Garden Interview #5

Katherine English Flora

As I collect flowers from the garden to arrange in a vase I learn fairly quickly how much talent is required in creating a beautiful arrangement and at that point my admiration for floral artist Katherine English grows even more. Katherine’s instagram feed is stunning and for me a constant source of inspiration. Along with sharing her stunning flowers, I’ve learnt about foraging for floristry materials and I have watched her grow as a business women. Katherine has created something which she clearly enjoys sharing through her photos and workshops. I hope you enjoy reading this interview with Katherine and I am sure she will inspire you to create beauty in your home.

Thanks also to Katherine for sharing her photos for this post.

Tell us about your garden?

My garden is a city garden, sadly with no sweeping vistas or even much lovely, borrowed landscapes. But it is a refuge and nourishment always. I’m not sure of the size, but guess maybe around 1/8^th of an acre altogether. I have gardened here for eight years, starting with some shrubs and trees, but really not a lot that has proved to useful or beautiful. Much has needed taking out, but what remains is a huge golden elm. I love the sense of protection it gives; it frames the house and garden and cools the house in the summer months. In the years I have been here what I want from my garden has been evolving constantly, and because of that many plants have come and gone. Some for a short trip in a wheelbarrow (to another spot) and some given away.

When I started learning floristry, I thought then that everything in my garden really had to earn it’s keep by being useful. So, my garden leaned to being a little flower farm, but my thinking has changed again. I’m now firmly of the belief that I only grow what I especially love, and what I know I can not easily source from local flower growers for my personal classes, workshops, and wedding work. And now I am changing what I grow again. I long for a more naturalistic style of planting but leaning to a slightly flower heavier version of it. This month I am changing the layout, where there was straight lines, I will be making sweeps and curves, with grass paths through larger plantings. I’m gradually moving to more perennials and less annuals, but there will still need to be space to pop a few favourites in through the season.

Do you have a garden style?

Once my mother said to me, that my garden was like a taller larger version of a wildflower garden. This was many years ago, and I think my style is still much like that. I love colour, but also adore more architectural plantings, taller strong shapes that give strength to the lighter fluffier plants. But honestly my garden is far from finished, not even remotely there really! How it looks changes every year, but I think it is nudging closer bit by bit to what I dream of. It really is a long-term plan, as time and money allow that little bit more each year.

Did you start your garden with a set vision as to what it would look like?

My vision has changed so much since I started working with flowers, but now I can honestly say that yes now I think I have a vision I am sticking to, but it has taken me many years to get clear about what that is. I’m hugely inspired by the more naturalistic plantings but lean to more colour and form than grasses and textures only.

Tell us a bit about your business Katherine English Flora

I feel incredibly privileged to be working with flowers, after a lifetime of very dull office work, I left to study floristry at the time of our first lockdown here in NZ. The kindness and encouragement I have received has led me to finding that others love my style, and that I offer a way that may not be what they have seen here before. It has led to my business offering personal lessons and workshops with visitors coming to learn with me. They really are the most joyful days, sharing my love of flowers and how to make arrangements with other flower lovers. I do create wedding flowers too, and for smaller events, and both are incredibly rewarding. As well as making and teaching flower arrangement I adore the process of taking photos of them, the styling, and capturing beautiful light. Photography has become something I love so much too. To make beauty and share that joy with others really is something I still pinch myself that I get to do!

How do you manage to keep your business out of your time in the garden or is it a happy blend of your business inspiring your garden and vice versa.

For me it’s a very happy blend, and vital that they both work together. Sometimes I find that I am working in the garden just because I really have to, but mostly it is time that I love. It nurtures me, and reconnects me with why I do what I do. I absolutely love finding flowers that inspire my arrangements, and growing those special ones is especially wonderful.

What is your favourite time of the gardening year?

In truth although yes I love all seasons (well, not so much winter really!), autumn has always had my heart most. I think it’s the golden light, the feeling I have in the garden, of it slowing and settling. It feels less rushed, and I savour it more than other seasons, in a way of treasuring every last part before it is gone. I do lean more to a love of warm colours too, rusts, apricots, plums with a little golden warm yellow and purples too. I think that fits so perfectly into autumn. Having said that I know that my spring garden has not been enough of a focus, and I am determined to up my game for that! Summer really just takes care of itself I think, meaning that there are always plentiful flowers then.

What is your favourite gardening read?

First that came to mind, was one from many years ago “The Sensuous Garden” by Monty Don. I’m not sure if it is still in print, but I love it for the feeling it evokes and how significant that is in a garden. Can I also mention two more flower-based books that I absolutely love? The first is “Cultivated : the elements of floral style” by Christin Geall. It is both an incredible resource for an in depth look at how the principles and elements of design apply to flower arranging, and oh so beautiful too. And last, I adore the beauty and inspiration for what we might grow in a cutting garden that “The Flower Hunter” by Lucy Hunter writes and so beautifully photographs in her book. If you only want to be inspired this is the book for it. Oh and one more “Wild : the naturalistic garden” by Noel Kingsbury and Claire Takacs. 

What is the best gardening tool that you have?

My very old fork, that used to be my husband’s grandfather’s. I didn’t meet him, but he was a devoted gardener, of that time when he won garden competitions and grew all the vegetables and fruit for his family. I also have a beautiful very old pitchfork that is perfection for turning the compost heap. Old garden tools that have been lovingly looked after really are a thing of beauty aren’t they. Oh and my Ars secateurs are the bees knees too!

What is your favourite go to plant which you would love to see more people growing?

For a vase arrangement I could not be without my heuchera plants, the leaves (and often flowers) make their way into so many. I have a collection of different ones, and I love the look of them in my garden too. Can I mention too how much I love my Plume Poppy “Macleaya Cordata”, it gives me so much pleasure in the garden with it’s long season of beauty and movement. Yes, I know it can be a bit brutish, but I still love it.

What is the best gardening advice that someone has given you?

To just grow what you love. I really think that is more important than a “designed” garden, gardening should mostly be about the pleasure and nourishment it gives. A garden should never be about about impressing anyone else. If others love what you do, then that is lovely, but it should not be what drives you. I think this way about my flower arrangements too, firstly I must love them.

Name a garden that you would like to visit and why?

For decades I have swooned over photos of Nicole de Vesian’s garden in Provence. It looks as if it feels entirely perfect for that site. Oh and maybe Great Dixter, but honesty there is a looong list of dream gardens that inspire. I think it’s mostly about the feeling you have in a garden, and many different garden styles can all have that. Maybe it’s about how well it fits into the time and place I think, and the mood it creates.

Name a gardener that inspires you?

Can I name two? First I will say Violet Faigan in Dunedin, her painterly eye, the way she chooses colours and forms that are both subtle and incredibly beautiful. Nuanced rather than showy. Just perfection. Secondly, I adore the garden and her generosity with sharing knowledge of Jenny Cooper at The Blue House in Amberley. The flow and layers of textures and colours in her garden is again incredibly artful. I especially love her garden in the autumn when it shifts into a golden swathe of shimmering beauty.

What are your garden goals for the coming garden year?

To lay out my new design, divide perennials that I want to repeat and then no doubt edit it all again once I see how it could be tweaked. Oh and maybe finally choose a couple more small trees for the garden. I agonise over tree choices, as it has such a strong impact on the garden for decades to come.

Name a dream plant that you love that you would love to have in your garden?

Angelica Gigas. Definitely. I have grown it before in a previous garden and adored it, but in this garden I have tried with a plant once (and lost it) and twice tried growing from seed with no success. If anyone can help me please do let me know, I would thank them and I know the bees would too. They adore it!

To learn more about Katherine and her work visit her website and her instagram feed.