A posy for Her Majesty The Queen.

For the past seven years The National Federation Of Women's Institutes (NFWI) or the Women's Institute have chosen us to supply plants and flowers for the AGM.   This year, on the centenary of the founding of the Women's Institute I was also asked to supply three posies for members of the Royal family: Her Majesty The Queen, The Princess Royal and The Countess of Wessex.

There have been countless florists that have supplied beautiful posies for Her Majesty and I am sure every one of them has felt very honoured to do so.   I too felt honoured and grateful for the opportunity to supply not one but three posies for The Royal family!   It was a wonderful feeling to see pictures of The Queen holding her posy in newspapers the next day.  The Times had a particularly beautiful image on the front page.  The Daily Mail had a number of images: http://dailym.ai/1Kem4i4

The WI had commissioned a hybrid tea rose named 'Inspiration' to mark the centenary.   A hundred were due to be delivered to us a few days before the event and these were to form the centrepiece of the posies and table arrangements but due to the vagaries of the British weather only twelve buds were showing and eight of these were very tight.   Unlike the roses grown in Dutch nurseries, the buds hardly opened at all and the posies had just four Inspiration roses in each.  We had to try to match the colours of the Inspiration rose at rather short notice and chose colours to complement the WI rose.  The other flowers included Lisianthus (Eustoma), Peony, Dahlia, Ornithogalum and three other roses in similar hues.

The route for deliveries to the stage at the Royal Albert hall is rather tortuous and halfway through delivering the plants and flowers the large lift I use was nowhere to be seen.   After pressing the button for ten minutes I decided to walk up the stairs only to find a carpet fitter fitting a red carpet in the lift!   I thought that I would be barred from using the lift and forced to use an even longer route used for deliveries for catering.   Fortunately the WI are adept at resolving last minute hitches and the carpet was quickly covered in protective sheeting so I could finish off my work.

At every AGM, just before the end of the event the ladies sing Jerusalem.   They sing it very well I must say.   Within minutes of the song finishing the WI members are making their way to the coaches that will take them back to their respective counties.   It has become a bit of a tradition to hand out the flowers from the displays to those ladies to take home with them.   The table arrangements are shared between the WI organisers and hopefully on this occasion The Queen, The Princess Royal and The Countess Of Wessex took their flowers home too!

Mon Chapeau!

Love those shapes!   A new range of planters for you to consider: the Chapeau range.

www.plantcontainershop.com

Dry stone walling

Further to my earlier post on the artificial dry stone wall 'top' requested by a customer, dry stone walling we are familiar with is not restricted to rural areas in Britain.   A Canadian dry stone waller has a blog here: http://thinking-stoneman.blogspot.co.uk/ and the following site suggests that there are 35 countries that have dry stone walls:  http://www.lowimpact.org/factsheet_dry_stone_walling.html

If you like the idea of a dry stone wall but don't want the views from your country estate spoilt then your servants can build a Ha Ha instead.   The image from Wikipedia explains it all.   As the image suggests, it is not a good idea to fly a kite from the top of a Ha Ha.

It's all in the detail.

A new addition to our range of lightweight rocks: tree trunks, tree stumps and logs.   Like the rocks, the artificial timber products are lightweight and durable.   I thought it was time to branch out.   Silence.   Ok, that pun is so bad no body even groans any more.  

Take a look at the detail on the largest tree trunk.   It looks like the bark is actually flaking off just like the real thing, but it's firmly affixed.

artificialrocks.co.uk

Lightweight artificial log

Lightweight artificial log

Lightweight artificial tree trunk

Lightweight artificial tree trunk

Lightweight artificial tree trunk

Lightweight artificial tree trunk

Stone style planters

The rectangular planters and tall square planters in the following images are 'polystone'.   That is to say they are stone chippings in resin.   They look like they are made of stone but are much lighter.   The tall rectangular planters can have a flat top to convert them to a pedestal or can be fitted with a smaller planter on top to add height and style.

Polystone planters - stone chippings in resin

Polystone planters - stone chippings in resin

The following stone style planters are made completely from a glassfibre resin material made to look like stone.

Stone effect glassfibre planters

The polystone vases shown below are also available in grey and cream as are the rectangular polystone planters.

Polystone vase.   The look of stone without the weight.

Go large

Following an enquiry at the beginning of the year, I tried to find the manufacturer of an extremely large tapered round plant container 1400mm wide and 2000mm tall that I had previously seen.  My search led to a non-functioning website www.ego2.com that suggested the company was no more.   Looking for an unrelated product the other day I found the large planter! It seems that the moulds have been purchased by another manufacturer and are now available in a limited supply.   These are made from glassfibre and are currently available in white.   It is possible to spray paint glassfibre however.   Do you want to go large?

www.plantcontainershop.com

Artificial dry stone wall.

Following an enquiry for the top section of a dry stone wall I was all of a quarry, sorry, quandary.   The obvious method is to build a small section with real stone and mould from that.   I usually use latex to mould with as it is very economical.   The thing is, latex takes a while to dry and several layers must be built up to get the required thickness.   The Cassini's plaster I use to make the finished article also takes up to a week to cure fully.   With a vacation looming I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.   Pun number two.

I decided to get the mould prepared by a mould maker.   Transporting a dry stone wall in real stone posed a bit of a problem.   You can't easily lift a complete dry stone wall, not even the top section.   I could have built the wall on a pallet but had this been handled roughly, my short section of wall may have crumbled.

I decided, therefore, to make a section of wall from scratch.   Using a box section as a base I used plaster to make the basic shape of the dry stone wall and then added cracks, notches and general rocky features by hand.   Here is the result:

Artificial dry stone wall

I haven't painted it as yet as it's still wet but I have converted the image above to greyscale, added some colour, added more of the lower wall and dropped the wall in to a farmer's field.   Digitally as opposed to literally, that is!  Aye, that'll do.

Artificial dry stone wall.   Digitally enhanced image.


artificialrocks.co.uk