Harriet Slaughter, Florist

Harriet Slaughter

Last week, I braved the frost to visit the workshop of florist Harriet Slaughter and photograph her at work making festive wreaths for St Nicholas Eve celebrations at Leila’s Shop on Tuesday.

I found Harriet and her assistants Rowan Lewis and Camille Lambert surrounded by copious amounts of sweet-smelling greenery, including olive branches from Covent Garden Market and Scots Pine from her father’s garden. They had been awake since before dawn, and were trimming the pine and olive in sprigs and weaving them onto the moss bases. One held the twigs in place while the other wound the wire around to secure the wreath. Harriet’s hands soon became coated in sticky pine sap and she showed me the old florists’ trick of rubbing her hands with moss to absorb the surplus oil.

It was time-consuming, fiddly, repetitive work, yet it was compelling to observe how the diverse elements resolved into elegant finished wreaths set for front doors across the capital this Christmas. Beneath the bench sat buckets of white narcissi and anemones with some lush dark scabious nearby, all ready for arrangements to be delivered to the Garden Museum in Lambeth that evening. So, once I had taken my pictures and Harriet had told me her story, I left them to their day’s work.

“My dad’s a gardener, he spends every day in the garden and that is how I learnt about plants. My family are all gardeners. We are bonkers about it.

A couple of years ago, I got married and the florist who did our flowers was very inspiring to me. So I asked he if she would train me and in return I did office work for her. I realised that I really liked the work and it has now become a huge part of my life.

I am a studio florist, which means I do not have a shop, instead I do deliveries for restaurants, events including weddings, and photoshoots. It can be quite brutal getting up at three thirty if you have to run a shop as well!

When you get to the wholesale flower market in the middle of the night, you have to go in brave. Ninety-five per cent of those who work there are men and they see a lot of florists starting out but as soon as they realise you are serious then you win their respect. At four in the morning, there is quite a lot of banter and it is quite hard if you have feeling faint-hearted. The flowers do not look good under fluorescent light and it is cold, hard environment. Yet I have developed a good relationship with several traders and I usually bump into a couple of friends. You become really aware of the seasons. I always get excited when the first daffodils arrive and the first day that the English dahlias come into the market is something I look forward to.

It is nice to develop your own style in a saturated market. I love it when I get a sympathetic client and we can design what we are going to do together.

My work is very influenced by the garden, drawing the viewer’s attention to the natural quality of plants and flowers rather than dressing them up too much. I like to create an arrangement that looks like something which might have grown in the garden, but with an urban element too. I am not a country cottage florist. I like my work to communicate a sense of composure without being regimented.“

Harriet Slaughter operates her floristry studio under the name Bold Oxlip

Rowan Lewis

Camille Lambert

Harriet Slaughter’s wreaths will on sale as part of ST NICHOLAS EVE celebrations on Tuesday 5th December 6-9pm at Leila’s Shop, 15-17 Calvert Avenue, E2 7JP. Gimlet Bar will be serving cocktails and Rosie Sykes of The Sunday Night Book will be serving seasonal delicacies.

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