If you’ve ever entertained the notion of packing in your day job and starting a career as a florist – making people happy, nurturing your creative side and being surrounded by perfumed blooms of every shape, size and colour – then you’re not alone. It’s a romantic vision, but for Sarah Clerke it’s a daily reality.
Having worked in IT for many years, she quit and signed up for a course in floristry. Now she runs the successful Cambridge Flower School, based in Linton and Hildersham, and hasn’t looked back since.
Says Sarah: “I used to teach IT, then in my early 30s I decided I wanted to do something different, something creative. I didn’t know much about flowers – I couldn’t tell a carnation from a chrysanthemum – but from the moment I started I loved it.”
Sarah set up two shops in Cambridge, then sold them to take up a position as project manager with Euroflorist. “Then, last year, some friends asked if I’d run some floristry courses for them, and it’s catapulted from there. Our courses are really popular; it’s amazed me,” says Sarah. “I think it’s on the back of the craft resurgence. There are a lot of people interested in floristry out there. Until now the nearest floristry courses were in Ipswich, Chelmsford or London, so there’s a real need for it.”
Are her courses only for those thinking of making floristry a career?
“Not at all: we’re aimed at anyone who loves flowers. We run workshops – either one day or half days – for people who want to have a dabble. We’ll teach them how to make a hand-tied bouquet which they can give to their friends, and they’re more informal. We eat cake all day and it’s a good laugh. Then we run career courses, including a seven-week beginners floristry evening course and a six-week wedding evening course, which are more for people who want to do it as a career.
“I get a lot of ladies in their 40s and 50s looking for a career change,” she adds. “They say they’ll either do it now or they never will! It’s infectious, it’s a lovely career. Once you get into it you can’t let go.” I meet Sarah at her home studio in Linton, to get a masterclass in making one of her most popular requests: a hand-tied bouquet.
“Hand-tied bouquets are what florists will spend 70{b486c5a37ab2d325d17e17d701cb2567b1ecd1814e8ceb33effa2a4f1f171d46} of their time on. But they’ve only been around for about 20 years. The traditional bouquet was the ‘hostess bouquet’, which are really small, with a little doily around them, and you’d take it to someone’s house for dinner. Then London florists made them a bit bigger, wrapped them in brown paper and that’s how we got the hand-tied. The alternative is the traditional flat bouquet, wrapped in loads of cellophane!”
For our bouquet, we select voluminous hydrangeas, wax flowers, astible and a little greenery, then Sarah shows me how to arrange them in a spiral, adding each new stem at an angle.
“Everything now is quite big and blowsy,” says Sarah. “The vintage, natural look is very popular; so creams and pinks and muted colours. But it changes as fashions change.”
Asked if she ever gets any men interested, Sarah replies: “The odd one or two. As it turns out, men are actually really good at floristry. We also do corporate teambuilding classes. At Christmas we had a group of 18 nurses in, and that was really great fun.”
‘Everything now is quite big and blowsy. The vintage look is very popular’
How easy do people find it? “Some people take to it more quickly than others, but the basics of floristry are really simple. The creative side comes later. First you’ve got to know the properties of different flowers; how to look after them and how to order using their latin names. We also go through costings, which is a big part of it. And for weddings you need to know about wiring. You know those bouquets which cascade right down?” she describes: “Every single stem is wired. We teach buttonholes too.”
Though Sarah orders mainly from Holland, there is an increasing trend for British-grown flowers. This month, Cambridge Flower School will celebrate British Flowers Week (15-19 June) with an original and rather lovely campaign.
“We’re going to set up what we’re calling the Lonely British Bouquet Campaign,” smiles Sarah. “We’ll be placing little bouquets all around Cambridge, for people to find, with a note inside, saying ‘please take me home and let us know that you’ve found me’, with a link to our Facebook page. We’ll go out early in the morning and put them in significant spots around the city. That’ll be in the week commencing 17 June, so look out for them!”
www.thecambridgeflowerschool.co.uk
