Flower Fix: Modern arrangements for a daily dose of nature (Fix)

by Anna Potter

India Hobson (Photographer)

"We've long admired Anna's way with flowers (especially when she reminds us that even a staircase can be the perfect place to install something floral and dramatic) and we're all just so happy to see her incredible style turned into something we can bring home." - Design*Sponge

The Flower Fix presents wild inspiration and modern arrangements by Swallows and Damsons florist Anna Potter, with beautiful photography by India Hobson.

Blousy blooms, speckled branches, rich foliage and delicate petals; nature has the power to inspire and energise, calm and soothe, focus and still. Anna has harnessed this magic with 26 tailor-made combinations of flowers to bring a floral boost to your home, no matter what your mood.

With easy-to-find seasonal blooms, found items such as twigs and dried fruit, and any assortment of containers, discover how simple it is to bring a little bit of nature's mystery into the everyday. Spanning all seasons and including both larger installations and smaller, simpler projects, there is something for anyone looking to play, experiment and create atmosphere with flowers.

Get your daily flower fix with these and more inspiring arrangements:

• Inspire Playfulness is a spring arrangement to bring joy, featuring lilac, roses, ranunculus, poppy, narcissi and forget-me-nots.
• Flowers for Gratitude is a mix of summer's bounty to inspire thankfulness, including garden rose, daucus, echinacea and chocolate sunflower.
• Find Beauty in the Everyday is a colourful arrangement to bring a fresh perspective, featuring autumn foliage, hydrangea, dahlia, crab apple and rosehip.
• The Shape of Self-Expression is a circular wreath design to express individuality, with holly, lamb's ear, yellow holly berries, twigs and dried seedheads, and ivy berries.

Each project lists the equipment, flowers and foliage needed to start the project along with step-by-step instructions. You'll also find a guide to basic flower arranging; notes on colour palettes and how to use colour; and a flower glossary listing the colour, seasonal availability and vase life of each flower.

Be led by the flowers, foliage, stems, follow their shapes and form, feel their weight and heft to create versions of these gorgeous arrangements that are uniquely your own.

• ISBN13: 9781781317884
• Publish Date: 30 May 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Aurum Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 208
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Flower Fix is a new tutorial and style book for flower arranging in the home setting. Author Anna Potter is the owner of Sheffield floral boutique Swallows and Damsons. Due out 30th May 2019 from Quarto on their White Lion imprint, it's 208 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.

The author has an art and design background and it shows. There are no cookie-cutter bland arrangements here. They're beautiful, well curated, and in a number of styles. The tutorials are very specific and include materials lists which include the flowers and species used. These are -not- all easily sourced. To recreate the arrangements from the book, the reader must either live in an area with a large flower market and/or be a keen gardener with a large cutting garden. Even so, some materials will need to be sourced elsewhere since the growing conditions for the items used in the arrangements run the gamut from temperate to tropical. The arrangements themselves run the gamut from traditional to avant garde. The author's sense of color is flawless. There are arrangements here which would look perfectly at home painted into a renaissance masterpiece. They're arranged thematically. The ebook version includes an interactive table of contents and index. I especially enjoyed the chapter heading quotes. They're also very well curated with an eclectic mix of artists, philosophers, and cultural icons included.

So many of us today live in relatively sterile surroundings, boxed in and with very little contact with the natural world. This book allows the reader to get a dose of nature up close as well as providing an outlet for creativity. There also seem to be very few modern books written about flower arrangement and the cut flower aesthetic. This book fills that niche quite well. Even if the reader isn't planning on recreating the arrangements in the tutorials identically, there's a lot of material here which can be adapted to the reader's purpose and available materials.

The weakest element of the entire book for me was the cover which (to me) looks cluttered and chaotic. The black anthuriums used in the cover arrangements are darned cool though.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.