Claire Bowen is the woman behind Honeysuckle & Hilda: a florist who likes to write and her two little dogs. Based in Oxfordshire, in a tiny village nestled in the Chilterns, she has a love of country walks and foraging in hedgerows, and her flower studio, where she dreams about flowers, looks out into her in-process garden.
Claire, an environmental advocate before turning to flowers as her life path, is also the author (co-creator with photographer Eva Nemeth) of a new book entitled “The Healing Power of Flowers”, a look around the year in 80 flowers.
Claire was in her 40s when she turned her attention, time, and energy to the joy and beauty of flowers, after long struggle with a life-threatening auto immune disease and lung cancer. In our conversation and in her work - through flowers and her new book -she shares more about her personal journey with flowers for joy, for love, and - perhaps especially apt for this time in our world – flowers for consolation. Her first book project, The Healing Power of Flowers, published in the UK in March of this year, is expected out in the US this summer. It is a unique, personal, sustainable and expansive riff on the Victorian Language of Flowers.
FOLLOW ALONG with Claire's work online at her website HoneysuckleandHilda.com and Instagram @Honeysuckle_and_Hilda
ALL PHOTOS SHOWN are by EVA NEMETH or CLAIRE BOWEN, all rights reserved.
JOIN US again next week, we're joined by horticulturist and devoted bug-lover Jessica Walliser about the fullness of life – the art and the science – in the garden – from the flowers, to the herbs, to the vegetables, and yes – to the bugs! Listen in then.
Thinking out loud this week:
What does it take to make us change - our ways, our direction, our priorities? Does it take almost dying?
That is the question ringing in my ears as I listen to this garden life story with Claire.
What does it take to make us change for our own health and well-being, for the health and well-being of all humans, for all creatures, or life on the planet...
There is of course not just one answer to this question, in the garden or out of it, but I can tell you I find the figurative 1000+ answers to this question in these Cultivating Place conversations endlessly fascinating and redeeming.
Thank you to every one of you that financially supports these conversations through your monthly recurring contributions or your one-time gifts throughout the year, it absolutely makes this daily and weekly work possible and sustainable. This kind of garden life thinking and growing, how we change, how we grow & how we do this together - are questions well worth growing the answers to.
I have a healthy handful of events coming up this year in person people and I am so excited for it! I got even more excited for it after seeing fabulous photos online of the opening gala and judging for this year’s Philadelphia Flower Show – where our friend Wambui Ippolito took best in show for landscape! Taking place outside and in the warm season for the first time in its long history, the Philadelphia Flower show runs all this week June 5th – the 13th in Philadelphia’s FDR park.
See – old garden dogs can change and learn new ways....;)
For all of my upcoming events where I would love to say hello and commune about garden life in general with you head to: Cultivatingplace.com/events.
From San Francisco to Nantucket, Bar Harbor to Los Angeles, Aspen to Atlanta – I look forward to connecting with you.
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