January’s Theme: Fresh Beginnings

To celebrate the New Year, we have collaborated with Cate St Hill, a design and interiors writer and stylist based in London who has a passion for light, Scandinavian-inspired interiors. Cate believes in an understated and minimal aesthetic as a background for everyday life, with natural, honest materials that appeal to the senses and improve over time.

Our January flower selections focus on simple, natural beauty and clean fresh palettes. Cate wanted to bring the outside in and create a series of simple floral displays that would refresh and brighten up the home for the start of the New Year. Shaking off the excess of Christmas, January is often a time when we retreat into the cosy indoors, reflect, declutter, and seek to enjoy simple, everyday moments at home. When the leaves have fallen from the trees and everything is looking a little grey outdoors, bunches of fresh greenery and bright, white blooms dotted around the home can lift the spirits and inject a bit of life into an interior.

Cate’s ethos is sharing simple design that lifts the spirits each day. The simple everyday means seeking a moment of calm amid our busy lives – to slow down and appreciate the little things. Cate has created flower displays that exude her natural style and are beautiful in their parred down simplicity. Lifting our spirits with a peaceful sense of calm is something we could all use at the start of a new year.

Picture Perfect

Cate created a beautiful living flower installation using individual stems from our Tall Selection, arranging these within simple picture frames. Within each frame Cate chose lemon coloured Aztec Lillies, pale lime Eustoma and soft pink hypericum berry, which together form an art piece positioned on a minimal white shelf.

Cate says: “I used simple picture frames to create a colourful shelf display with single stems and branches. You could also press flowers and use dried stems to last through to Spring. Letting the stems extend outside the frame creates a wilder arrangement and a beautiful focal point in the room.”

Fika Time

On her dining room table, Cate prepared a ‘fika’ – a custom in Swedish culture with the basic meaning “to have coffee”, often accompanied with pastries, cookies or pie. Cate worked with our January ‘Short’ flower selection, which is white, fresh and delicate and the result is beautiful in its simplicity. Cate has created a natural, woodland-inspired scene, with lots of different sized vessels forming a relaxed, informal centrepiece along the table. Vases of various heights and textures create layers, and give a sense of depth. Candlelight provides a soft glow in the darker days, while each person’s place setting is made a little bit special with a decorative dish of ranunculus.

Cate said: “My dining table arrangement is all about appealing to the senses and feeding the soul, with fragrant smells from the narcissus and eucalyptus, freshly baked cinnamon buns and warming cups of coffee.”