December & a mention in VOGUE
The tulips for next spring are still sitting in a box, waiting to be planted. We are growing them in containers this year, and only a few of them. We reigned in the order after the spring this year was too wet for them, and we couldn’t sell most of the crop- tulips are just too much of a gamble for the flower farmer, but we still couldn’t be without them. When they burst into flower, it feels like the first moment of the year when the colour palette opens up when harvesting for use in our design work. We’ll likely wait until the first week of January to get them into the ground now while we tie up all the loose ends of 2023 next week and prepare for a break over Christmas.
This year, we had a full-on wreath season, sending out Sussex Wreaths up and down the country! We hosted a lovely wreath workshop at nearby Knepp and a swag workshop (which was featured in Vogue!!- eek!!) in London at Skye McAlpine's Tavola pop-up. We have filled our local retailers with seeds and decorated clients' homes and shops, including Tavola- it's been a very festive, evergreen-filled month. The year's theme, joyfully, is ribbons. We've been having a lovely time tying what feels like- and probably actually is by now- thousands of bows amongst the weaving of evergreen branches.
Beautiful image by the brilliant EVA NEMETH