The art of flowers

In conversation with floral artist, grower, educator and author, Bex Partridge. Words By Hannah Tapping

Can you tell me a little about your background and how you found your way into the world of flowers?

I started my business about eight years ago, but I’ve only been running it as a full-time business for the last three. Before that, I had a very multifaceted career to say the least. I left school at 16, trained to be a chef, and worked in the wedding and dinner party industry before moving into wedding planning. I then stumbled into the corporate world, working in marketing and product development for FMCG companies. While it seems a world away from flowers, I actually worked on a lot of fragrance development, so there is a tenuous link to what I do now!

My job took me to live in Amsterdam for a couple of years and the way the Dutch decorate their homes with flowers, often with big beautiful seasonal branches, was hugely inspiring to me and very different to what we were doing in the UK. The British flower movement hadn’t really taken hold, so flowers at home tended to be quite formal. That experience really sparked something in me.

It’s really important to say that I have always gardened, either with my mum or learning from my grandma. My husband and I bought our first house when we were 23 and had an allotment by the time we were 25 which, back then, wasn’t considered to be cool. I was always the one that was gardening at the weekend while my friends were out clubbing.

I went back to work six months after having my first child. When you have a child, you really start to re-evaluate what you’re doing and what you enjoy. By the time my second son was born a couple of years later, we had moved back to the UK and this is when things really started to change for me from a career perspective.

More and more I realised I just didn’t want to spend my days in an office doing things I didn’t enjoy with people who weren’t my vibe. It sounds awful, but that was the reality. Around that time, we had moved to a new house that had the most amazing mature garden. My son was born in March and, while I was on maternity leave, the garden came to life and I honestly became completely obsessed with nature.

I felt like I was trying to find a little piece of myself, that wasn’t work and family, and so flowers became that piece. Gardening has always been a thread throughout my life and that is fundamentally why I do what I do now. This business gives me an excuse to continue to grow and garden but then to also create beautiful, lasting designs from what I grow.

How did you make the adjustment from the corporate to the creative world?

I think flowers ignited a creativity in me which had actually always been there, but that had been suppressed by my career. I’ve always been that person starting a new hobby or trying something out, whether it be knitting or cross stitching… I never just sit still. I always need to be doing something with my hands. Then, when I discovered flowers, and particularly dried flowers, I found something I could not only create with, but also grow.

Dried flowers back then were not considered to be in vogue and nobody in my sphere was even remotely interested in what I was doing – most thought I was absolutely crackers! I went to a couple of markets and sold nothing. Undeterred, I launched Botanical Tales on social media, which had a wider audience, and I suddenly found a lot of people out there who actually loved what I did… and it snowballed from there.

ABOVE: Flower Wreaths

Did you have any formal training?

No, I’m entirely self-taught. I love my garden. I love growing. I love nothing more than receiving fresh flowers, but from a creative perspective, I really enjoy the freedom that dried flowers can give you, without the worry that they’re going to wilt or how long they will last. It means you can really take your time. It becomes almost a meditative practice, because there’s not the time pressure you have if you’re working with fresh flowers.

So, I spent my days when I wasn’t with my baby son, either playing with dried flowers, photographing them or writing about them, and from there, I got requests for arrangements. Workshops followed and I pitched my first book. Botanical Tales is ever-evolving.

We now live in Devon with about a half an acre of land. Some is given over to my son’s football pitch, but I do have a small dedicated growing area with lots of beds dotted around. I’ve then got two allotments in a little village just down the road that has got much better growing conditions than at home. When we first moved to Devon, I thought I was going to grow everything that I could possibly need, but realised that in itself is a full time job.

While growing is such a huge part of what I do (as well as foraging, which helps me to gather the stems that I need to give my pieces a really lovely organic feel) I have made peace with the fact that I can only grow so much. This has taken the pressure off and allowed me to continue to grow, but with enjoyment.

TOP: Everlasting Installation

ABOVE: Unfurliung flowers

Can you tell me a little about the drying process and do you dry the flowers yourself?

For the most part, yes. I much prefer to start with fresh flowers and then dry them myself as it gives me control over the drying conditions. The very act of drying is actually quite an art in itself. I dry stems in my studio away from direct sunlight to keep as much colour as possible. The studio is a passive build, maintaining heat in winter but staying cool in the summer, giving the perfect ambient, non-fluctuating temperature that dried flowers require.

If you are picking to enjoy freshly cut flowers, then you would normally pick at either the bud or just after the bud stage. With dried flowers, you want to pick most when they are in full bloom, but with others you’ll be utilising the seed head, meaning you can actually enjoy the flowers, let the bees and butterflies enjoy them too, and then wait for the seed heads to go over. This is another reason why I love growing dried flowers, to see your garden full of blooming flowers and being able to enjoy them before cutting them is the very best.

Bex Partridge is the author of Crafting With Flowers (Quadrille, £16.99), an extract from which can be found on the following pages.

botanicaltales.com