Alice Howard – All Things Floristry

Tell us a bit about your background and how you got into floristry. What was the inspiration behind establishing Botanique?

I would love to say I spent my childhood captivated by flowers, except I didn’t. I did spend a lot of time making things growing up though; with a keen interest in craft for as long as I can remember.

I’d always wanted to start my own business — my dad is very entrepreneurial — but like many, I was swept along by the expectation that A-levels meant university, and a degree meant a graduate job. Breaking this pattern and going off sailing and skiing, meeting some alternative personalities(!) led me to realise that starting a business straight out of university was an okay thing to do…

I flew home in January 2012, and opened a shop in Islington two months later with an up-cycling range I created. Wanting to have a wider product range of complimentary up-cycling themed products, I invited other craftspeople to rent shelves to showcase and sell their products. A one off crate of hand-thrown old nursery pots filled with cacti and succulents were a hit and soon buying plants for the shop became a regular habit.

When the shop next door closed, I immediately envisioned turning it into a flower and plant shop. I had got the bug for fresh flowers and was regularly making trips to Columbia Road to buy stems to arrange. Eventually, I secured a 6-month pop-up lease in the space. Luckily, a friend-of-a-friend named Pip — an experienced florist — joined me to help get the flower shop off the ground. We got on brilliantly so when the pop-up lease ended, I rebranded my main shop on Exmouth Market as Botanique Workshop, and invited Pip to be my business partner in running the floristry side.

Working closely with Pip the floristry business grew and began to dominate the theme of the shop more and more. We started to make flowers for weddings and events, began delivering bouquets nationwide and opened a second shop on Church Street in Stoke Newington. When Pip moved to Newcastle two years later, I felt ready to take over with the help of her assistant Maya, who is now part of our team.

I haven’t looked back since. With a brilliant team of florists, we’re busy week in and week out with events, installations, weddings, and workshops in our studio opposite the Exmouth Market shop.

Alongside this, I’ve continued to grow our product range, now including candles, soaps, pressed flower cards, sewn homewares, our own seed packets; as well as collaborating with Cotswolds-based potter Tom Bartlett on our own line of ceramics. Now our products can be found stocked by likeminded shops across the UK.

Do you have a favourite time of year / season for floristry?

Spring is always very exciting when all the spring bulbs are in full swing, but it has to be this time of year (June) when there is such a wide selection in flower. We are receiving the most exquisite selections from our British growers; double snap dragons, enormous Peonies, beautiful frothy phlox

What has been the biggest lesson that you have learnt since opening the shop?

The whole thing is one big very steep learning curve. As my interests develop, and I continue to diversify my business to try to keep up with myself!! I have never had any formal training in either retail, floristry or product design and manufacture so I do make it up as I go along. Which is probably the long way to do it and is full of mistakes, but I get a lot of satisfaction from working things out for myself.

I really noticed myself grow when I had children. Always being obsessively present and hands on in my business I was forced to step away from the daily running of the business. This forced me to get better at delegating which enabled me to spend so much more of my energy working on the business rather than in the business. I really wouldn’t have imagined this to be possible when I learnt I was pregnant with my first baby 6 years ago. For my second “maternity leave’ I took a proper step and was so proud to observe my amazing team from my sofa!!

Any tips for aspiring florists or people keen to get involved with the industry?

Get some experience in a reputable flower shop. If you really muck in, ask lots of questions and come bursting with enthusiasm then the experienced florists will appreciate you and be keen to share their knowledge and skills with you. Only take a course if you can really afford to, relevant real floristry experience is much more likely to get you your first job in my opinion. Buy flowers from the market or Columbia Road and play with them over and over. Find your style, stay true to it and be prepared for a lot of hard work, floristry is not for the faint hearted.

Can you give us a selection of flowers that can be bought in a bouquet and preserved or dried?

When choosing flowers for drying you need to pick ones either with a fairly flat face or ones that are already on the dry side as a fresh flower. The larger more round headed stems (e.g. peonies, dahlias) won’t dry so well in terms of drying out fully without going mouldy and retaining their shape. Good ones to try would be strawflowers, hydrangeas, statice, thistle, gypsophila, poppy seed heads, grasses, nigella etc.

If you would like to dry your fresh flowers let the florist know this so they can guide, you with what to choose from what’s on their stand that day. To make a dried arrangement try to pick a variety of different shapes and textures i.e. mix flowers with spires with focal large headed stems, then some filler flowers and foliage for volume. To dry flowers its best to start the drying process when the flowers are at their best rather than when they have started to turn, loose shape and fall apart. Hang them upside down (so that the stems dry relatively straight) and hang them in a dry, warm and well-ventilated space away from direct light.

What are the most popular flower trends right now? Where do you see trends moving?

At the moment there is an increasing trend for more sculptural and ‘ugly’ stems as well as a focus on arranging flowers in clusters (by colour and also variety). A lot less foliage is being used in arrangements than it was even a couple of years ago. At Botanique whilst we often create arrangements in these styles for corporate clients such as for fashion shoots and brand activations but in store, we continue to focus on naturalistic arrangements in our signature whimsical garden style. I don’t see the trend for untamed arrangements ending. As an industry we are increasingly championing seasonality and British grown flowers which are celebrated for being imperfectly wonky!  I am noticing more and more interesting hybrids of flowers coming through for example a butterfly ranunculus bred with a straw flower got us all very excited this spring. I also think the use of other materials and objects mixed in with flowers is going to grow, for example adding ribbons and fruits into tablescapes is growing in popularity.

Tell us a bit about your Best of British bouquet for British flowers week?

At Botanique one of our main goals for this year was to sell a wider selection of British grown flowers from spring through to Autumn. We started the year with tulips, then ranunculus and now peonies from family growers Smith and Munson. Now that the summer season is gearing up, we are receiving a weekly British selection from our main supplier at the market, Bloomfield.  We are also really excited to be working directly with British grower Beth (of Flos flowers) this year who is about to start delivering to us directly from her farm in Hertfordshire at least once a week.

This has all made it possible for us to be able to offer a Best of British bouquet to our website for delivery through the British growing season. Our ‘Best of British’ bouquet is a beautiful selection of seasonal British grown blooms and foliage straight from the flower patch. Each bouquet is totally bespoke as it is the florists ‘pick of the patch’. The florists pick quickly evolves with the fast pace of the British growing season. Expect peonies and poppies in May, cornflowers and roses in June, delphiniums and Queen Annes lace in July and dahlias and cosmos in August.

Any exciting plans for the future?

We are really excited to have launched a prop hire collection this year.  Making our extensive range of vases, urns, footed bowls, candlesticks, runners and plinths available to style weddings, events and shoots in and around London. I am also working on a new collection of our own brand candles and soaps which will launch later this summer.