinnière/corsage. I never knew how much work it requires to make a small corsage like this... so much patience and time needed to wire every single leaf, cluster of berries and flower together... Now I know why they can be so expensive to buy!

Hope I haven't bored you with too much flower talk! Will share with you the rest of my flower academy experience in the next post!

Love, J