Christmas 2015

The planning for Christmas usually starts early. This year was no exception; Rita heads up the Flower Team at St Mary's, and she found her inspirations for this year's flower arrangements in the Autumn edition of Flower Arranger, the NAFAS magazine, available direct from NAFAS or your local WHSmiths. (Rita just happens to be my mum - we often work together on the ideas, in that Mum will see something and we'll refine it and put our own stamp on it.)

Obviously, this gorgeous vertical arrangement in lime green, yellow and bright orange wouldn't do for Christmas, colourwise. Traditionally, it's white or red flowers in church. However, one thing we know from experience is that red flowers work best in our church; we tried white and silver one year, and it felt too cold and stark. (We do use white flowers in church at other times and they look fine - they just don't feel right for Christmas.) So we stick with red, though we'll throw something in the mix like lime green chrysanthemums (or were they dahlias? They are the two flowers I always get mixed up!) or stars or gold or wrought iron...

We adapted the vertical design to incorporate gold canes, gold ting-ting, gold wire, red baubles and fir cones with seasonal greenery, deep red roses and scarlet carnations.

Sketching the design - me

Quantities - Mum

The flowers...

Each window would have two arrangements - one to sit either side of the candles we use for the candle-lit carol services. The server's window (so-called because years ago the server at communion sat in a chair in front of it) was the exception with one arrangement; it's a smaller window so doesn't need two to fill it.

The team varies in size and members according to who's available and what we're planning - today we had Alison, Pam, Lynda, Josie, Sadie, Rita and myself. While I wired up fir cones and baubles, the others set to work, placing the flowers and sticks so they were all as similar as we could get them, height wise.

Once the flowers were in, the dishes were placed in the windows for the base of greenery to be added. We had spruce (probably chopped off someone's Christmas tree!), berried holly, laurel and ivy, and of course the fir cones and baubles.

One of the four finished windows

The porch had a Christmassy guest rather than candles; the draught can mean the candle gutters, so we tend to use either a lantern or props here.

With added Rudolph...

Rudolph's nose perfectly matches the carnations...

On the altar and in the server's window near it, we used gold cloth rather than green or red; it seemed appropriate to have that in the chancel area. 

One of the two altar arrangements

I'll add a few more pictures after Sunday when we change the purple under the cross to white and the candles are lit.

So there you have it - Christmas flowers at St. Mary in Charnwood, 2015. We're very pleased with them. 

(The only downside? With the unseasonal warmth, the flowers are unlikely to last into the New Year. Our church can be very cold during the week when there's no-one in, so the flowers usually last at least two weeks, sometimes three, (I think four is the record...) though we rearrange them so they look different. Mind you, there's a lot to be said for using good quality flowers from the outset, too.)

Have a blessed and peaceful Christmas!

A church without flowers

During Advent, which starts this Sunday on the 29th November, there are no flowers in church. The liturgical colour will change from green to purple - for preparation - and the church will be kept bare, at least until we decorate for our Carol Service Sunday on the 20th December.

The only 'decoration' is our Advent wreath. It tends to be a fancy candelabra with five candles - four red for Advent Sundays (some churches use three purple candles and a pink in the third week. You can find out more about the meanings of the candles here) and one white for Christmas Day; nothing like the old Blue Peter tinsel-covered coat hanger that was a staple of my childhood.

It feels quite stark without flowers - even now, after perhaps forty Christmases at the same church, I get a small shock when I walk into church and there are no flowers. But you do get used to it...it just about begins to feel 'normal', when suddenly, on the last Sunday before Christmas Eve, everything changes and the flower team work their magic to fill the church with colour and candles in celebration of the great Christmas Festival.

But for now, all is quiet and bare... Drop by again on the 21st December!

Harvest 2015

Harvest isn't quite the same now, as it was when I was a child...

I remember Mum covering three shoe-boxes (one each for me, my brother and sister) in crepe paper and filling them with a few tins and lots of home-grown veggies to take up to the front of church during the first hymn. The church would be filled with fresh produce, jams and cakes which were given to folk afterwards (I always wondered who used to get the enormous marrow that was always - ALWAYS - there, and what on earth they did with it...)

Nowadays, 'harvest' has changed - for the last few years we've tended to focus on supporting our local food bank, and ask specifically for non-perishable items to be donated. And in the spirit of continuing to share our good fortune with others, we make up lots of small posies which are taken out to people who might have been bereaved, or are ill, or have experienced some other difficulty. Church decoration therefore relies less on flowers and more on displays of tins and packets.

This year has been a little different; we had a wedding on the Saturday before, and although the bride was happy to get married in a church decorated for Harvest, we (the flower team) thought she should have some 'wedding flowers' as well. So to tie in with her theme, pink flowers were arranged in the porch, on the altar and on the gates, but the windows and altar window in the body of the church had 'harvest' arrangements...

At the altar window - first time we've ever had veggies on there!
(Spot the brussel sprouts...)

Porch - a little bit of harvest and a lot more wedding...

Donated food , flowers and flags...

The flags are made by a women's project in the slums
of Calcutta from old sari material - something we heard about
at the All-Age Harvest Service

Welcome!

This blog has come about for two reasons;

1. Thanks to both my Granny and my Mum, I am a passable - though untrained in any formal sense - flower arranger. (My only qualification is the guide Flower Arranger badge!)

2. I've been a member of St Mary in Charnwood Church, Nanpantan, since I was five...over forty years to date.

I'm not sure when the two came together, if I'm honest, but for years now I've been helping to provide flower arrangements for church services as well as special festivals and weddings. Flower Festivals - filling the church with displays linked to a theme - were always done by 'proper' Flower Arrangers, usually a local Flower Club who were invited in to decorate the church.

All that changed around Christmas 2002; we'd decorated the church on a theme of Christmas carols, and the response was so positive, we were asked to organise a full Flower Festival the following year.

In the space of eight months, we did it. August 2003 was 'Stories from the Old Testament', and we haven't looked back since, holding a Flower Festival every three years thereafter except for our 125th Anniversary Festival, which was brought forward by a year to be an anniversary event.

On this site you'll find pages for each of our festivals where you can see photos of the arrangements, whereas the blog itself will follow our planning for the 2016 festival as well as other bits and pieces you might find interesting about the wider aspects of flower arranging in our church. 

I hope that what you find here will encourage you - if you don't already - to maybe hold your own flower festival or try something a bit different in your own place of worship. And if you're here just to look at the flowers and enjoy God's beautiful creation, I hope you enjoy what's shared.

Katherine 

St Mary - from 'A Tapestry of Time' - 2013