A career in bloom (From The Argus)

A career in bloom

8:50am Monday 20th February 2012 in Celebrating Sussex By Nione Meakin

Chichester Cathedral is an imposing space that demands grand visions. Fortunately, Paula Pryke isn’t short of those.

The world-renowned floral designer has installed 5ft-wide “flower balls” in London’s Tower Bridge (“They only just fitted in the lift!”), designed a 10,000 sq ft indoor garden inspired by Cecily Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies books, and filled the windows of America’s Marshall Fields store with her stylish arrangements.

The new patron of Chichester Festival of Flowers is coy about what she will be unveiling at the June event, which this year takes inspiration from the literary world, with the theme Every Book Tells A Story.

But it will, she promises, be “something pretty special”.

The annual, weekend-long festival is one of the UK’s most popular, attracting crowds of more than 15,000 people and raising vital funds that go towards the upkeep of the cathedral. Pryke says she was “honoured” to be invited to be its patron. Her husband, architect Peter Romaniuk, grew up in Chichester and her mother-in-law still lives there.

“The festival has a very strong and talented team behind it and it’s a very good show to look at. I’ve been to others and this one really does hang together well. It also has the added benefit of a really stunning backdrop, of course.”

Pryke is sure to be a huge draw. Since making her entrance in the world of floristry in 1987, her striking designs and bold use of colour have made her one of the world’s most in-demand floral designers. She has a concession at Liberty in London’s West End, runs a renowned flower school and has an A-list client base that includes actors Ewan McGregor and Julia Roberts.

Flowers Every Day, her 14th book, has just come out.

It’s all a far cry from her original career as a history teacher in an East London comprehensive, which she finally abandoned after the pupils burnt the classroom down and she spent the rest of the term teaching in corridors and gyms. “I knew I was in a career I wasn’t really suited to,” says Pryke, now 51. “But I’d never thought of myself as artistic. I always loved fiddling around with flowers and I decided to take a floristry course – I loved it from the moment I started.”

The late-1980s were something of a stale period for floristry and Pryke and her contemporaries set about shaking things up. “I made working with other accessories popular – things like fruit and sweets and feathers that people might not have thought of putting in flower arrangements.

I introduced a few sculptural ideas, such as grouping flowers into a topiary shape, and I also became known for my use of colour. I realised some way into my career that colour was my main motivation.”

But Pryke’s talent also lies in her accessibility; her books aim to make floral designers of us all. “I think some flower arrangers make it too complicated, when I see it as a similar discipline to cooking – things are best when they’re fresh, seasonal and simple.”

Flowers Every Day champions cutting gardens as the natural accompaniment to the “growyour- own” trend in fruit and veg.

It’s an obvious means of providing cheap, seasonal flowers for the home with the minimum environmental impact.

But for those of us who lack gardens, or the inclination to grow flowers, there is a lot that can be done with even the most basic bunch of supermarket carnations, she says. “We’ve done things like putting ten tiny vases on a table, all with one small flower in, or a group of three vases together, with one stem in. They’re simple and stylish and a good way of making a bouquet go further.”

Her personal favourites tend towards the English country garden varieties – foxgloves, peonies and the like.

She’s less fond of tall, straight flowers such as gladioli and liatris – “I find them a little stiff and restrictive” – but is of the belief that any flower can be made to look attractive by one means or another.

The job of a florist is a rather different matter, however.

“Generally, you are conveying messages for people.

Whether it’s a bouquet that says ‘I love you’ or a sympathy tribute that’s someone’s final gift, it’s your job to get inside a client’s mind and work out the best way to get across what they’re trying to say.

One of the lovely things about flowers is that there’s such a huge vocabulary to work with.”

* Paula Pryke’s Flowers Every Day is out now, published by Jacqui Small LLP, priced £25 * Chichester Festival of Flowers takes place at Chichester Cathedral on June 7-9. For details, visit www.chichester cathedraltrust.org.uk