I love flowers, I have ever since I was a toddler. One of my first memories was of me plucking my mothers magnificent dahlia’s off at the neck. I couldn’t have been more than 3. I even remember the colour like it was yesterday…. It was a deep, dark almost purple cabernet colour and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid my eyes on. I remember toddling into the house clutching my prize tightly around the neck and my mother giving a wail of horror when she saw what I gripped so proudly in my paw.

In my childish mind it felt like my mother was absolutely furious, which she probably was. I distinctly remember my grandmother coming to my rescue telling me not to cry, and my mother not to be ridiculous because dahlia bushes carry on blooming. She took me to the kitchen and filled a saucer with water and took me to my room and placed the decapitated dahlia in the deep saucer so it floated like a water lily on the dressing table next to my bed. I would lie in bed transfixed at its colour, intricate petals fitting into one another to create this perfect shape, and its smell. Most of all I remember that distinct dahlia fragrance as I drifted off to sleep in the evenings and woke in the morning.

My father was a horticulturist, my mother a florist and my grandmother and favourite aunt avid gardeners – Where else would I turn to for inspiration, but flowers…