Last week I spent a delightful couple of hours in a Garden to Vase flower arranging workshop with the brilliant Annie Jenkins.
We’d arranged it as a birthday treat for my mum, and 5 of us followed Annie around her garden - finding out all about the different plant varieties, how to cut them, and what to do with them.
We then sat, played, chatted and created in the sunshine. It was a complete treat, a wonderful shared experience, and a fun creative process.
We learned SO much in a short space of time, and it reminded me that:
It’s fun to learn something new and different, especially when it’s purely for the joy of it. There was no test at the end and we weren’t trying to be experts - the focus was having a lovely time learning a few practical skills.
Having a supportive, knowledgeable guide to show you the way is a gift. None of us were confident at the start, each of us got something out of it, all of us produced a finished result that looked better than we had expected!
It pays to broaden your perspective. I would have walked past most of the things we picked - wild daisies, structural greenery, herbs, seedheads. So many pretty things that it’s easy to overlook but shine when put in the spotlight.
There’s no one right way. Each of us had the same bowl and access to the same flowers and each of our arrangements looked different - a gorgeous reflection of our personal preference, individual style and mood in the moment.
It’s completely OK to keep it simple and easy. The point is to bring colour and joy into your everyday life rather than stressing about complicated perfection - you can pick a flower and pop it in anything you have available.
I love it when something works out even better than you could have imagined, and I’d completely recommend it as an activity.
We walked home having had a great afternoon, each holding our very own flower arrangement, along with the confidence to apply what we’d learned going forward.
When was the last time you learned something new for the fun of it?
And did it teach you more than you expected?
Wishing you a wonderful week,
