Hortus Poeticus

18/11/2023

Our last wedding of the season was for such a lovely bride Hannah and we loved making this for her.

Almost all the stems were ours, all the stems were English, of course, and she had some of our last roses, together with our first anemone from the poly which we had carefully saved for her.

We love our weddings, our bridal couples and their lovely families.

As always thank you to the flowers for making it all possible.

12/11/2023

Remembrance

Saturday 11 November

Lest we forget

07/11/2023

In amongst a fair bit of rain we have had some wonderful crisp autumn sunshine, especially at golden hour, as here.

Autumn is a favourite time of year.

06/11/2023

November 3ed

And here is the bride’s bouquet made by HP shot through with some deeper tones of chrysanthemums, whilst still retaining a light delicate feel.

All English stems, all grown by us, mainly outside, save for two chrysanthemums and one Margaret Merrill rose which came from up the road.

Scented, seasonal, sustainable and totally romantic.







🍁

05/11/2023

Whilst it alternately blew a gale, or rained with positively biblical commitment, in our floral studio HP was making these still, small moments of calm for a lovely bridal couple on Saturday.

We adore the subtle mellowness of autumn’s tints and tones, lit sometimes with flickers of flames as in the bride’s bouquet.

All English flowers, almost all grown by us.

04/11/2023

HP in France

Playing with some last bits and bobs in France last weekend including some pretty Chantilly snaps from , my local flower farmer.

Doriss is in her first year of flower growing, but is already growing some lovely things and it is wonderful to have access to a flower farmer locally for things we don’t grow in our garden there. Looking forward to what she grows next year.

We are embarking on stage 4 of our French project and it is good to have the équipe back, getting stuck in. Our experience is that it takes a while to gather the team and that can be frustratingly slow, but once on site they really get on with it and take huge pride it creating beautiful work. They are vrai artisans.

03/11/2023

24/10/2023

We have just updated our website ready for the very fast approaching festive season…including our Winter Workshops.
We will be hosting a variety of seasonal classes up at HP HQ, showing you how to create seasonal & sustainable Christmas wreaths, garlands and festive table scapes made with all English stems. No imported stems. No air miles.

30th November - Christmas Wreath Workshop
7th December - Christmas Wreath Workshop
14th December - Christmas Garland Workshop
21st December - Festive Table Scape Workshop

All classes will run from 5.30-8pm in our barn in West Meon, with festive drinks and light refreshments included. Please visit our website (link in bio) for more information and how to book.

We also have some availability left for house installations in the run up to Christmas week, drop us an email or call if you’d like to chat more about dressing your home for the festive period.

20/10/2023

We are very excited to be heading over to next week for Floral Pumpkin workshops with Steph and her team at
The workshops will be designed for an adult and child to create flowery pumpkins together full of wonderfully seasonal English stems. Taking home a pumpkin each!
Drinks and refreshments are included from the team at Bloom Bloom, as well as all the materials and equipment from us.

Please head over to to book a place on EventBrite or book

15/10/2023

Fields of pumpkins aglow in the early sunshine yesterday as we dropped flowers to and for an wedding there.

Lovely to see her and lots of super freelancers and to feel that buzz of excitement and focus at the start of a set up even though we were just dropping off. The venue was teaming with vans and lorries with everything from flowers to portable loos, crockery, beverages and kitchens.

It never seems possible that within a few hours all will be serene beauty but it always is and we are sure that Jen and her team will have created something stunningly, seasonally, beautiful.

As well as all our own events, we provide our creative floral and foraged picks for florists for theirs - and treat their picks with just as much care, consideration and attention as our own.

Pleasures of being a grower; pleasures of this floral community

13/10/2023

There were squeals of delight from team HP when Jessie returned with this handful of wild strawberries from the garden. These were then sent up to for an event this weekend, we hope there are some squeals there too!

05/10/2023

A top the Downs as golden hour washes everything it finds with soft amber light.

Always a favourite time of day to be out on the bike enjoying the light and sheep arranged just as God intended (to quote from Stoppard’s wonderful mind bouncing play, Arcadia).

Early autumn proving, as it often does, that its a time of year with much magic to be found.





🍁

30/09/2023

Botanical table at HP home in Normandy courtesy of a lovely new flower grower I have found

Doriss is relatively new to flower farming but is already producing lovely stems and I pick them up at Falaise market on Saturday morning or drive over and get half a bucket mid week.

It’s great to see the flower farming movement start to take hold in France and I am thrilled to have access to local grown subtle beauty just as I would and to support someone starting out on their journey - as so many kindly supported us.

24/09/2023

At the very top of the Horace Walpole stairway to heaven ( and it was, as led off it were rooms and rooms of the most extraordinarily beautiful designs, just breathtaking on every floor) we felt the visitor might just like a visual pause.

We therefore eschewed an urn, although those who know us understand that we have a magnetic pull towards urning, and instead opted for the simplicity of an old marmalade jar, the fleshy lily pad leaves of nasturtium and a few home grown gourds the colour of crème fraîche from French markets.

Mr HP was rather upset that our bed of courgette plants turned out to be gourds, but we, long time gourd lovers, were delighted and snuck a few in around the stairs for good measure.

Heartfelt thanks to .chappell.flowers and for giving all of us such an incredible venue in which to make flowery magic and to Claire Leighton who helped so much to make it all possible.

The pleasure of gourds and Mr Walpole

24/09/2023

Images of the staircase, in various stages of being made, that we created at the wonderful for the sustainable Flower Festival imagined and brought to life first five years ago by the visionary .chappell.flowers and and supported by . The lowest level was a shady woodland glade with ferns and old man’s beard and a mossy stone shell filled with water, moving through to jewel bright colours and flowery cottage borders to grassy meadows at the very top. It is hard to imagine a more beautiful backdrop that this stunning case with its wonderful stained glass lantern at the bottom and top lit lights at the top. It was such a privilege to work with it.

This festival is a real gem, in a star of a house and grows in stature year on year. We were thrilled to be asked to take part again.

Leigh and Janne brilliantly curate it, showcasing some extraordinarily beautiful designs using only British flowers and sustainable techniques. The artistry, breadth of imagination, use of colour and technical skills of all the other contributors were just awe inspiring - and very humbling. There was a fabulous buzzy, community atmosphere generated by the lovely house team, other florists and of course Leigh, Janne and also .

Not sure what the word is for a gang of happy florists but we were all certainly one on Thursday as we all set up.

We will do a compilation of other designs in the week - just sifting through them - they were stunning.

Thanks to the HP home team of Fi , Jessie and Izzy, and yours truly. What fun we had.

13/09/2023

Our sunnies have been magnificent this year, loving the rain - apparently rather more than we have - and rather more than we thought they would.

We’ve grown all shades from palest lemon yellow through apricots and tawnies to these wonderful mahoganies and used them small in bouquets and arrangements and statuesque atop mantelpieces and adding drama to ‘urning’ - creating large urns, a sport we love.

Right now we are saving seed like crazy for next year’s flowers whilst leaving some for the birds to feast on.

We love this dialogue between us and those we share this special place with.

06/09/2023

Looking back to last September when team HP created a lost garden glade in the downstairs drawing room for flower festival - we cannot believe there is now less than 2 weeks until this years festival!

Tickets available to buy from their website, for weekend visits and evening talks and demos throughout the festival.
We are so excited have been invited to host the Friday evening talk and demo where we will talking and showing all things Hortus. We’d love to see you there!

The festival is curated by .chappell.flowers & and kindly sponsored by .homes

Photo by

05/09/2023

The beauty of seed heads - bleached colours and wonderful organic shapes against azure skies.

For more looking, .brown.studio and have paired up to create .sideflower to explore the beauty in what we often overlook in our verges and hedgerows. They are full of Take a look !

04/09/2023

What a wonderful wedding Charlotte & Mathew had last month. Stunningly captured by Kirsty

A late summer negroni colour palette full of hot pinks, oranges and peachy tones, making the most of our wonderful dinner plate dahlias, cosmos and poppies with roses from
What a riot of colour!

03/09/2023

Late afternoon sun catching the detail of a beautiful urn and accompaniment for the lovely wedding of Mark and Maria yesterday. The scent from the roses was just heavenly as was the palette they chose.

is a beautiful relaxed venue with a seriously chilled vibe and they looked all set for a fabulous evening with the weather once more playing ball too.

All English flowers, as always, mostly grown by us with some additional roses as tagged

Many congrats to Mark and Maria !

01/09/2023

Last year some of our sunnies reverted to type but this year they are magnificent and slightly counter intuitively are loving the rain - rather more than we are.

We will definitely save seed of this fellow who has been cheering us for days.

Have a great weekend from all at HP, rain or sunshine

26/08/2023

A tawny sunflower in all its robust rustic beauty in the incomparable setting of last weekend during tear down of a wonderful wedding the day before.

Having added character and joyful insouciance on Saturday atop a splendid mantelpiece, it needed its moment of recognition before moving on to another life.

Tiny holes in its leaves show that we weren’t the only ones to appreciate its charm and testify to our no chemical pesticides or insecticide philosophy - we share this world and our aim is to tread lightly w’ere we go.

10/08/2023

Best scent ever.

A yearly treat at Hortus Poeticus France is the stunning blooms of Magnolia grandiflora, a shrub I have been in love with for decades.

First introduced to it by Stephen Lacey, long a fanatic of a good plant, it has sumptuous petals like ball gowns from the pages of old copies of Vogue and an incredible refined scent of lemons to give your heart and soul to.

We put single blooms in bedrooms, on the kitchen table, as here, and everywhere else we can find.

Inhale it and the scent lingers on you like a perfume. Pure intoxication.

Pleasures of summer

06/08/2023

Florence picked the most beautiful palette for her bridal and wedding flowers on Saturday and we really loved creating her bridal bouquet of all English flowers mostly grown by us right here in Hampshire.

More photos of the venue flowers follow

03/08/2023

We are delighted to be part of this years Strawberry Hill House Flower Festival, 22 – 24 September, taking on the staircase in Horace Walpole’s Gothic castle.

We will also be teaching a Masterclass on Friday evening, sharing some of our knowledge of flower growing, floristry and demonstrating a wonderful Autumnal display and table scape using flowers and fruit from our farm.

Tickets for the weekend and Masterclasses with us, .chappell.flowers , and .fl.o.london are available to book now via

Curated by the wonderful .chappell.flowers & and kindly sponsored by .homes
In association with

20/07/2023

We are suckers for old stone fonts and pulpits with their wonderful carved stories of worship over centuries - of births and marriages and celebrations just like the lovely wedding of and Jonny that we flowered last weekend.

And old stone and naturally grown flowers are a marriage made in heaven, thankfully for us to enjoy now, beautifully complimenting each other as jasmine and honeysuckle trails and canes of rambler roses spill over this lovely font to tumble towards the light.

We wish Fi and Jonny many many happy years finding the light.

17/07/2023

We had the most wonderful palette to play with at Fi and Jonny’s East Cowes wedding on Saturday and had such fun dressing the their beautiful church IHT these colours.

Design, creation and installation all , flowers almost all grown by us right here in Hampshire; none imported.

All natural mechanics, flowers repurposed back to the reception and all waste compared.

We look to create the most beautiful romantic weddings, full of magic and joy with the lightest possible foot print. We grow specifically for our palette and aesthetic and have access to incredible
flower and foraged material and we absolutely loved what we do.

Pleasures of being wedding flower growers and designers.

07/07/2023

Just look at this little face plainly enjoying being at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show last week in the Flowers from the Farm Flower School tent. As did we.

So many thanks to the folks and and to for inviting us to come and do a demo. We had such fun.

Hope you had a good week too as we head into the weekend.

04/07/2023

here we come! We are absolutely delighted to have been invited to talk at the RHS Flower School tomorrow, hosted by for the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival.

We will be on at 11am, and drop in floral workshops with Flowers from the Farm will be running all afternoon, followed by another demonstration from the wonderful at 2pm.

Thank you so much to for co ordinating us all, we are looking forward to a lovely day of flowering!

25/06/2023

Bouquet for Serena last Saturday; she had wonderfully clear ideas about what she wanted and the palette.

So we created this sophisticated bouquet of solely ranunculus and roses, with unusually for us, no foliage, in a palette of marshmallow and raspberry.

She looked terrific carrying this bouquet- official photographs hopefully follow.

English flowers only - ranunculus grown by us.

Venue

25/06/2023

Favourite pastime - urning.

Last weekend we split our team for weddings in Hampshire and London and created this beautiful scented urn as part of the brief for our lovely London wedding couple, S and A.

Using roses, philadelpus, foxgloves and sweet peas for scent, we referenced a woodland glade at its feet, complete with ancient, gnarled mossy logs and wild strawberries.

It is huge fun to create wholly different wedding flowers for different bridal couples in very distinct wedding venues and we love interpreting their wonderful visions.

Venue was which has a cool vibe.

25/06/2023

Making hay - literally, yesterday evening

And suddenly our haze of waving grasses with its mesmerising dancing butterflies and other insect life is gone for another year. We leave the margins that don’t make the hay cut for as long as possible to provide habitat and food.

This afternoon, or maybe tomorrow, baling will start with its rhythmic thump thump that always signifies early July or this year, late June.

Briefly then the fields will be a beautiful bleached pale green- yellow, before astonishingly fast, the grass grows again and the cycle brings all over.

This rhythm of life - of fields and flower farm - brings us much joy.

19/06/2023

Another picture courtesy of the flowers Hortus Poeticus created for the stunning wedding of a gorgeous couple - and on Saturday.

It is hard to go wrong when you have an abundance of English flowers grown naturally, arranged in water and a church window of this simplicity and beauty.

Emily’s brief of romantic English florals was a joy to interpret in a classic English country church on a day when an English summer was in full flood of its extraordinary beauty. A day to treasure.

Pleasures of being a floral designer and grower.

Thanks as always to the HP home team and to our lovely freelancers and

(and to Vanessa for this and subsequent photos)

18/06/2023

Old stone and roses is a marriage made in heaven for us so we made this romantic flowing arrangent to festoon this beautiful pulpit as part of our church florals for a this life marriage of the gorgeous on Saturday to Simon at the stunning Houghton Church.

Our own flowers including wonderfully lax canes of old roses, scented philadelpus and sweet peas provided the intoxicating scent of an early English midsummer which the cool of a church always holds so well.

Wedding brilliantly arranged by who even orchestrated a perfect summer’s day beside the River Test where the reception was held.

We were lucky enough to be guests as well as the flowerers; the whole day had the dream like quality of a film set, just perfect.

Thanks to the Hortus Poeticus home team who as ever pulled out all the stops, plus our lovely freelancers




All made sustainably as always; no imported flowers.

PS
Thanks to Vanessa for some great pictures too.

13/06/2023

The HP team has an uncanny knack of intuitively echoing their choice of clothes with the flowers they pick!

Here is Beth, one of our freelancers, riffing on a wonderfully orange calendula, perfect for adding zip and zing to any floral, sartorial - or indeed culinary story !

Happy midweek !

12/06/2023

And a little boutonnière for our Chawton House Wedding.

10/06/2023

Beautiful Lavatera Pink Blush positively glowing in the sunshine at HP HQ yesterday.

Today we have a wonderful Summer Party to dress celebrating a wedding of some lovely local friends. The brief is not too wedding-y, with lots of joyful happy colour in sunset ( or Negroni ) tones.

We can’t wait to set this one up.

Pleasures of being a flower grower.

09/06/2023

Bright and brilliant blues today.

Such a wonderfully vibrant colour which looks wonderful threaded through summer bouquets and arrangements so as to drop tiny segments of sky into the heart of them.