It was an interesting week for me I had been to Covent Garden market, where there were beautiful flowers, but void of florists to buy them, and a nice demonstration on flowers for funerals that could only attract about thirty florists. I rolled on to Hay-on-Wye my favourite destination to scour the shops for design and floristry books, this never fails to inspire me. With Australian visitors on the way back from our bookish day came a breathtaking (literally for me) walk to British Camp at the Malvern Hills to wonder at the panoramic views. The Malvern Hills, on my own doorstep and I only go when I have visitors, I felt the shame and the laboured breathing of the unfit. At the weekend the UK Skills final at the Malvern Gardening and Food Show gave trainee florists the chance to pit their skills against their contemporaries, here was an opportunity to show the world, or at least the hoards of Malvern Show visitors, what florists were about. The competition was shoved into a corner of the food hall where the general public were more interested in buying dishwater tea and a soggy bun. Plus UK Skills were contending with the enthusiasm of the Young Farmers competitions, whose encampment was on the other side of the food barn. Here was a great horde of raucous young people all cheering for their favourite, and UK Skills was a damp squib compared to it. On Sunday finally my spirits were lifted when a bunch of floristry judges went to the UK School of Floristry to view Wally Klett’s wedding designs. Here we had the opportunity to study and examine the bridal designs, to enthuse, share knowledge and become excitable about floristry and the way forward. It was the experience I had craved all week. Where has the excitement gone in floristry, the thirst for new design, and the adrenalin rush when you make or see an inspirational, original design? Here we are in the most wonderful profession, working with natures most precious gifts, and with the skills to create forward reaching designs and yet there is lethargy, a malaise of moaning, a can’t do attitude, retrospect and repetitive. I want to get florists by the scruff of the neck and shake them out of their apathy, I want to encourage and stimulate their creative juices, make them twitch with excitement, find their G spot (whatever that is,) with flowers. The industry needs florists ahead of the game to move us forward, not ones that are content to concentrate on poxy posies. Come on who will sign up to exhilaration on a vast scale and then pass on the burning ambition to excel to a whole new bunch of florists?

Last week I visited Hay-on-Wye, a little town on the Welsh/English border world famous for its bookshops and the annual literary festival held in early summer. With over 30 bookshops selling old, antiquarian and new books it’s the most brilliant place if you are a book lover or searching for an old book, and the bonus is it’s only about one hours drive from where I live. I collect old floristry books and they are few and far between, so a trip to Hay-on-Wye is a necessity now and again. Well I like to think so.There are quite a few flower-arranging books around from the 1950’s, but very few floristry ones. Gardeners on large country estates who did the flowers for the lady of the house wrote the oldest books and some chronicled their ideas, these books are a real rarity. Flower shops did not really come into their own until the Victorian era before this time flowers were usually seen in greengrocers in a few straggly containers or on market stalls. Flower arranging was the province of the wealthy. So to find an old floristry book is difficult, but this week I had such a find, the three volumes of The Practical Fruiter and Florist dating from around 1933. I could not believe my luck and guess what they were moaning about the price of flowers then. These books have such pearls of wisdom as relevant today as it was all these years ago. Nothing really changes. If you have any old floristry books let me know or are looking for a particular book let me know on my next visit I will look out for it. Have a good week.