Florist Willow Crossley: ‘When I had postnatal depression, being in nature would lift my mood'

Telegraph

12 hours ago

Thanks to her extravagant floral arrangements for wedding couples such as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, alongside collaborations with brands including Chanel, OKA and Jo Malone, Willow Crossley has been called the 'Queen of Flowers'. Her floral styling business, which she launched in 2014, now encompasses floristry courses and tutorials, and an online shop selling homewares and gardening products. Here, she talks about her colour obsessions, postnatal depression and why gardening is her meditation.
Where do you live?
Our home is on the edge of a village in Oxfordshire and is actually three adjacent cottages joined together. They are made of Cotswold stone and date back to the 16th century, with additions from the 17th and 18th centuries. Many of the rooms have wonky walls and wobbly floors, so nothing feels straight, but it's full of character and charm and has beautiful old Crittall windows.
There are climbing roses around the house, clematis over the front door and wisteria hanging from my studio. The garden is at the back and can be reached through the kitchen and the conservatory, which was added by the people before us.
What kind of garden do you have?
The garden is rather higgledy-piggledy, roughly divided into two parts by old hedging. My husband, Charlie, and I have three young boys, aged 10, 13 and 15, who are sport mad, so quite a bit of it is taken up by them.
Rugby pitch one day, cricket pitch the next, not to mention football. Every spring, I know my beautiful potted tulips – my two-toned 'Raspberry Ripples' and 'Sorbets', 'Carnavals de Nice' and 'Estella Rijnvelds' – will get decapitated one by one.
The other factor is that, as a florist, I often come home from events with lots of plants which I can't bear to throw away, so I'll put them in the borders and hope they grow. In an ideal world I'd really want to start all over again with a perfect layout, but right now, it reflects our lives and is a joy to be in.
What's your ideal style?
I love that airy, ethereal feel that a bed of cosmos, Ammi majus or gaura gives you. Even cow parsley creates that soft, dreamy look – I'd happily have it everywhere.
In one quiet corner, away from all the balls, Charlie and I have finally managed to create four large, raised beds, all trimmed with box. He has two for his veg and I have two to grow cut flowers, mostly from seed. We started them only last year, so I was delighted when my beds rewarded me with verbascums, sweet rocket, geums, corncockles, 'Crème Brûlée' phlox, white cosmos and Himalayan blue poppies.
I also planted nasturtium towers because it's a flower I am obsessed with. It climbs, it trails, it has such crystal-clear orange tones and grows quite happily with no care whatsoever. I'm hoping to repeat it all this year.
Which colours do you love the most?
I'm obsessed with some colours and allergic to others. Yellow's a good example. I love its soft, gentle tones, but buttercup and dandelion colours bring me out in a metaphorical rash! I love putting blues and oranges together, but the colour I have the biggest connection with is green. It has a certain energy, especially in spring, when so many young leaves have that wonderful translucency.
For me, 'Solomon's Seal' has the most perfect green tone ever. I do lots of floral arrangements for weddings, so colours are always in my head, but my mum did the flowers for my wedding. It was in September, so we had lots of hydrangeas, cosmos and oak leaf, while my bouquet was filled with roses and astrantia… All very soft and girly.
Did you have a garden while you were growing up?
Alongside my two younger brothers, Ned and Tom, I spent my childhood on the border of mid Wales. We lived in this lovely farmhouse which didn't have a garden, so our parents built one from scratch. I was encouraged to help but would quickly get bored and say, 'Can we stop weeding and digging now!' We were surrounded by meadows and woodlands, so I'd often go off with my brothers to play along streams and pick mushrooms. It was a real Swallows and Amazons, no-shoes, outdoorsy life.
Then, when I was 10, we moved to Powys, to what was the home of my grandparents on my father's side [Vaynor Park]. It has the most beautiful garden which Mum [the artist Kate Corbett-Winder] still tends today. She's a brilliant gardener, with a great eye for colour and scale. Whenever I go back, I'm always inspired, whether by her swaying grasses or the 12ft artichokes.
Do you think your upbringing played a part in your career?
When I first left school, I went to the London College of Fashion. I then worked on fashion magazines, before moving to the south of France with Charlie, who wanted to live on a vineyard and make wine. We were there for five years and as I'm not very good at sitting still, I started making little things, such as bags with vintage fabrics, which I'd sell on beaches in St Tropez.
I also wrote a blog about my life which got turned into a book, then another about interiors, which is when I started wanting to include lots of flowers. It felt so natural and made me want to reconnect with home and all those flowers I knew as a child.
What was the turning point for you?
Our eldest son was born in France, but when he was one, we moved back to London. Around that time, Charlie gave me a week-long floristry course for my birthday. It was at the Covent Garden Academy of Flowers and I was hooked. It also made me realise I needed to be back living in the country. Luckily, everything came together.
I've now had a floristry business for more than 10 years, and from the beginning, it was important for me not only to use flowers in season, but also ones which are locally grown – for example, from the Land Gardeners in Oxfordshire or Bayntun Flowers in Wiltshire. Growing flowers myself has been a natural extension of all that.
Have your children taken any interest in the garden?
When my eldest two were young, I would sit them both in high chairs with a jam jar each and some flowers. It would keep them busy for 10 minutes, but as they got older, I was just grateful that they had the space to be outside and run around. When I'm in the garden now, our youngest son, Kit, will come up to me and tell me he enjoys pulling the weeds out. I've seen little evidence of this, but I think it's his way of impressing me. Just for fun, I'll test them on the names of flowers, but my middle one, Rafferty, has taken to calling everything a 'hycineum', probably because it sounds like a fancy floral name.
Does a garden have healing properties? Is it more than just flowers and soil?
If I'm away, I can't wait to get back, and I know that's because being outside makes me feel better. I began to realise this when we were in France and just after I had my first son, Wolf. I was 25 and I suffered quite badly with postnatal depression, but immersing myself in nature – walking along the vineyards and flower fields or into woods – would lift my mood.
Even now, if I'm feeling a bit low or have too much on my plate, my automatic response is to go outside. People ask me whether I sit and meditate, but to be honest, I find that impossible. To me, going into the garden to sow a packet of seeds or plant a few bulbs is the best meditation I could wish for.
willowcrossley.com