The Garden Haven
On Sunday 17th August 2025 I hosted my inaugral “The Garden Haven Floral Retreat” here in our West Cork cutting gardens and floral design studio.
Four, flower loving ladies joined me to spend the day in exploring and creating in a calm, and peaceful environment.
The day began in the studio with a little meet and greet, after which we had a leisurely tour of the gardens. I had earlier cut a bucket of flowers and foliage myself and left this in the studio to rest and drink while we were serenely moving through our garden cruise.
Back in the studio, the ladies enjoyed some freshly made tea and coffee, which I demonstrated a rambling garden style floral centrepiece in a beautiful white, ceramic compote bowl by HomArt, using the flowers and foliage I had earlier gathered.
My selection included pink “Olvia Austin” and “Gertrude Jekyll” roses by David Austin roses, “Staburst” dahlias, sweet peas, phlox, larkspur, campanula lactiflora,, sedum, yarrow, scabiosa, thalictrum and snapdragons. The scent was heavenly!
The ladies eagerly ventured back to the gardens, pails and snips in hand, to begin choosing and cutting their own selections. It was wonderul to see their buckets fill, each choosing their own colour palettes, textures and shapes.
Fiona’s bucket of beauty at The Garden Haven Floral Retreat August 2025
They each set to work on their own centrepiece designs, occasionaly nipping in and out of the studio to snip annother few ingredients, or spend a moment listening to the birdsong!
We took a lunchbreak in the garden mid designing. I had set a picnic table on the front lawn beneath the cherry tree, where we enjoyed delicious fresh sourdough bread from Diva Bakery in Ballinspittle, and an array of locally grown salads, cheeses and spreads from Gather Community Grocer in Ballinspittle. Kate Bean arrived just in time to join us for dessert, which was a selection of scrumptious home baked cakes from Rebecca’s Cafe Kitchen near Kilbrittain.
The ladies headed back to the studio to complete their bowl arrangements while I reset the table for our photoshoot.
In turn, the ladies set their completed bowls on the dressed table for Kate to capture. I changed up the candles and added a little fruit and veg to each tablescape according to each design. The results were beautiful, and the ladies were thrilled to see their work in action.
We had some time to spare before our day ended, so the ladies and I headed back to the garden with our pails and snips, to refill for a quick hand gathered bouquet demonstration and creating!
Again, it was so lovely to see the colours and ingredients each person chose.
Kate stayed while I showed the ladies my hand gathered bouquet design method, and took a few pictures in the studio while I worked. She is a massive flower fan, so I was delighted to hand her my sample bouquet to take home!
Each of the ladies made exemplary bouquets, each was completely different and beautiful. We tied each with a complementing ruffled fabric ribbon by the Floral Box company.
I would really like to thank each of these wonderful ladies for coming to my first retreat and for embracing the experience so fully. And of course huge thanks to Kate for coming to spend a few hours with us capturing the beauty. I can’t wait to share Kate’s images in a further post!
I will be running 2, possibly 3, Garden Haven Floral Retreats in 2026, and will announce dates very soon.
Flicky x
