Celebrating British flowers

This British Flowers Week we caught up with TT founder Clare in her garden to talk about her love of… British flowers.

Clare enjoys expressing her creativity through her garden in Stroud in the Gloucestershire countryside. “I find my day in the garden each week is a great way to decompress after the challenges thrown up at Talking Tables,” she says. “It’s a creative outlet that also beautifies the space around the house. But I like the physicality too – I prefer to garden without gloves so I can feel the soil and stalks. I also love that gardening is a topic that you can get infinitely more knowledgeable about, there’s always something more to learn.”

 At this time of year Clare is busy nurturing and dead heading some of her seasonal favourites – such as day lilies, alliums and simple Welsh poppies. The garden overlooks countryside so Clare gardens with the neighbouring fields as a borrowed landscape. “I get joy and happiness from vivid greens and warm, sunny yellows, so tend to lead on those colours,” she says. This may be one of the reasons that spring is a favourite season, with the yellows of daffodils, forsythia and euphorbias particular favourites.

Clare has just taken part in Open Edge, a local village open garden initiative that runs at the beginning of June. And she also loves to share the garden with friends and family: “Eating outside tends to be a bit more informal and leisurely over a sunny afternoon; it’s so lovely to pause and sit down in the space you have spent creating. To share it with others.”

At Talking Tables we source in season flowers for our shoots from small local businesses so are keen supporters of British Flowers Week. And as Clare says of British flowers: “They are local, seasonal, and ultimately native to us, therefore unpretentious.”

Find out more about British Flowers Week here. There’s also a supporting exhibition at the Garden Museum.

Photos: Kel Portman