The Bookshop Blogger #17

Sunday, 18 July 2010, 12:11 PM   

I have mentioned before that I am an avid gardener, and my passion for flowers extends to using them to add something to the décor of a home or a party.

I have a friend, PT, whom I met thirty years ago while travelling by bus together doing the school run. I am not a car driver; I can, but I don’t. No road hogging 4X4’s for us! No, we used to wrangle three kids apiece on the no. 167. Our children went to the same school but were in different years. We used to see each other under these circumstances Monday to Friday, we’d smile and nod but never a word was spoken beyond maybe a ‘hello’.
 
But on a Saturday we would both happen to take the no. 294 into town, sans enfants, to shop. (In those days I worked part time.) I can’t remember who spoke first but Saturdays became our day. We would sit and chat on the bus, go off and do our shopping, meet back again for coffee then catch the bus home together.

We discovered our mutual love of gardening quite early on and quickly established a tradition: our annual trip to the Hampton Court Flower Show. We apply early and always go on the Saturday, PT has been a member of the RHS for a very long time and she’s mega-efficient.

Once there, we have very different agendas; she is looking for garden inspiration and I look for floral inspiration but, by the time we have come home, we have covered enough ground that we are both brimming with ideas.

Back at the shop I find myself looking for exciting books on flowers. I have some delightful regular customers who emerge like blossoms exactly a week after I return from Hampton Court to see what books I have chosen. Well this year, I would like to share those choices with you! But before I do, I just want to tell you about a wonderful flower that PT found, she was so excited she dragged me half way across the exhibition to show it to me. It’s called ‘Serendipity’ and it’s a kind of foxglove with split tubular bulbs and petals like waves. It’s incredibly flouncy, and that makes it look like the kind of ruffle Spandau Ballet would have worn whilst singing True or Gold (the only two Spandau Ballet songs I know.)

So, for my recommendations. If you have ever looked at a flower and thought ‘wow’ - and if you haven’t then there’s something wrong with you - then Anna Pavord’s Bulb is a thoroughly engrossing book, as she eulogises on flowers from the perspective of someone who knows a thing or two and doesn’t mind sharing.

As I said, I like flowers as enhancements to interior design and celebrations. The rest of the world seems to have the drop on us here and one look at Zhanna Semenova: Floral Art will provide a host of ideas so outlandish that they seem to be from  another planet – I love them! In Japan, the art of Ikebana goes back to feudal times and Naoki Sasaki’s designs in Japanese Cotemporary Floral Art will show you that they can work just as well today.

Of course, that sort of thing is not for everyone and the books of both Paula Pryke and Jane Packer take these creations and mould them into something more homely. If Semenova is Alexander McQueen then Pryke and Packer are Top Shop.

And Titchmarsh? Primark.