08/08/2026
8 August 2020.
A photo of the first wedding buttonhole I've ever made. Practising wedding florals for my daughter's Covid-bound wedding a month later.
With no previous floristry experience and no possibility of going to learn floristry at a class or workshop, I learnt from this book by and a newly found community of like minded flower growers on Facebook .
Before opening this book, 'mechanics' were folk who fixed my broken down car and cajoled it to pass it's MOT. And to be honest, like the rest of us 'non florists', I really didn't understand the harm floral foam caused
I had seen that green crumbly stuff in the rather staid basket arrangements of chrysanthemums, carnations and asparagus fern if I visited relatives in hospital or the arrival of a new baby. I was once a flowergirl at an aunt's wedding in the 1970s with a pomander shaped ball of red bud roses on a loop of ribbon. I learnt that the roses were stuck into a green crumbly ball, like a cinnamon studded orange at Christmas because I got bored and wanted to know how the roses were stuck on. I had great fun digging a big hole, deep into that foam ball, green crumbs falling on my blue velvet dress and down onto the kneeling mats below me. Oh did I get into trouble for that. There are wedding photos of that 7 year old with a tear stained, bloated face, holding a ball of roses in a peculiar way so that the hole would not show.
Maybe that was why it was sooo easy for me not to use plastic based floral foam and instead learn from Sarah and many others during that strange period of lockdown, to create wedding florals that are kind to our planet and the multitude of micro organisms that live in our oceans.
I think this book is still available. It really is time to reject floral foam and all it's so called eco alternatives and learn how to create mechanics from everyday, compostable or reuseable materials. And once you know how, you'll be able to create floral arrangements anywhere, with materials readily available. No need to wait to order in blocks of foam, just rake the lawn for some moss, cut a few twigs, bend some wire and away you go.
