The Cut Flower Podcast

Living a Creative Life with Frances Palmer

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 123

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Text Agony Aunt Roz with your Cutflower Questions.

In this soulful and inspiring episode, Roz is joined by renowned potter, gardener, and author Frances Palmer. Frances takes us on a journey from her New Jersey childhood to the peaceful, flower-filled studio she now calls home in Connecticut. She shares the origins of her creative practice, her connection to the earth through ceramics and gardening, and the personal stories behind her beloved books, Life in the Studio and Life with Flowers.

This conversation blooms with wisdom on the interplay between floral design and pottery, the beauty of seasonal routines, and the importance of daily creative practice. Frances reflects on the lessons found in both soil and clay—from the joy of experimentation to the humility of failure. They also explore how photography plays a role in capturing her work, how she manages the logistics of a global pottery business, and why sustainability and tradition matter more than ever.

Whether you’re a creative, a gardener, or simply someone who loves beauty, this episode offers a gentle reminder that meaning often comes from the rhythm of the everyday.

Key Takeaways:

  • Frances Palmer is a celebrated potter and passionate gardener.
  • Her books merge memoir, art, and practical advice on creative living.
  • Floral design and ceramic work are deeply intertwined in her process.
  • Seasonality shapes both her artistic and gardening practices.
  • Shipping handmade pottery internationally comes with challenges.
  • Daily routines and early mornings are vital to her creative rhythm.
  • Gardening teaches patience, experimentation, and resilience.
  • Photography helps her convey feeling and story in her work.
  • Traditional techniques and sustainability are core values in her art.
  • Nature, legacy, and beauty are at the heart of her creative life.

You can find out more about Frances here 

You can pre-order her new book Life with Flowers here

Make the most of your garden by visiting bramblecrest.com and use the code FIELDGATE at checkout. See website for full details.


Roz (00:00)
Hello and please allow me to introduce our guest today, amazing Frances Palmer. Frances Palmer is a American potter and a gardener based in Connecticut. Her ceramics, particularly her vases, her bowls and her vessels, are sought after by collectors and have been featured in the New York Times, Martha Stewart, Living and Vogue. Beyond her pottery, she's also known for her exquisite flower arrangements, which I've been having a look at, often grown in her own garden and beautifully photographed by herself.

So she had her first book in 2020, Life in a Studio, Inspiration and Lessons on Creativity. It's part memoir, part manual, and offers a glimpse into her philosophy on creativity, work and beauty. She's passionate about growing dahlias, as am I, and seasonal flowers, which often feature in her artistic compositions. Got a new book out this May, which we'll talk about in a minute, Life with Flowers. But tell us,

Frances a little bit more about you, you've come, know, where you've got to where you are today, where you, what you're up to. And yeah, let's just learn a little bit about Frances Palmer.

Frances (01:07)
All right, that's a, those are a lot of questions all in one. I grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, which is not very far from where I live now. It's a different state, but kind of similar landscape. Back then, where I grew up, it was a lot of farm country, which has subsequently been taken over by corporations and turned into corporate headquarters. But at the time, when I was young, there were a lot of farms, a lot of farm stands.

Roz (01:09)
Ha

Frances (01:37)
We had a garden my mother grew some very basic things so I was just kind of used to growing up around Around plants and flowers and vegetables. I went to university in New York City and then when I married and we moved up to Connecticut we our first house was a Sort of a mid-century House that was cantilevered into the hillside. So that didn't really give much opportunity for growing

flowers. And when we were living in that house, that's when I started doing ceramics. And so after about a number of years, and we had three children and a dog, and I was doing ceramics, we found this house where we've lived for the past 30 years, which has given me lots of property to have two gardens and a studio.

Roz (02:19)
Thank

Frances (02:34)
And so that's kind of where I've been now for over 30 years.

Roz (02:39)
with lots more space and lots more potential like you say for growing eventually so you're in your forever home it's kind of like you've moved into this

Frances (02:42)
Yes, yes.

Well,

I mean, I think it's my forever home. Most our kids are grown up and moved away and have, you know, having kids now themselves. And all of my friends who had kids at the same age, they've all moved to other places, but it's hard for me to leave my

studio.

Roz (03:04)
So tell us about your book. Obviously, you've got a new book now. Tell us what inspired it. What do you say?

Frances (03:10)
Well, I

guess in 2017, I was approached by Leah Ronan, who is the publisher at Artists in Books.

And she asked me to write a book about my creative practice in the studio, which I did. And it took me a couple of years to write that book. And it came out just around COVID, which was challenging. And then I thought, great, I've written my book, I'm done and everything. And she came back to me and said, okay, that was very nice, but now would you write a book about the flowers that you grow?

Roz (03:35)
you

Frances (03:48)
in relationship to your ceramics now that you've talked about. I mean, there are flowers. I do talk about the flowers I go in the first book, but she wanted me to kind of get more in depth and more specific if people wanted to have flat grow flowers themselves. So it's not it's not real. So the second book is Life with Flowers, which comes out in May. And ⁓ it isn't exactly a it's not a garden manual. It really does.

really does focus on my relationship to the flowers and why do I grow them? What do I think about when I grow them? Why do I choose them? What is their history? How do I reference them art historically? And so a very kind of personal view of growing the flowers as opposed to a regular like garden manual.

Roz (04:39)
And it takes a lot to write a book. I've only ever written one and a couple of planners. And I have to say, it's a lot harder than you think it's gonna be.

Frances (04:47)
The second book was really challenging because the way I grow is very personal, as I said. I felt I was a little intimidated, but I kept being told to keep going, so I had to.

Roz (05:03)
We've deadline. We've got to write another thousand words.

Frances (05:04)
Exactly, like stop

worrying and just write.

Roz (05:09)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. And also it's a personal journey. So it's your journey. So actually, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. Because it's kind of what what's inspired you.

Frances (05:17)
It doesn't...

It does, is, I mean, that's the only thing I could cling to is that it has to be my voice, my ideas, because that's what I know. I didn't want to pretend to be an expert on anything growing wise. I just could only look at it through the prism of what I did.

Roz (05:39)
Yeah, which implies other people who perhaps don't know anything about growing to give it a go ultimately.

Frances (05:44)
Right. I mean, there are

like, there are flowers like delphinium, where I basically say I really can't, I don't really, I haven't had success growing this, but I will keep trying until I do, you know.

Roz (06:00)
They're not easy to germinate, that comes from a grower. Obviously I'm growing and I've been growing for 15 years and I wouldn't say they were the easiest plant to germinate from seed, they're currently in the fridge at the moment and sometimes it's easier to buy a plug plant and move from that. ⁓ So they're not easy, that's all I will say.

Frances (06:12)
Right.

No, no,

and I buy I gave up on the seeds. just buy plants and still there. It's not easy, but I, you know, I haven't given up.

Roz (06:29)
No, no. Well, I mean, for us, every year we have a failure at something and we, you know, it will be different. Each year will be different. So one year we'll have a really amazing year or something and the next year it'll be awful. And there's no rhyme or reason. It's just, we don't give up. You just keep going.

Frances (06:34)
Right.

No.

Exactly.

Roz (06:48)
So what do you hope your readers will take away from the book? What do you think they'll be inspired by the book?

Frances (06:54)
I I hope that the readers have.

I hope that they can look at their own garden environment and assess what it is they can grow, what they would like to grow, that they try, that they understand that is, as you know, you you have to, it takes years to kind of figure it out, have patience, have perseverance, don't consider things that don't do well as failures, you know, it's all, it's just all a process. So I think that's what I would like people to take away that they have.

the enthusiasm to try and just keep experimenting.

Roz (07:34)
Yeah,

I think so. I say to people, teach a lot of people how to have their own cut flowers, whether they're doing it as a flower farm or whether they're doing it as a consumer just in their gardens. And I always say to them, actually failure is fine. It's nature. There's so much, there's so much you're out of control of.

Frances (07:48)
Yeah, yeah. And,

you know, there isn't really anything that compares with having your own flowers to cut. It's just, it's so rewarding. So even if you have a few versus a farm, it is really equally thrilling.

Roz (07:58)
No.

Oh,

100, I still jump into up and down when I germinate and I still go, how many, what's the percentage of germination? And oh my goodness, those plants have come out. And also nothing ever turns out as you expect. I planted something like 3000 ranunculus in pink and white, and they are not pink and white. They are orange and red and yellow and white and a few pink, and they are definitely not pink and white.

Frances (08:10)
Yeah.

No.

What are they?

Right. Exactly.

Roz (08:30)
So I just take them to joy as they are what they are, but

definitely not pink and white. So, your relationship with flowers is deeply woven into your work. And you obviously get that. How do your flowers inspire your ceramics? You know, how do you connect the ceramic with the flower and then photography? How do you put the three together?

Frances (08:36)
Right.

Well, the ceramics came first when we moved out to Connecticut and I had small children and I wanted to figure out a way that I could be home with my children but have a métier, have a way of earning income. And I'd always done things with my hands. I have always wanted to be an artist. So that's how I kind of lighted on the ceramics. And

Very early on when I made the decision that I wanted to do functional ceramics so that I could send them out, send the pieces for people to live with, ⁓ I realized that it was very important for me to start documenting the work before it left the studio. Otherwise I would have no record of what it was I was making and sending out. Then the next step was, okay, so you put a pot in a photo, how do you give it context?

you give it scale. And especially since I made a lot of vases, I decided I better use flowers in the vases, which I did, or the bowls. And we were still living, we were still kind of going back and forth to New York City, or I would drive into New York and buy flowers at the wholesale flower market. But then

because as I explained, the first house that we lived in out here wasn't really conducive to gardening. But once we moved over to this house and I had land, I spent a lot of time looking at English garden books. Do you remember Sandra and Norrie Pope, who had had spend before it has been changed over? Is it the newt now or something like that? But at the time when I went there, which was, had been in the late 1990s,

Roz (10:32)
Yes.

Frances (10:37)
they had this amazing book of flowers arranged by color. And you could look at a whole page of flowers that were in red or flowers that were yellow. And, and that was very exciting to me because I think about color a lot. And so I could pick which flowers I wanted. And at the time, then I would write away to England for flower seeds. And because you couldn't get a lot of those kinds of flowers here.

And then I just started kind of growing them. And also, Dahlia's figured very, that was a real inspiration for having a flower garden because I wanted to go Dahlia's as well. Thompson and Morgan had seeds back then that ⁓ you couldn't find here.

Roz (11:27)
Wow. And now we're saying, you you have so many varieties that we can't get. Certainly, I mean, it's unbelievable how it's, I mean, I'm a member of the Association of Speciality Cut Flower Growers in the States. And I've come to a, I go to their conference and the last one I went to was in Boston. And there were, dahlias or dahlias that we say that you, that you had, there's no way we could get, you know, your supply was much bigger than ours and your choice was much bigger than ours.

Frances (11:31)
Exactly. Yeah.

wow, well there's some...

Yeah, there are so many boutique Dahlia growers now. It's crazy. at the time, I again, like over 30 years ago, I had gotten some places to order from my husband's from San Francisco. We had been in San Francisco and I met I talked to the people at the San Francisco Dahlia Society and they gave me like Swan Island and Ferncliff Gardens, a number of suppliers that I still use. But in between times, they're like

many different people that are growing dahlias but those smaller places can be challenging to order from because like if you don't go online at noon on you know such and such a date you're doomed you can't you know you're shut out but

Roz (12:38)
Yeah,

yeah. No, it has become a whole, yeah, minefield, that's for sure but yeah.

Frances (12:43)
Yeah, but you

can get Cedric Morris bearded irises and you can't get those. Yeah, that's so, ⁓ I know, I don't know why it's so challenging to ship in between countries, but you know, that's what it is.

Roz (12:48)
We can.

No, I

don't know really. I mean, I follow quite obviously a lot of flower farmers and obviously Fleurette based up in Washington state. And she's got the same climate as us, you know, so it's very interesting to see what they're growing. It's about as close as you can get to a UK climate. But it's, and then I'm working with somebody in Sweden who's importing dahlias from the States because of the amount of varieties that you can get in the States that she can't get in Europe. But it doesn't seem to be that easy to get what you want everywhere.

Frances (13:05)
Right. Yeah.

No. Yeah. I mean, in terms of the dahlias I kind of gone back to the classics because it just got to be such such an exercise to get some of the more eccentric ones. And I just thought, well, that even because you've grown them yourself, they always look more special. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Roz (13:26)
So maybe that's the next decade.

I know. I still love Wizard of Oz. I still, you know, I'm still a great,

some of the staunch ones I still a great favour of. I love all the functional form of all the different types of them. So yeah, there's a dahlia for everyone isn't there? To be sure.

Frances (14:00)
right.

Yeah.

Exactly.

I know, I mean, I teach a class at the New York Botanical Garden and what I say is try not to get hung up on a particular name of a dahlia just think about do you want an orange? Do you want a ball? Do you want a decorative? You know, just think about it that way and not have yourself so strictly like if you want this particular one, because there are lots of ones that are probably pretty close in terms of color and shape and all that. ⁓

Roz (14:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, I'm the same. I mean, I forget what mine are called. They're either the pink, pink bull one or the beautiful white one or the, I don't, you know, I can't, I forget what they're called. And I just think I buy, buy the colour and the shape. So do you grow with a pot in mind or design the pot for the flowers? Or do you do the pot and then think what you can put? How does it, how does the creative process work?

Frances (14:36)
Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.

⁓ It's

sort of a back and forth, for example.

Pot that's coming out of the kiln. I'll walk around the garden and see what do I think would suit the pot? Or if I know like for example lilies are coming into bloom And I don't feel like I have a vase that's tall or strong enough to support some of the big ones I'll quickly make a pot to accommodate the flower so it just it You know kind of depends upon the client time of year it depends on

what's coming in, for example, I'm waiting for the the Fritillaria, so I want to make sure that I have the right vase to hold, especially the the Meliagris. Is that how you say it, Meliagri? I would never, the little checkerboard one. So yeah, I want something really delicate to hold that because it's so beautiful.

Roz (15:36)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. So, are you shipping pots across the states then at the moment? You're shipping them.

Frances (16:00)
I ship

across the states, I ship all over the world actually.

Roz (16:04)
Wow, wow,

well done. I mean, it's phenomenal because A, shipping is difficult in its own way and shipping pottery is difficult and then shipping it worldwide is amazing.

Frances (16:13)
Well, yeah.

Well, ⁓ my husband actually helps me with the packing. He does all the packing. He's, yes, he's had a packing and he's got a pretty good record. So, ⁓ yeah, it's pretty easy to as long as it's packed well. We've had, you know, knock on wood, very few problems.

Roz (16:21)
He's head of packing.

Yeah.

Wow, so what are the favourite flowers have you got in your garden right now? What's growing now seasonally? Where on April?

Frances (16:46)
Well, things

are just emerging. we have, I have hellebores, I have daffodils, I have the fruit trees are starting to fruit, but I don't cut those because then of course I don't have the fruit. The tulip leaves are out, you can just see the tulip heads starting to poke out and the Fritillaria and the Muscari. Yeah, so then there's the debate which changes

Roz (16:58)
clear.

fruit.

Frances (17:16)
every year, like when do I put in the Dahlia tubers? Can I put in my LilyBolds? know, just sort of like figuring out, you don't want to put everything out and then suddenly you get a freeze. But even if you get a freeze, it's not that bad because it'll only be for, you know, a few hours or so. So every year is different as you know.

Roz (17:26)
See you then.

Yeah. You've got the same,

same as us. I mean, we're, we're in tulip mad tulip season now. We've done Narcissus, Muscari, Futillarius. And we're going, you have all your whole spring collection now and then that will run now until, and we're in runuculus and then you will run that until the end of middle to the end of May.

Frances (17:39)
Right.

Highest synth, my highest synth.

Right.

Right, and then the peonies come, the roses come, bearded iris come. And ⁓ yeah, so I have a time so that there's kind of something going all the time.

Roz (18:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah brilliant. So your daily routines, what's a typical day in the studio or the garden or is there such a thing?

Frances (18:23)
Well, if I'm here, if I'm not traveling, I'm here every day. And like this morning, I fired a load of terracotta that when I cracked open the kiln last night, I saw that I was going to have to fire them again.

And I, so I kind of woke up at four this morning with like, okay, I've got to get out and deal with the terracotta because it's for an order. So I usually wake up like around 430 or five in the morning. I try to do an online bar class or some kind of take a walk, some kind of exercise and

Roz (18:46)
Nothing.

Frances (19:09)
and then I get out to the studio by around 8-8-30.

Roz (19:13)
No, that's early. That's a really early start, that is.

Frances (19:16)
I know,

I just, I'm really, that's like the best time of day for me, sadly. Yeah, I have children that I'll get up early to. I've given them a bad habit.

Roz (19:22)
is to get up really early. Yeah.

Well, that's all right as long as you go to bed early enough because if you're if you're late to bed Yeah

Frances (19:32)
Yeah, I go to bed pretty early, I have to say. It's kind of

a very boring life. But yeah.

Roz (19:41)
So what advice would you give someone trying to live a more creative, seasonally inspired life? Because it's seasonally inspired, because you're going from one season to another to another and producing pots with creativity. What advice would you give to somebody who wanted to have more of a creative life?

Frances (19:54)
Yeah.

I mean, I think it's very parallel to having a garden. It's something you have to practice at every day. You have to, and you have to think about it in long term. It's not something like you do for a week or two and you accomplish. You have to really think over a period of years and just like little by little, keep at it. And you have to learn how to block out those demons that we all get about.

I should stop. This isn't right. What am I doing? You you have to tune out the noise and just keep going. Exactly. I don't know what I'm doing. Nobody will like this. Yeah, it's hard, but it's, you know, you have to really work at it.

Roz (20:36)
Yeah, I'm not good enough. Will I ever be good enough? Is this good enough?

Certainly from a creative point of view, because you're producing something creative that takes a lot of effort. And therefore then the demons will definitely jump in, know, will they like it? What happens if I don't sell it?

Frances (20:50)
Yeah.

Right, have

to, you can't, you just have to listen to yourself. You have to listen to, you have to, you know, have trust in your instincts about what brings, you have to find things that bring you joy, really, and not, not listen to all those other things. Which is not, it's not easy to do, believe me.

Roz (21:10)
Yeah.

Agreed, yeah we did. No,

no, no, not at all, not at all. So your photography captures more than beauty, it's obviously got mood and meaning. What role does photography play in your creative life? So you're obviously taking photographs of everything as well, from a sort of creative point of view.

Frances (21:35)
Um, you know,

yeah, I mean, the photography is, I just, love that process. And I, again, it, it, back to the garden, back to the clay. You have to do it like every day so that if you don't, if you do something over and over again,

it doesn't, each one that you do does not become so monumental. It's because you can think, okay, well, this wasn't so great, but tomorrow I'll try something else. And I look at the photography the same way, and I really think about...

when I'm taking a photo, what is it I'm trying to communicate? Whether it's some, a flower that's just blooming and I want everybody to see how beautiful it is or a new pot that I have available for sale. then again, it's just because I do it so often, I have a very particular point of view about how I think about what I want the camera to see. ⁓ I've also just started, I went, decided I wanted to, I love studying old photography.

story and background that I just am very interested in it and I talk a lot about that in the new book. ⁓

In January, I went into New York City and I took a class on how to make platinum palladium prints. Do you know what those are? It's an early photo process that was developed in 1874, kind of after cyanotype, after the salted paper print. One of the next phases was platinum palladium. So what you do is you make an emulsion with... ⁓

different chemicals including platinum and palladium and you if you make a digital negative I print out a digital negative so say I'm working with a negative that's four by five inches and so I do I do ⁓

a rectangle of emulsion that's the same size as the negative 4 by 5. And then I put the negative on top of it and I expose it in an LED box. And then you come out with this really beautiful image that's very kind of... ⁓

19th century, really. So it's this great combination of modern and old technique. And I've been making a lot of these of botanical photos that I've taken of flowers because I'm having an exhibition in the summer up at the Berkshire Botanical Garden in Massachusetts. So I want to have these on the wall. that's been a real, ⁓ it's been really fun, but it's a struggle trying again, I just need a few more hours than the day.

Okay.

Roz (24:19)
Were you

always creative? Were you creative as a child?

Frances (24:22)
I was. I've always done things with my hands. First, when I was in high school, I wanted to be a printmaker. I was going to go to art school for printmaking. Yeah, I've just always been a hand person. knit, I sew, I cook. Yeah, it's just that my hands have to be always busy.

Roz (24:42)
It's

funny, isn't it, how your brain works and what you decide you're going to do. yeah, know, creative people who, for instance, can do pottery, then obviously that translates into photography and then it translates into cooking and translates into sewing and embroidery and all sorts of things. It's a real talent.

Frances (24:46)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

⁓ I mean, it just keeps me sane. So I just, you know, I just have to keep going. I just always am learning something. It always is exciting to me. And so that I think gets me up every day.

Roz (25:04)
you

And you're sharing obviously with the exhibitions you do, with the books that you're writing, with the places you go and talk at. You're travelling quite a lot.

Frances (25:23)
Yeah, yeah, you know, again, the first book came out during COVID and

never having written a book before, was really, I was very unclear. I was giving a number of talks on Zoom. like here, I can see you. when you're talking to hundreds of people that you can't see, you're sort of pouring your heart and soul out. And I just found that so difficult. So I'm really grateful now when I can go and talk to people in person. It's funny, you just things you just never take for granted because you

Roz (25:43)
Yeah.

So, yeah.

Frances (26:00)
realize how special it is to actually be with people.

Roz (26:04)
Yes,

yeah, definitely. Zoom became very popular during COVID and we all got used to it. We even did our family chats on Zoom, didn't we? It was all mad. And we still use it as a tool for business, but yeah, actually meeting people face to face is still a lovely thing to do.

Frances (26:08)
Yeah.

Right, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

Roz (26:24)
So I love it when people come to the farm. You we'll do workshops on the farm or we'll do lots and lots of floristry on the farm and that sort of thing. And that's very touchy-feely. So, you you're picking and arranging.

Frances (26:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah,

do you have a lot of those scheduled for the summer?

Roz (26:38)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've scheduled the whole of the summer. do. And we're also doing a retreat in Spain, where we take flower farmers to Spain to be creative. So we meet some flower farmers in Spain. We normally do a retreat here on the farm for a couple of days, and then probably 10 different lots of floristry days. So quite a lot on the farm. Yeah.

Frances (26:49)
wow.

Yeah,

that sounds amazing. Exactly. Yeah.

Roz (27:04)
keeps the same like you say

so just a quick fired round for you what's your favorite flower to grow

Frances (27:13)
Well, I mean, I saw that and it's so difficult. It's like, what is your favorite child? Well, I mean, I have to say a number of them. do, of course, dahlias bearded iris, drive me crazy, ⁓ roses, peonies, asters, zinnias, you know, all of the above.

Roz (27:16)
I know it.

Lots of country

cottage garden flowers there. It's like evokes memories of sort of, you know, days gone by really, which is, yes, the beauty of it. And what pot shape do you return to again, again? What's your pot shape type?

Frances (27:37)
Right, exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Well,

I love a footed vase, so I tend to throw something that has sort of a bulbous bottom and then goes up straight and then with a nice foot, you know. I love looking at classical ancient Greek and Etruscan pottery and those shapes are hard to improve upon, so I really love to throw those.

Roz (28:16)
Yeah, I still love working with the constant spry sort of dish. I still love it. I still love the shape of it. I still love the beauty of it. And exactly. What about your garden tool? What's your most beloved gardening tool for me? I mean, mine's a new one. Mine's a nawaki knife because it does everything. It does everything.

Frances (28:20)
Exactly. Right, a nice big footed ball.

wow. Yeah,

I have those like thin, they're not very hefty, those clippers with the red kind of rubber handles. I tend to have those in my back pocket and I use those a lot. Yeah.

Roz (28:47)
Yeah.

Go out

cutting with them. Yeah, I'm never without a pair of snips, that's for sure. And what book do you love besides your own, of course?

Frances (28:54)
Yeah.

Well, I mean, again, I was thinking about that. So I guess my first garden book that really got me going was Margaret Roach's A Way to Garden, which is just a great first book on thinking about how to start a garden. And she has an incredible website and blog, and she's so talented. And of course, the other one is Flower Decoration by Constance Bray. It's a perfect

thing to read.

Roz (29:30)
And the interesting thing about

her, about Constance Sprite, the interesting thing about it was, of course she didn't use floral foam and used all sustainable, she didn't need to. And we're coming back around to it again with chicken wire and water, which is what Constance Sprite did. Why did we ever invent the stuff in the middle?

Frances (29:38)
No. No. I know. Yeah.

I

don't know. mean, I only use branches or things like that in my vases. I don't use any tape or wire or any of that stuff. just feel it's just messes everything up when the flowers begin to die. This way you can just pull everything out and compost it and not have all that. And of course, flower foam is a big no-no, but ⁓ I don't know why flower people are still using it after all that information.

Roz (30:13)
I know.

We're still teaching it, still teaching it in college. We're still, which is mad. I mean, a lot of it's been banned. It's kind of banned by the RHS now in the UK and it's banned in a lot of churches. So somebody would wake up and say, well, why is that? You know, why are we still producing it? You know, it's a multi-billion pound business globally, probably.

Frances (30:17)
I don't... Yeah. I know, it's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

I know. Well, just like all the things in the environment that are bad for us, those companies dig in and try to try to keep going regardless.

Roz (30:48)
Yeah, I think absolutely right. Yeah. So a flower you wish you could grow, but you can't. You've mentioned bearded iris. Is there anything? And Delphini was from seed, isn't it?

Frances (30:59)
No, no, I can grow be I grow lots of bearded iris delphinium. Delphinium

is a challenge. I'm trying to think what else you know, something tropical, I guess that doesn't really work in this climate. I would say delphinium is at the top of my list of flowers. I wish I could grow I mean, I get one spike or two spikes, but that's pretty, pretty sad.

Roz (31:17)
Yeah.

So what's your dream floral arrangement with flowers in a vase? You know, you talk a lot about branches, which I adore. ⁓ I love to use lots of wedding work that we do. I love to use branches. And I do sacrifice the fruit for the branch, but don't tell my husband. But I'll pick a few when he's not looking. ⁓ But so it's blossom. What's your dream floral arrangement that you would make?

Frances (31:32)
Yes.

Right.

Well, you know, I've been bringing in a lot more natives into the garden. at the end of October, September, October in my garden, I like to grow a lot of coleus, annual coleus. That's a great branch for supporting and asters combined with the dahlias. So I just, love putting together all different things that are happening at the same time, or for example,

example with the bearded iris and the roses and the peonies, have lots of viburnum, dogwood, so it's just kind of incorporating all types of growing material and not having kind of just letting it flow as it gets into the vase and see how it evolves.

Roz (32:37)
Yeah,

seasonal. Yeah, definitely. ⁓ So if someone was listening and we sort of touched on this and wants to begin their own creative or growing journey, something, what would you tell them? Would you just, what would be your one piece of advice?

Frances (32:51)
Well, I think the first thing they would need to do is build a good soil.

Roz (32:57)
Yeah.

Frances (32:57)
and

the land gardeners, have such great information about soil. So you need to start with good soil and you need to assess what kind of soil you have on your property and if it needs amending and you know or manure or sand or anything like that. So once you have a good basis of soil, I think that's a great ⁓ start to start growing things. And I wouldn't be too ambitious. I mean the first couple years you could just do annuals or dahlias or

something really simple that if things don't go well you haven't made a big investment. ⁓ know, gladiola bulbs, corms, things, dahlia tubers, stuff that you could just play around with and not take too seriously before you start investing in perennials and things like that.

Roz (33:45)
Yeah, agreed.

Yeah. So your new book, what's it titled? Where can you find it? Where will you find it?

Frances (33:52)
Well, it's called Life with Flowers, which is sort of a companion to my life in the studio. And I guess you could look it for the book in your local bookstore. You could go to some of those web, large websites that I'm not sure if we're to be naming. But ⁓ yeah, I mean, if you go to my website, I do believe on there is a list of places and I, it's definitely available in the UK. So, ⁓

Roz (34:06)
Yes, you can say, well we know it's going to be.

Frances (34:22)
It's published by Hachette. So Hachette, if you had a question, you could email them or email me and we could help you find it.

Roz (34:31)
Yeah,

lovely. No, I'm sure we find it really, really interesting. And I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. And I will be using one of the big online stores. So it's just easy. But thank you very much for joining. It's really interesting how you've managed to merge one creative art of pottery with another creative art, which is of growing and flowers and put the two together and be in sympathy with each other. ⁓ Because quite often they're not.

Frances (34:36)
are the things here.

Right. Yeah. ⁓

Right. Well, I mean...

The other thing, the thing interesting to end is that I find the clay, which of course is earth, and the flowers, what I love about doing both of them is that these have both been part of civilizations since the very beginning. So I feel like I'm part of a very old tradition of thinking about the earth in so many ways. And I just feel really grateful that I'm able to do that.

Roz (35:29)
Yeah,

it's kind of a legacy, isn't it? Because you're, it is like you say, you've got earth and you've got flowers and you're putting them together and you're looking at historically what we used. ⁓ Yeah, that's a real talent, real talent.

Frances (35:37)
Right.

Well, thank you. I love it. So thank you for asking me.

Roz (35:45)
No,

thank you for coming along today. It's really nice to meet you. We shall put in the show notes where to get hold of the book and what the book is called and your website. And some people can always get hold of you. And yeah, keep in touch and let me know how things progress. All right, take care. Bye bye.

Frances (35:53)
Okay.

Okay.

I will definitely do that. Thank you so much. Okay. Okay. Bye bye.