Christmas wreaths
IN THE STUDIO
The festive season is underway. In the studio we have been busy making this year’s wreaths using all the flowers, branches, seedpods and grasses we began harvesting back in early July at the farm. Bound into bunches and hung from wooden beams in the attic in long lines of copper, pistachio green, ochre and apricot; it’s a thrill to rediscover all the treasures squirrelled away months ago - roses, delphinium, forget-me-nots, strawflowers, fennel and so many more…
This year we set ourselves a challenge to create the most seasonal, sustainable wreath designs we could. Avoiding using copious amounts of moss, metal frames and wire, Yukiko wove foraged branches from the farm hedgerows into beautiful natural circles of spindly twigs. And instead of sourcing from further afield this time, every element (bar ribbons and some beautiful hydrangea paniculata from The Real Flower Company farm, also in Hampshire) was grown, cut and dried by us. The pine cones were gathered on the edge of a windswept beach in Norfolk.
One of the things I love about this year’s wreaths is that they are still making use of the abundance and colour of our garden at its peak productivity in the height of the summer. Little botanical artworks, other than being wreath-shaped, they aren’t too Christmassy and the subtle colours and soft materials lend themselves to hanging on a wall year-round, in place of a picture or other ornament. Previous clients have told us that they have kept their wreaths up for months, even years - one rehoused from the front door to a guest bedroom, one hung over the clock in a kitchen and added to every time there are sprigs of herbs leftover from cooking - bay and rosemary and oregano - a dried circle of scratchy thyme fading into the silver shadows of an old oak porch. After-all, why should Christmas be disposable and wasteful when we make concerted efforts to recycle the rest of the year? Some of my favourite decorations have been passed down and adapted and I love the idea that with these woven wreath bases you can do the same - keep adding to them, saving and drying future flowers, collecting treasures, creating something new from something old. Building the story.
Our wreaths and other goodies can be found in our Christmas shop here.
In late November we decorated a beautiful wintry wedding in London. The church in Chelsea was dressed with Narnia-like arrangements of dried materials that had been harvested and stored months earlier - golden teasels, wild grasses and necklaces of wild clematis vine with fluffy puffs of ‘old man’s beard’ - layered with delicate nerines and anemones. The church interior was pale and simple without being austere, beautiful modern chandeliers hanging above the aisle - the effect magical and otherworldly, sunlight from side windows catching the glass bulbs with pearlescent seedpods of lunaria below.
At the Savile Club in Mayfair an afternoon reception of canapes and cocktails melted into a glamorous evening of candlelight, black tie, dinner and dancing. The bride switched from a satin Grace Kelly gown to sashaying Ginger Rogers-style ostrich feathers. We dressed the main staircase leading from the Club’s drawing room up to the ballroom, beautifully carpeted in grey-lavender, with banks of fresh and dried flowers and feathery drifts of miscanthus grasses, a huge garden urn above spilling with Virginia creeper and jasmine nightshade. For the Ballroom mantelpiece - ornately carved and gilded marble - I cut silvery artichoke leaves, tiny, delicate-leaved pittosporum ‘green elf’, ferns and globes of dried allium heads to lend a sense of the garden, winding down from autumn towards winter.
Photo credit - Emilie White
Photo credit - Emilie White
It was such a pleasure to bring this dream to life for the most wonderful clients. Thank you as always to Yukiko, Timi, Zephirine, Katharine, Olivia and PollenCrew, our fantastic team, for your calm, care and collaborative teamwork.
IN THE GARDEN
In Hampshire the landscape is citrine, green and brown. Mud and puddles, sticky, claggy soil. Occasionally the last of the yellow leaves fizzle into the damp undergrowth like flames landing in water. This month we’ve moved on in leaps and bounds and the garden is looking satisfyingly organised. We have planted up half of the next plot with beds of roses, shrubs and perennials, leaving the latter section for the annuals to be sown in the spring. There has been a lot of digging, shovelling and mulching in the pouring, unrelenting rain… but it’s amazing the wonders this does for the skin! We’re optimistically calling it “Gardener’s glow”.
Knee-deep in green waste from our last wedding of the year it occurred to me how much I love the polarities of farming flowers deep in the countryside while living in the city. It’s a curious, slightly schizophrenic mixture but it has become so obvious to me this year how much we need both ways of life now and how much it informs our work at Aesme. The best of both worlds, perhaps. To work in silence except for the trees blowing in the wind, and pheasants calling to one another through the mists in the fields, to witness owls hooting when you’re packing up your tools at night. And then driving back into this vast city of twinkling windows, its spilling stations and restaurants and theatres and the juxtaposition of then sitting in a candlelit wine bar in a dusty boilersuit, watching people walking home from the tube, jogging towards the river, carrying shopping, flowers, briefcases. No-one bats an eyelid at our mess of crazed hair and mud-caked boots - one of the best thing about London is the anonymity of it, being a grain of sand among millions. I’ve never thought that lonely. On the contrary, the sheer number of interactions you can have in a single day, just getting from A to B… and yet how small and village-y it is too - really just a sprawling interconnected network of villages and lights seeping out into the dark patchwork of fields and farmland beyond. Flitting between both places, and both states of mind, is home to us now. There’s no-where we’d rather be.
IN THE ETHER
A few things we’ve been loving this month…
R E A D I N G - ‘WEEDS : The Story of Outlaw Plants’ by Richard Mabey
L I S T E N I N G T O - Divna Ljubojevic | The Puppini Sisters
F O L L O W I N G - @ottolinedevries | @cannellevanille
E A T I N G - Sunday roast at The Angelsea Arms (one of the best in town)
V I S I T I N G - our friends at Flint, Lewes for scented candles and beautiful Christmas decs