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A Flowerona Day – Social Media For Florists

I have long been a reader of Rona Wheeldon’s flowery blog Flowerona. Even before I started blogging myself, I enjoyed reading her then daily Flowerona posts with a cup of early morning tea before getting the family up for school. As Flowerona has grown Rona’s talent in using social media to grow her blog has been clear and when I saw that she was teaching a course called ‘Social Media For Florists’ I could not resist signing up.

I have to admit that I did feel something of a fraud on this course – it was aimed primarily at florists trying to grow their businesses and as I am neither a florist nor a business I did feel slightly ill at ease. I do blog about gardening, my Cutting Garden and arranging flowers, however, so I felt I had much in common with all the other lovely flowery ladies I met that day.

Rona was an excellent teacher – she exudes confidence and charm and makes you feel that anything is possible. Despite numerous interruptions for questions she was effortlessly able to keep the course on track and to time.

Rona was joined by the very enthusiastic and bubbly Fiona Humberstone – the face behind The Brand Stylist. Rona and Fiona both run extremely successful businesses around their blogs and were full of advice and information on the most popular social media sites for florists. Supporting Rona and Fiona were Duncan McCabe from the supremely successful florists McQueens and Emily Quinton from Makelight Photography. Duncan spent the day shooting a video of the event and Emily took lots of photos – you can see more on Flowerona. You may remember that I took one of Emily’s excellent Photography for Bloggers courses in the spring – it was lovely to see her and catch up with her news.

Due to a very bad journey I missed most of the first session which was all about making a mood board to represent your brand. Lead by Fiona the idea was to think of three words that represent your brand and then to use magazine pictures, photos and styling props to create a mood board to reflect these words.

My words to describe my floral style would be ‘Simple, Homegrown & Seasonal’ and I hastily stuck a few photos of my seasonal arrangements from ‘In A Vase On Monday‘ posts onto my board. Although the flowers change with the seasons, I think my style of using flowers is very similar throughout the year and that was reflected in the photos when I put them all together. If you look closely you might recognise a few of the pictures from previous posts.

We then broke for a much needed cup of coffee and some fantastic cake!

For the second morning session Rona and Fiona talked at length about FaceBook, Instagram and Twitter, sharing the best ways to use these media to develop our own business brand.

After an information packed morning we headed downstairs for our lunch, cooked by the amazing Maddie Hatton. The lunch was as delicious as her Instagram feed had promised – I wanted to take her home to live in my kitchen! All the details of the lunch setting were lovely – drinks by Kilner, glasses, cups, plates and cutlery from the very famous Anthropolgie and lots of flowery chat as we got to know each other better.

Lunch was over all too quickly and it was back upstairs to learn a bit about using our camera phones – I had no idea that I could take a square crop picture straight from my phone (very useful if you are planning to upload a picture to Instagram). We looked at the importance of editing photos to improve the image and of trying to find a style for our pictures that can be instantly recognised.

After that we had a little practice at styling images:

Then it was back to our desks for the final session about blogging.

At the end of the day we were asked to spend some time thinking about how we would use what we had learnt.

My aim for the day was to come away with a plan that would help me build my Peonies & Posies readership. Whilst I do not write for the comments, follows, likes and shares it is always nice to know that the hours I spend photographing both my flowers and my garden and writing posts are for a satisfied audience and a growing readership is a sure sign of that.

What I learnt on the day is that it is very hard to build a successful blog organically – regular interaction with other social media seems to be necessary to promote what you are all about (in my case Peonies & Posies). I already use the social media that we discussed, but in a very haphazard way, so my plan moving forward is:

My FaceBook page is going to become a place where I share what is wowing me each week – other peoples blog posts, videos, photos and events that I think you will enjoy. There will still be updates about posts on Peonies and Posies as well as photos from my garden, but my aim on FaceBook will be to share what I have enjoyed each week with you.
I am planning to use Instagram much more. Instagram is almost like a mini blog post – I can upload a photo or two a day that show where I have been or what I have been doing in the garden. As I only post on my blog two or three times a week I can use Instagram to remind you when to plant garlic for example, or to show you the roses as I am going about my garden work – it releases me from the need to be in the house on my laptop when sharing Peonies & Posies with you.
I have never made much effort with Twitter – to be frank I have found it quite confusing and often an information overload. After the course I have a better understanding of the benefit of it – it is a quick way to communicate – I can catch up with what someone is up to whilst i am on a train or doing taxi duty and I can share what I see very easily with my followers. I doubt that I will use Twitter to post much myself – there are only so many hours in a day, but I will have a quick check on what others are posting daily and retweet anything I love so that my followers can enjoy it too (can you tell that I am even learning to use the lingo!).
Pinterest will remain something I dip into if I am at a loose end. I have quite a few boards and when I have time (usually during the long dark winter evenings) I love to add to these flowery mood boards. Do take a look if you have never visited me there. Pinterest for me will continue to be a bit of light relief rather than something I feel I have to make an effort with.

So how am I doing with my plan? You know what they say about the best laid plans and so far I have not managed to implement my plan on a daily basis. First and foremost I am a gardener and that is where I prioritise my spare time. Without the garden there would be no Peonies & Posies, so at busy times like the bulb planting season I have to say family first, garden second and then my Peonies & Posies world. I think that getting into the habit of using Instagram daily will help – I can blog and garden almost simultaneously – but all habits take time to form.

So thank you to Rona and Fiona for organising such an informative and stimulating day! Their attention to detail was faultless – the venue, food, styling and flowers were all beautiful. Even more important though was the course detail and this was everything I had hoped it would be. I came away with my own notebook full of thoughts, beautifully printed and detailed reminder cards on all that we had covered and the most beautiful goody bag – I will save that one for another post!

So please take a look at my other social media and do leave me a comment to do let me know that you have visited – every comment, however short, is appreciated and does help to boost my enthusiasm to keep on plugging away with Peonies & Posies!

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October 11, 2014
17 Comments
by Julie

Flowers

Bouquet Making With The Garden Gate Flower Company

Following on from my recent post about the Green & Gorgeous cutting garden I have finally found a few minutes to sit down and pull together my thoughts on Day 2 of the Wedding Flower Intensive Course hosted by Green & Gorgeous and The Garden Gate Flower Company that I attended back in June.

I thought I would start at the end, so to speak, by showing you my finished bouquet held by a professional model complete with wedding dress and photographed by a professional photographer (the very talented Imogen Xiana)!! I was so excited to see this photo – I feel like “a real florist” showing this one off!

So what was the Wedding Flower Intensive course all about? Having spent the first day with Rachel from Green & Gorgeous concentrating on the growing side (you can read about Day 1 here), we all arrived back eager to spend our second day learning as much as we could from the lovely ladies Becca and Maz who run the Garden Gate Flower Company. Their website describes their work as ‘individual, natural, wild and wonderful’ and they make beautiful seasonal arrangements from their own organically grown flowers and foraged materials. The Wedding Intensive was an opportunity to learn how to create wedding flowers in their own unique style.

This very natural way of arranging flowers – no foam, no spiralling and turning and certainly no man-made additions is perfect for garden grown flowers which often have imperfections such as bendy stems, droopy flower heads, the odd insect etc. These ‘faults’ are all part of the beauty of the flowers in Becca and Maz’s world and make their creations very individual.

We started the day gathered around our work tables with large cups of coffee listening to Becca explain the philosophy behind their wedding work. I felt very much the amateur amongst the lovely group of professional growers attending the course, so I was relieved as I listened to Becca talk to realise that much of the way that I work on my limited number of weddings is similar to their business model. In particular Becca stressed the importance of making sure that a bride understands your style before committing to a wedding – for me this is the key factor in whether I will agree to take an event on. At the Garden Gate Company they talk to brides at the planning stage in terms of colours and shapes, making it clear that the actual flowers cannot be specified as what is available on the day will vary from year to year.

A mood board is prepared for each wedding so that the bride can visualise the overall look without focusing on the detail of the actual flowers. I have been very keen on mood boards as a way of presenting my ideas since I made my first one on a Flowerona Social Media For Florists Course a couple of years ago (you can read about my day here). Since then I have made quite a few and think it helps both potential clients and me to visualise what we are trying to achieve.

After we had all picked Becca’s brains, we moved on to the mechanics of their style of wedding bouquet. Most wedding bouquets are made as hand tied arrangements. At its simplest this involves holding the stems in one hand and adding flowers, turning the bouquet as you go, to create a spiral of stems which can then be tied together. This produces a domed circular shape that can be as large or small as you wish. Becca and Maz use a very different technique which produces a much looser and more flowing arrangement.

This would be much easier to demonstrate than it is to explain in words, but in summary you must think of the hand that is holding the flowers as the neck of a vase. Start by adding a few strong foliage branches to create a support for your arrangement and then slide the stems into your supporting foliage one at a time and move them into position. Always hold the flowers very loosely so that you have room to add and move about your flowers – just as though you were arranging in a vase. This was the aspect I found most difficult to master – I have small hands and felt like the whole bouquet was going to slip away from me – under instruction I kept the faith though and they were right – it works!!

Apart from the mechanics of bouquet making, the other aspect of their work that sets them apart is the range of materials that they will include in a bouquet. When picking their material as well as flowers they are looking for a range of foliages, grasses, fruits, berries and dried materials to create a very lush and voluptuous display. These are certainly not bouquets for brides who are looking for a small neat dome.

Once the bouquet is complete and has been secured with tape, the finishing touch is the addition of a selection of long silk ribbons in colours to set off the flowers.

I had never worked with beautiful silk ribbons such as these before and I was very interested in learning the technique as my next bride had ordered a beautiful selection from Lancaster & Cornish and I wanted to make sure I could do these ribbons justice..

After Becca had finished it was time for the attendees to have a go! We were all very nervous but soon relaxed as we started working with the beautiful flowers that we had gathered the previous day.

Once our bouquets were finished we broke for lunch and then the exciting part of photographing the bouquets started. Our course organisers had arranged for a professional photographer to join us, along with a model made up and dressed as a bride, so that our bouquets could be photographed to their best advantage. Whilst mine was away being treated to this VIP experience I took a moment to capture a few shots of the other attendees bouquets.

The final part of our day involved watching Maz make one of their signature table arrangements. As with the bouquets, no foam is involved – the flowers are arranged into a bowl of fresh water and supported by chicken wire scrunched up and secured in the bowl.

As with the bouquet the variety of materials is the key to this individual look – particularly the addition of unusual foliage such as the heauchera leaves, fruit and dainty airy flowers that float above the canopy and give movement to the whole arrangement.

I left the course feeling confident and inspired and ready to meet my next challenge – the wedding of the lovely Polly and James. I will be sharing my photos soon and hopefully will have some professional photos too as I had very little time in this wedding to play photographer. As a taster have a look at one I have ‘stolen’ off Facebook – didn’t they make a handsome couple!

If you have enjoyed these photos please do pop over to the individuals Instagram accounts to find out more about what they do and to see lots more beautiful pictures:

@thegardengateflowerco & @gandgorgeousflowers
Photography @imogenxiana
Dress @cherrywilliamslondon
Hair/MUA @hairbyhannah_uk

I am just going to share one final photo of my course bouquet!

I hope you have enjoyed this look at my exciting couple of days away immersed in flowers and I will be back soon with photos of the flowers I made for the wedding!

August 9, 2016
12 Comments
by Julie

Monday Flowers

In A Vase On Monday – Cafe Au Lait and a Boiled Egg

Welcome to ‘In A Vase On Monday’ when I am linking up with Cathy at Rambling In The Garden to share a vase of flowers picked from my garden every Monday.

I had to pick my flowers very early today, before the rapidly approaching storm hit. I was so early that I put together my vase before I had even had my breakfast, so today I am sharing not just a jug of Cafe Au Lait dahlias, but also the freshly laid boiled egg in my little Emma Bridgewater Buff Orpington egg cup that I had for my breakfast as the downpour started.

All this wet weather, together with dropping temperatures is bad news for my lovely dahlias, which tend to droop very sadly when battered by wind and rain. As I know that it is not long now before they will be blackened by the frost so bringing the Cutting Garden year to a close, I am madly cutting as many as I can whilst I still have an abundance of blooms to enjoy. Looking back at last year I can see from my blog posts that the dahlias lasted throughout October and well into November, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that this year will be as good. Even if the season is as long as last year the end of the Cutting Garden is in sight, so I need to make the most of it whilst the abundance lasts.

Today I wanted to take another look at the stunning dahlia Cafe Au Lait. This is my first year growing this variety and I only grew one plant as a trial, having heard reports of this being a difficult dahlia to grow. I have to say that my one plant has been very easy – a little late to start flowering compared to others in my garden, but once the buds started they have flowered beautifully and easily lasted 3-4 days in a vase.

Dahlias do not have a very long life in the vase and droop quickly if kept out of water. They are such productive plants, however, that you can regularly pick new blooms, refreshing your vase arrangements as individual flowers fade without depleting the look of the plant in the garden. The harder you pick, the more the dahlias respond by throwing up new buds. Dahlias should be picked just as the flower opens – dahlia buds do not flower once cut and if a bloom has been in flower for a few days or more when you cut it the petals around the edges will fade and drop very quickly.

Regular picking also has the advantage of stopping the plants from becoming leggy. I rarely stake my plants and instead encourage strong bushy growth by cutting back to a bud well below the flower I want to pick. Often the stems I cut will have unopened buds on them, which I leave if they are well placed and will add to an arrangement or remove if they will make the stem difficult to work with in a vase.

I added a few late scabious flowers and a sprig of achellia to this jug just to remind myself of summer!

Next year I am planning to grow a few more plants of Cafe Au Lait and I will order my dahlia tubers in January from my favourite supplier Rose Cottage Plants. Most dahlia tubers I just lay out in trays in the greenhouse in late April and water regularly before planting in the ground in early June. As Cafe Au Lait took a while to flower this year, however, I am going to start the tubers off in large pots in the greenhouse in March, so that they can be planted out in June as well developed plants. When ordering dahlias I tend to opt for colours that will work well with my interiors and this slightly coffee coloured creamy dahlia has worked perfectly with my largely cream painted kitchen and dining room.

I hope you have enjoyed taking another look at Cafe Au Lait today and that you will pop over to Cathy’s blog to see what she and the others have made this week. Last week I spent a very inspiring day in London on the Flowerona Social Media For Florists workshop and I will be writing about my day and sharing photos of the lovely styling of this event later this week. I also plan to be back with more about my different varieties of dahlia, if the rain stops for long enough to take some more photos this week!

October 6, 2014
20 Comments
by Julie