‘Everybody has the ability to express themselves’

Louise Bastow’s home in Bishopston is warm on a bright November morning. With a beaming smile she welcomes the four members of this morning’s half-day Crafty Gardeners workshop and busies herself making tea in a variety of floral mugs. On the stone floor are three buckets stuffed with flowers and greenery – huge white roses, soft purple anemones, vivid salvias, big cuttings of fennel and privet from the garden, complete with bindweed – along with Munchie the black and white cat, who curls up on the sofa in amongst the coats.

None of the attendees has much experience of creating mixed arrangements like the one we’re making today, although several are lovers of horticulture. “I want to learn to display my flowers as well as I can grow them!” says Chris, vice-chair of Henleaze Garden Club, as we go around the table and introduce ourselves.

Workshop leader Louise is confident and friendly, hacking off thorns with an enormous kitchen knife as she confesses, as a Londoner, that she was surprised by the fertility of the soil in Bristol when she first moved here five years ago. After leaving the capital, Louise worked for almost 20 years in Bath as a garden designer, winning an RHS gold medal at Hampton Court before the recession struck and business became quieter.

Louise’s workshops include shop-bought flowers and also cuttings from her garden and Redland allotment

“Through Instagram I kind of got obsessed with flowers,” Louise says. “The joy of those kind of apps is that you take a journey, and I kept finding these absolutely gorgeous flower arrangements. What struck me was that the stuff I was seeing on Instagram was not what I was seeing in the local florist: culturally they were different.”

Inspired by the loose, garden-grown style of American flower grower Erin Benzakein of Floret Flowers, Louise sought out florists in the UK with similar styles and in 2015 began to undertake workshops with them, to understand the intricacies of creating floral arrangements. She also did some work experience with Roots Floral Designs on Broad Quay. “It was heaven,” Louise beams. “They were really inspirational people.”

After being asked by a charity to put on a wreath-making workshop two Christmases ago, an experience Louise describes with a laugh as “terrifying”, she began to run workshops around her kitchen table using herbs from her garden and flowers from her friend Christine Hollow’s allotment in Redland.

Louise spent 20 years working as a garden designer before turning her green fingers to floral design

Pairs of yellow secateurs and a groaning plate of chocolate biscuits sit on the big wooden table, and Louise stands at the head of it to demonstrate the main technique of the day: spiralling. She picks up each white rose and removes most of the foliage and any imperfect petals. “Treat them like a vegetable,” is her advice, suggesting we squeeze the backs of their heads to test firmness before buying. Louise demonstrates slowly and carefully, deftly intertwining the stems to create a simple posy and lifting the heads in the centre to create a neat dome. Then it’s our turn to put the skill we’ve just learned to use.

“People either take to it really quickly or they don’t,” Louise laughs. “It’s like rubbing your belly and patting your head. The key is making sure the atmosphere is relaxed enough so that people don’t worry about picking it up.”

Louise’s kitchen table becomes awash with greenery as the group pick flowers to start their arrangements

With a quick practice under our belts, a fresh round of tea and a stream of encouraging words from Louise, it’s time for us to work on creating our own mixed arrangement. While in earlier workshops Louise was prescriptive about the flowers she handed out, now she allows everyone to pick their own from the buckets. Soon the table and kitchen floor become a sea of discarded greenery as we snip and spiral.

“There does seem to be this strong link with nature and happiness,” Louise says as one arrangement starts to come together, while another is put down, reshuffled and started again. “People that come to the workshops are in a happy frame of mind but they tangibly leave happier. I think it’s partly that feeling of ‘oh my god, I made that myself’, because for some reason people just don’t think they are creative – unless you’re an artist, you’re not allowed to call yourself a bit creative. But it’s crafting: everyone’s got the ability to express themselves.”

Louise is a hands-on guide, helping each student in turn to perfect their posy

Louise has been running her workshops under that Crafty Gardener name for just under a year, working with Michelle Wake, a garden designer who also has 20 years of experience. The two connected when they discovered they were both running workshops and chose to pool their resources. “We are both of a similar age and wanted a new adventure,” Louise says.

They now run quite different programmes but find they complement each other. Michelle’s full-day workshops focus on garden design, including making your garden attractive to wildlife and planning next season’s planting. Louise’s workshops focus around floral craft, including making flower crowns, autumnal flower arrangements and Christmas wreaths.

The finished arrangements are expertly wrapped by Louise – a skill she picked up at Roots Floral Designs on Broad Quay

As the two-hour workshop comes to a close, Louise comes around to give her last pearls of wisdom and ties the stems together with brown string. She’s eternally positive, picking out what she likes in the four arrangements that, despite using the same flowers, are all very different from each other. “I really like the teaching side of it because it skills people up to do something,” Louise says. “It’s not difficult but you can make something absolutely beautiful and really personal.” She dashes upstairs to grab some cellophane and brown paper and skilfully wraps each bunch so it’ll survive the trip home.

“I’ve come from a gardening background and I love flowers because they are beautiful, but the teaching side feeds me,” she says. “People aren’t always gushing, but you can see in their face that they are really chuffed. It’s a skill they carry on using and then they gift it to other people, and I think that’s really important. It makes me feel good.”

Louise’s next workshops – making Christmas wreaths – take place at Bristol Folk House on Saturday, November 24 and cost £40.35 (£39 for over 65s). To book visit www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk/courses/christmas-wreath-workshop or call the Folk House 0117  926 2987. Find out more about the Crafty Gardeners and all their upcoming workshops by visiting www.thecraftygardeners.co.uk