Online florists cater for those who want fresh flowers delivered all year round, not just on Valentine’s Day
On February 14 doorsteps across the land will brace themselves against a nausea of red roses and the villainous grins of the teddy bears roped to them. Once a year, like unhinged maharajas, we summon garlands from around the globe — Belgium, Kenya, Ecuador — then plonk them next to the radiator to wilt. Valentine’s Day roses dunked in anti-fungal pesticides somewhere outside Bogotá are not love; they are subtext for “it’s remarkable how long we’ve tolerated each other”. They are for the mistresses, the desperate and the lazy. True love flowers all year round.
In recent years there has been a rash of online subscription services itching for customers to commit to a lifetime of muddy vegetables and organic coffee. We can subscribe to regular crates of free-range bacon (artisan heart attacks in a box) or weekly cases of wine (bottled dipsomania). Ordering repeat deliveries of fresh-cut flowers may once have felt as decadent as Cleopatra demanding her bed of rose petals be refreshed incessantly by slaves; it is now an increasingly widespread proposition.
All week Alice Strange slips through the rooms and corridors of her clients, imparting a drift of flowers in her wake. Blossoms and magnolia; delphiniums and peonies in soft colors and romantic accents. “I go to bed at eight,” she says “wake up at four, leave at 4.15 and am at the New Convent Garden market by 4.30 to buy flowers for that day.”
After working at designer Martin Brudnizki’s studio in London and the florist Wild at Heart, Strange conceived a bespoke service that married interior design with florist, and struck out on her own. “I could never understand why you would pay for an off-the-shelf arrangement when you could pay the same amount for something tailor-made,” she says. “Someone might love pink flowers that look amazing on their own but in a home look really average.”
Unlike the blossoming of letterbox subscription services, which leave the customer to configure a bewilderment of stems, Strange selects, trims and arranges the flowers, pairing them with the interior design of each house. “Flowers should never be viewed in isolation, they’re part of a surrounding — whether that’s a garden or an interior,” she says. “Styling interiors with flowers is like building layers on a canvas; flowers are the final accent of color needed to finish the picture.”
All week Alice Strange slips through the rooms and corridors of her clients, imparting a drift of flowers in her wake. Blossoms and magnolia; delphiniums and peonies in soft colors and romantic accents. “I go to bed at eight,” she says “wake up at four, leave at 4.15 and am at the New Convent Garden market by 4.30 to buy flowers for that day.”
After working at designer Martin Brudnizki’s studio in London and the florist Wild at Heart, Strange conceived a bespoke service that married interior design with florist, and struck out on her own. “I could never understand why you would pay for an off-the-shelf arrangement when you could pay the same amount for something tailor-made,” she says. “Someone might love pink flowers that look amazing on their own but in a home look really average.”
Unlike the blossoming of letterbox subscription services, which leave the customer to configure a bewilderment of stems, Strange selects, trims and arranges the flowers, pairing them with the interior design of each house. “Flowers should never be viewed in isolation, they’re part of a surrounding — whether that’s a garden or an interior,” she says. “Styling interiors with flowers is like building layers on a canvas; flowers are the final accent of color needed to finish the picture.”
The high-note screams of bright color blooms are notably absent from Strangers arrangements. Her style is singularly her own, informed by the muted tones and impressionistic paintings of St Ives artist Winifred Nicholson: a pot of primulas and the promise of an open window, a grace of pensions on a marble mantelpiece. “Nature has an amazing way of arranging itself,” says Strange, who is inspired by the hedgerows of Lincolnshire where she grew up. “You only have to look at the countryside to know what textures and colors work.”
For More Information: - Jenny Lee
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