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