The weather was iffy, but the company was good and it was generally agreed to be a lovely day out.
With limited time we made straight for the House on our arrival. There were many beautiful and inspiring floral arrangements in the rooms and corridors with both traditional and contemporary designs on display; plenty of wonderful photo opportunities.
After a quick bite to eat it was time to queue for the demonstration. It was good to swap notes with members from other flower clubs as we waited.
Jonathan’s demonstration was first class. An innovative and talented designer, Jonathan kept our attention for the whole 75 minutes and his passion for his work was obvious. He worked quickly, deftly and with precision, yet was able still to talk eloquently about Chatsworth’s history, the preparations for Florabundance, the gardens, his designs, the plants he used and give us a few tips too. The end result was super -the stage looked stunning at the end of the presentation.
There were six arrangements for raffle prizes and two of them were won by people from our party! Off stage the arrangements looked wonderful of course, but BIG. We had the benefit of a 49 seater coach so the arrangements could have a seat each ( there were only 23 of us), but we had to remove some of the taller stems in order to get them home safely. See picture below.
We managed by the skin of our teeth to get enough support to make this outing possible so thank you very, very much to all those members and friends who came.
