The Wilde Bunch

Saying it with flowers has become a Valentine's Day tradition. However, Bristol-based florist Claire Nicholson believes in showing her passion for the environment by saying it with weeds and wildflowers. Suzanne Savill reports. Pictures: Chas Breton

There is not a red rose in sight. Instead, as Claire Nicholson gets to work on a Valentine's bouquet, she is working with red tulips... and weeds.

Claire, who runs Bristol- based natural floristry service The Wilde Bunch, explains: "I've always been obsessed with plants and flowers, and I'm particularly keen on how things grow naturally.

"My whole ethos is that I want to provide gorgeous floral arrangements inspired by nature and the seasons."

And that means her bouquets and displays include wild plants and flowers that some people would regard as weeds.

"Weeds are ostensibly wild flowers," says Claire, who lives in Southville and works out of a barn on the outskirts of Bristol.

"They often grow where they aren't wanted, but that doesn't meant they can't look beautiful.

"For example, ranunculus comes from the same family as the buttercup. I think they're beautiful, yet most people will moan about having them on their lawn.

"One of my favourites is cow parsley, which can be found in hedgerows all over the countryside.

"Ivy is also lovely, but while some people use it to decorate their homes on occasions such as Christmas, most regard it as a weed when it starts growing up their walls."

Claire's decision to call her floristry company The Wilde Bunch – and the company motto "Expect the Unexpected" – is in keeping with her belief in not solely using commercially grown flowers.

"I named it after Oscar Wilde, the writer and poet. One of his famous quotes is: 'To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect'.

"I thought it was so appropriate for my business, as people get the unexpected from my work. Also, there is the local connection of The Wild Bunch crew and the Bristol sound."

Claire does not have a shop, preferring to work out of her barn and travel around in her van.

"It's now becoming very much in Vogue to have natural, wild arrangements, but wildflowers and some of the older varieties of English cottage-garden flowers have a short shelf-life, which is why you won't see them in many shops.

"But they're fine for The Wilde Bunch to use at events like weddings and other events. My background in floristry is very much big events such as the Stella Artois tennis tournament, rather than shop-based work.

"I'm obsessed by giving my customers bespoke arrangements that are as fresh as possible and don't cost the earth, both in terms of finance and the environment.

"To take wild flowers and weeds from the English land, wherever that is, is both environmentally unsound and, if for commercial gain, is illegal.

"However, the special places we propagate and grow wild flowers and weeds from are privately owned and I have full permission to sensibly pick from them.

"The farm on which I'm based has given me permission to cut things like rosehips, ivy and bluebells, and I also get quite a lot of wildflowers, such as blue cornflowers, from arable land on my family's farm on the Somerset/Dorest borders."

Claire trained in horticulture at Wisley Garden – the flagship garden of the Royal Horticulture Society – and went on to work as a project manager at the Royal Society of Arts, specialising in sustainable development, eco-design and environmental management, and also worked on the design team of a leading London events florist.

She then decided to come to Bristol, and managed a florist's shop before launching The Wilde Bunch last year.

In addition to using wild foliage in her arrangements, Claire uses recyclable and recycled materials wherever possible.

"A glass jar can be very prettily decorated with ribbon and filled with flowers. It doesn't cost anything and it is a good way of reusing something," she says.

"Rather than buying expensive cellophane, I try to use things like recycled brown paper, which can be decorated – for example with hearts for Valentine's Day."

Claire emphasises that she is not opposed to flowers being imported into Britain.

"I realised when I worked for the RSA that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and sometimes what seems the right thing to do can be the wrong thing," she says.

"I don't think the answer is to only buy British flowers, as there's a huge developing market for flowers in third world counties like Columbia, Ethiopia, Uganda and Ecuador.

"There are people there who rely on growing flowers for export to make a living. They don't want people in the West to stop buying their flowers, although they would want us to put pressure on for better working conditions and pay, and less use of pesticides.

"People talk about supporting British flower- producers as if they are growing them in their back gardens, when the fact is that the amount of energy that it takes to produce flowers out of season in England, using light and heat, has an environmental impact, particularly compared to flowers flown into Britain as 'bellyload' in a scheduled passenger plane.

"I've got a wedding coming up soon that I'll be providing flowers for, and after the recent cold weather I'll be hard-pushed to get flowers like daffodils that have been grown here, so if that is what the couple want, I will have to look beyond this country."

For further information on The Wilde Bunch go to www.thewildebunch.co.uk

Although red roses are now associated with Valentine's Day, Claire says this is only a recent phenomenon.

"The traditional flower for Valentine's Day is the tulip, not the rose," she says.

"The tulip is one of the few flowers in bloom in February in this country. There is a lovely story that St Valentine hid his message into a tulip, and it was revealed when the tulip bloomed."

For the Valentine's bouquet with which she is pictured, Claire used tulips and "weed" ingredients including blossom, eucalyptus, catkins, twigs and ranunculus, plus ivy "growing through" a twisted wild honeysuckle circlet.

Other wildflowers and weeds that she uses in her arrangements, depending on the season, include feverfew, wild clematis, ox-eye daisies, wild orchids, cornflowers, field scabiosa, sneezewort, forget-me-nots, valerian, spurge, hellibores, rosehips and sloe berries.