Occasions
The flower for the moment
People have been saying things with flowers for as long as they have been unable to say them otherwise. The great flower books are full of blooms that already mean something — here is what we would reach for, and what we would write.
A birthday
The oldest use of the twelve months, and still the best one.
Their month’s bloom, from Furber’s plate for it — or the bloom itself, standing alone, if the flower matters more than the month.
Find their month →If you didn’t write one, we’d write
Eleanor — 14 June 1996
A wedding
The bouquet recreated, or the two birth flowers together.
The atelier bouquet, composed from the photograph — or, simpler and quietly lovely, the couple’s two birth flowers as a pair. Botanical plates hang beautifully in twos.
Compose the bouquet →If you didn’t write one, we’d write
Eleanor & James — 2 September 2023
A birth
A flower that was already waiting for them.
The birth flower of the month they arrived in, inscribed with the name and the date. It is the gift that becomes theirs later, when they are old enough to ask what it is.
Find the month →If you didn’t write one, we’d write
Rosalind — born 3 May 2026
An anniversary
The month it happened in, or the flowers that were there.
Furber’s plate for the month of the wedding — the exact bouquet that would have been in season. Or the bouquet itself, composed again.
Find the month →If you didn’t write one, we’d write
Ten years — 2 September
Mother’s Day
Her flower, or the flowers of everyone she made.
The birth-flowers-of-the-family arrangement: a bloom for each of her children, gathered into one urn. It is the one gift that is about her by being about them.
Gather the family →If you didn’t write one, we’d write
For Mum — Thomas, Grace & Eliza
A remembrance
The chrysanthemum has meant this in half the world for a very long time.
Their birth flower, inscribed with the name and the years — or November’s chrysanthemum, which is the flower of the late garden and of remembrance, whatever month it was.
Find their flower →If you didn’t write one, we’d write
Margaret Wilde — 1934–2024
November’s flower is the chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium) — the flower of the late garden, and of remembrance.