AESME

13/06/2026

Thank you SO much to all the gorgeous folk who came to the studio last night to celebrate our book Naturalistic Flowers: A Year of Plants, Places and People. It truly meant the world to us to have you all there and to hear how much you are enjoying the book, we are humbled and happy and not hungover at all. Thank you to Thames and Hudson for giving us this opportunity and to Kirstie and Alicia for helping to organise such a lovely get together. Cheers! 🥂

12/06/2026

11/06/2026

Installation Day! Thank you so much to today’s gorgeous group for your creativity and curiosity in creating this beautiful botanical archway. It was such a pleasure meeting new faces and seeing some familiar ones returning again. The studio looks absolutely gorgeous dressed to the nines for our book launch party tomorrow! Thank you also to .studio for your brilliant design and tutoring, such a pleasure to have you teaching alongside us and can’t wait for you to join us on our very first Naturalistic Desjgn Course in September.

10/06/2026

♥️ ❤️ 💓

10/06/2026

From garden to vase… prepping the studio today for our Botanical Installation class tomorrow - if you’re coming we’ve got seriously gorgeous goodies to share! Translucent poppies, gigantic stems of lemon yellow Cephalaria, scented rose boughs and buckets of lemonbalm, as well as some seriously tall privet branches cleared from the back of the garden (to make way for a new collection of shade plants…) We can’t wait to see everyone tomorrow!🍃

09/06/2026

BOTANICAL FLOWER PAINTING WORKSHOP

Wednesday 1st July with

In this special workshop you are invited into the AESME Studio to explore flowers through the language of paint.

Working from a carefully gathered selection of seasonal stems organically grown at our Hampshire cutting garden this session offers an opportunity to slow down and observe the subtle structures, colours and gestures of flowers.

Taking cues from the garden and the vase, Nay will guide you through her approach to translating botanical forms into expressive painted studies.

Beginning with a conversation around composition and colour, you will look closely at how flowers sit within a vase, how stems interact with one another and how movement and balance emerge naturally from the materials themselves. Through gentle demonstrations and individual guidance, Nay will share techniques for building painterly layers, mixing colour and capturing the character of each bloom.

Participants will develop their own floral painting throughout the session, exploring mark making, composition and the quiet pleasure of working directly from nature.

This workshop is open to all levels. Whether you are new to painting or looking to deepen an existing creative practice, the emphasis is on curiosity, observation and the simple joy of spending time with flowers.

All materials will be provided and the studio will be filled with seasonal plant material chosen for its colour, texture and form. You will leave with your own completed painting a bunch of fresh flowers to arrange at home and a renewed way of looking at the botanical world.

Wednesday 1st July
10am - 12.30pm
Aesme Studio, 139 Railway Arches, Macfarlane Road, Shepherd’s Bush, W12 7LA

https://naybellamy.com/products/1st-july-botanical-flower-painting-workshop-aesme-flower-studio-london

08/06/2026

For the latest ‘Arranging the Garden’ episode for the Flowers on Film Club we visited Dyffryn Fernant. This garden, created by the supremely talented Christina Shand, was the location for the closing chapter of our book ‘Naturalistic Flowers’.

I’m glad we ended there because, in a way, it was the crowning experience of a year-long adventure. It was a garden we had long admired from afar but were even more astonished by when we finally washed up, after dark, and rose to discover after a long sleep in the swirling mists of an enchanting autumn morning. What an extraordinary feat of a garden this is - half rock, half bog, slipping into wild marsh with the Fernant stream wriggling its way through ferns and willows beneath the Preseli Hills.

If you’re in Wales and can make a detour to see this magical garden you must! And if not it’s 100% worth making a pilgrimage to.

Flowers on Film can be found at the link in our bio 🔗

08/06/2026

It’s all about installations this week as we prepare for a fun class on Thursday where we’ll delve into the art of dressing with botanicals to evoke the way they naturally grow.

If you can’t make it and want to brush up on your larger-scale design skills we have a new online course dedicated to the subject - INSTALLATIONS, which can be found over at our website.

Scaling up can be daunting - the size and quantity of materials, the variability of the weather, the structure, safety and logistics - are all factors that require greater consideration when designing an installation than a small vase or bouquet of flowers. But there are many overlaps, too, and installation work does not necessarily need to be complicated - they are often most effective when the design is kept simple.

05/06/2026

The latest episode of ‘Arranging the Garden’ has just dropped over on Flowers on Film featuring the magical . Back in London I caught up with its creator, Christina Shand, on the phone and it was fascinating to hear her talk about the history of the garden and how it has evolved over the last 30 years. There’s a recording of our call in the episode, as well as gorgeous footage of the garden in the late afternoon sunshine and the step by step making of the arrangement to the sound of bees and evening birdsong. We hope you enjoy.

28/05/2026

It’s always a happy moment watching those garden flowers being carried away down the row of railway arches. An incongruous sight but all the more beautiful for it.