On the quiet difference between British flowers and Australian ones — and why I leave most of the greenery out.
When I watch the florists I admire in the UK, the first thing I notice isn't the flowers. It's the greenery. There's a lot of it, and it's deliberately mismatched — apple greens against dark greens, a broad leafy stem beside something fine and delicate. Texture stacked on texture. To the British eye, that isn't clutter. That's tradition.
And I understand it. The UK has centuries of it to draw on. We don't. Australia is barely two hundred years old, and our flowers reflect that — a newer country, with a newer way of seeing. So the difference between British floral design and Australian floral design isn't really about flowers at all. It's about culture. Two different ideas of what a beautiful thing is allowed to look like.
A bouquet isn't a collection of nice things gathered together. It's an edited object.
In a lot of British work, the foliage is the feature. The mixed textures, the filler, the wildness — that's the point of the arrangement. The flowers come second: a few focal roses, or some tall delphiniums rising out of a mass of greenery. It's whimsical, romantic, a little untamed. Country garden, essentially. Beautiful in its own language.
I design in a different language. I use one foliage. Usually just the one, chosen so it never becomes the thing you look at. I don't want the greenery to be prominent. I want it to hold the arrangement together and then step back, because the flower is the focal point — not the leaf beside it.
That's the whole difference, really. British design tends toward more: more texture, more variety, more in the hand. Australian design — at least the way I do it — is colour blocking, a clear focal flower, restraint. Choosing what to leave out is as much of the work as choosing what goes in. Composed, not assembled.
The focal flower, doing the talking.
The Monaco White — white on white, restraint as the whole point. From $99. Shop the Monaco White →
People sometimes read restraint as having less to offer. I read it as having a point of view. Anyone can add another stem. The harder, better decision is usually the one to stop.
