Location: East Coast Wildflowers

Season: September

Last year, I visited Salon in Taipei, and this September we had the pleasure of welcoming our friends from Salon to Sydney for a week of flowers and creativity.

We began at East Coast Wildflowers, our family’s flower farm on the NSW Central Coast. It’s always special to return to the farm where I grew up, but spring is an incredible time to visit, with an abundance of Australian native wildflowers in season.

We started the morning with a walk through the farm, exploring the different textures, forms, scales and colours growing across the property and talking about how these characteristics influence the way we work with flowers at BESS.

From the Farm to the Workshop

After our farm walk, we stopped for a very Australian lunch — a BBQ cooked by Jack, with produce from some of our Sydney favourites, including Iggy’s Bread, Victor Churchill and Paddington Alimentari.

Then it was time to work with the flowers.

Using spring materials freshly cut from the farm, I demonstrated our approach to a large-scale native flower arrangement, working with the natural shape and movement of each ingredient rather than forcing the flowers into a predetermined form.

We finished the afternoon with a gift bouquet workshop, where everyone created their own arrangement using seasonal Australian-grown flowers and foliage from the farm.

For us, the connection between grower, florist and finished arrangement is incredibly important. At BESS, we work exclusively with Australian-grown flowers, with a particular love for the native wildflowers that have been part of my family for generations.

It was the perfect way to begin our week with Salon — surrounded by friends, flowers and the Australian landscape that continues to inspire our work at BESS.