… and a very Happy new year to you! ( 24 days late i know… )

A wonderful flower-full year gone by ..a few snippets for your enjoyment.

Thank you for being part of the journey and for your support in 2011.

Please don’t forget to join and follow me this year on Facebook for my daily flower diary AND Instagram (aleksandradiary) for fun flower compositions!

Peonies -single yellow ones… November could’t come any sooner?!

summer hydrangea – my growers- am forever grateful for.

handwritten and handmade penmanship pieces

corsages and buttonholes

Spectacular sunsets i have worked amongst in the studio!

RED ROSES… arms full and thorns full… velvety and en masse.

Christmas wreaths sold to bring in the festive season!

Spring time colours enjoyed and admired!

reflections of life and nature

creativity

amazement and love

left overs

2012… lovely to meet you!

Aleksandra will be @ Grosgrain Homewares. selling freshly made Christmas wreaths for 2 days only on 20th/21st December!

From $150, they are perfect for your Christmas Party, to hang on your front door and to enjoy at home with family over the festive season!

Beautiful homewares, fashion, garden and christmas gifts available in store.

3/29-31 Redleaf Ave, Wahroonga NSW 2076

Open 9.30-5pm,

Hope to see you there!x

It’s been a few weeks since my last post but i am finally in my new house, settling in well and making a home. When i was living at my parents home I’d often come back from the markets with a few extra bunches for my mum to pop around the house. One of the first things she mentioned when we bought our new home was that she would miss having the flowers every week. I’m so lucky to have such support from my family in what i do, i am lucky enough to have lots of  helpers, including the little ones and furry ones ( these helpers mostly drink the rose water , a delicacy it seems) . My nieces and nephew would often ask “and… whats that one?!” and yell “Poppy!!!”  when they knew their favourite  (an easy word when you first start speaking..) We often have conversations about how the flowers are changing and growing within the house, admiring their beauty and in awe of what nature has produced. The life of a flower is extraordinary. I was really inspired when i found these images from Rachel Levy. I love how she has captured the last days of life, one of which most of us disregard and throw away so quickly.

“French artist Rachel Lévy photographs flowers that are past their prime: wilting, fading and revealing visible signs of decay. Nonetheless, captured in the last fleeting moments before perishing, they are strikingly beautiful.

She sources only specific types of flowers from horticulturalists, to ensure that the plants have aged naturally and have been exposed to the elements. Myriad factors combine to create the (im)perfect specimen, from climate and sunlight to the varied lives of the flowers. Her practice is a kind of portraiture with each flower being entirely individual, each with its own temperament. Printed onto cotton paper, her limited edition photographs have the painterly qualities of watercolours. Lévy’s work is an unusual and modern take on a classical genre.”  -www.stephaniehoppen.com

I must admit that the worse part of my job is cleaning out old arrangements and old flower buckets. The smell is absolutely hideous. A mixture of rotten dead carcus and other repulsive scents  to be exact. Often dry reaching from the intoxicating smell, i don’t quite deal with it very well but it’s amazing what great compost it makes. Do admire  the end  textures of the falling, crimpling and scrunching specimens  but be warned of the fading decaying scents!

Well it’s seems to be that time of the year again… the Spring wedding season!! a beautifully frantic time, where most weekend are spent installing beautiful blooms for my gorgeous Brides!

Whilst i am knee deep in green, and balancing buckets on top of my head, juggling blooms in my arms and getting thorns in my fingers….  i decide to buy house. YES some would think i was crazy. i just got the keys today and i am now a homeowner. (pinching myself**)

In this post i really wanted to apologise for my blog disappearance over the last couple of months and look forward to sharing my new home and new flower studio with you!!

now… off to pop on the overalls and start painting away.. very very excited.

Chat soon , Aleksandra x

Come out of the grey and Pop it it with some seasonal Poppy flowers and Block it…with Lisa Ho‘s new Spring Summer range. Delightful!

I have been surrounded by Camellia’s my whole life.  Watching them grow and cultivate  through my family’s nursery, to my Omite’s rambling camellia beds in her garden, placed for decoration on Latvian sweet breads at family events and enjoyed in vessels amongst the homes of my extended family. I always looked beyond them  never really taking in their  true beauty, until i became a florist. As a florist you really get up close and personal with flowers. You admire their unique character and qualities, and as you pick each bloom you work out it’s “best side” or what is unique about each specimen and arrange it’s beauty accordingly. So we had a connection the Camellia and i … and from then on it’s been love.

Last sunday i visited the private home of Bill Fleming, in Galston NSW (round the corner from my house, in the hood..) His 5 acre property “Elegans” is part of  Open Gardens Australia and is open to the public on certain dates of the year around July  and October. I was taken aback by his array of different varieties of Camellia, well over 200. I spent an hour fossicking about, and in awe of many of his 30-40 year old Camellia trees. What amazed me was each variety portrayed such a difference in appearance, especially in their form.

The Camellia flower forms are:

Singles( One layer of up to 8 petals surrounding a central stamen)

Semi-doubles (Two or more layers of 9 or more petals that surround a central stamen)

Anemone form (One or more rows of large outer petals, lying flat or undulating)

Peony form (Informal Double Many layers of irregular and waved petals)

Rose form double (Many Layers of petals, the flower opens as a formal double but when fully open it shows stamens in the centre)

Formal double (Many rows of petals building up to the centre and never showing their stamens)

Being a florist, Spring is awaited for the “Peony’s” arrival in November. It’s a shame few wedding take place in Winter because this fine specimen is truely  Winter ‘s Peony. The “Japanese Rose” as one might also call it was famous also with Coco Chanel creations. “There are a hundred ways to wear a flower” -a symbol of carnal desire, the immaculate flower so voluptuous yet radiant in beauty accentuated the beauty of women.It  flattered their decolletes and adorned their hair in the mid 19th century when Camellia’s first arrived in Europe.They were part of the socialite scene, and became an emblem of women seeking to seduce as they donned the flower as a sign of seduction.The Camellia became an symbol of the Chanel brand and featured strongly in her Haute Couture collections.

They take my breath away every time. Desirable?  Absolutely. The craft of mother nature once again inspires to say the least. Designed by nature to be a timeless jewel.

Join the NSW Camellia Research Society Inc- Please visit www.camelliansw.org

I think i’ve mentioned before that i don’t do winter well. I feel much like the bare trees, very exposed and dressed in shades of grey.However it’s funny how winter is one of my favourite seasons for flowers; Camellia, Violets, Magnolia, Daphne,Japonica Blossom, all sweet scented and glorious to spend time admiring by the bedside under a cosy doona. A few discoveries and moments of late…

A sea of snowbells..local peach orchard..skelaton leaf discovery..camellia admiration..latvian “mid-summer” soltice flower crown..swift house ceiling..plant stand garden..

Ana and Luke are truely the sweetest couple you have ever met… true sweethearts, so young and so in love!! Photographed by the amazing Trish from Tealily Photography , i had the pleasure of creating a little Floral Wonder and Styling!! i was so excited to be working with Trish, we had such fun that we’d find ourselves excitedly “yelp” from all the visual delights! Set amongst a beautiful Apple orchard in Bilpin NSW, it was a magnificent Autumn day to shoot Ana and Luke, our Traveling Hearts. The city girl and country boy travelled the long distances to be together for many years carrying their heart with them always to see one another, no matter how far the journey…. It was an amazing day, even our flower heart got a good work out!! Big Congratulations to Ana and Luke who recently married last month! Thanks to the wonderful Bill for his spectacular Apple Orchard, Karen for her lovely tandem bicycle and the ladies at Mountain Retreat , Bilpin  for allowing us shoot on their amazing property!! Heres a sneak peek….Happy Friday everyone! X

Today is our 1st Birthday!! Thank you to everyone for their support ; family, friends and co-creatives! It’s been a magnificent year, and look forward to another blooming year! much love XOX

Every epoch has had its favorite flowers. If we would form a correct opinion of the ideas, manners, and habits of a nation, we have only to look at its bouquets.

We pride ourselves on being the first to advance the following aphorism: Flowers are the expression of society.—from “The Fashion of Flowers,” in Les Fleurs Animées

As a masterpiece of botanic illustration, the engravings in J.J. Grandville’s Les Fleurs Animées (The Flowers Personified) speak for themselves. Exquisitely etched and hand-colored, the 54 plates depict an enchanting world of flower ladies, traveling amidst a floral tableaux of haute couture and insect courtiers. As a work of Victorian social satire, its intent is found beyond the delightful whimsy, and is conveyed in the book’s introduction:

As the story begins, the disenchanted flowers assemble before their Flower Fairy to request release from a 19th-century landscape that relegated them as adornment and inspiration for society’s art and romance:

”Your Majesty, the flowers here present beg you to accept their homage, and to lend a favorable ear to their humble complaint.

For thousands of years we have supplied mankind with their themes of comparison; we alone have given them all their metaphors; indeed, without us poetry could not exist. Men lend to us their virtues and their vices; their good and their bad qualities; it is time that we should have some experience of what these are.

We are tired of this flower-life. We wish for permission to assume the human form, and to judge, for ourselves, whether that which they say above, of our character, is agreeable to truth.”

The Flower Fairy concedes: “Go, deluded flowers; — let it be as you propose. Ascend upon the earth, and try human life. Ere long you will come back to me.” And the ensuing vignettes follow their pursuits: Thistle as piano teacher, Iris as trinket-vendor, Daisy as fortune-teller. The femme fleurs embark on a journey to contend with a society that had defined their personalities, a world of Victorian beauty so adorned with their likenesses, that it is said it was impossible to say where the flowers began, or the woman ended.

Rose

‘Nenuphar’ (Water Lily)

‘Flèche d’Eau’ (Arrowhead)

‘Bleuet et Coquelicot’ (Cornflower and Poppy)

‘Aubépine’ (Hawthorn)

‘Narcisse’ (Daffodil)

Capucine (Nasturtium)

‘Bal’ (The Ball)-’Reine Marguerite, Campanule, Fuchsia, Pied d’Alouette, Muguet, Pyramidale, Liseron’{China Aster, Canterbury Bell (Campanula), Lady’s Ear Drop, Larkspur (Delphinum), Lily of the Valley, Pyramidale Bell Flower, Morning Glory}

Ciguë (Hemlock) and below this ‘Thé et Café’ (Tea and Coffee)