Making the funeral flowers for my own mum
Jo Thompson, Wye Valley Flowers, Gloucestershire.
Jo’s beautiful casket spray with February flowers. These farewell flowers were filled with flowery childhood memories and of time Jo spent with her mum.
This is the hardest funeral tribute I’ve ever put together. It was for my mum’s funeral and she absolutely loved flowers, especially my flowers of course!
My Grandfather had been a flower farmer and my Nana used to make bouquets, which Mum would pull up the big hill in a trolley to sell around the village. I remember as a child picking flowers in the garden and arranging them with Mum around the house. There were always flowers in our house as my dad was also quite a romantic.
Mum’s wish was for ‘lots and lots of flowers’, so we created this 6’ topper which completely covered the top of her willow casket. The design was based on the wildflower bank at my childhood home.
The gentlemen also had buttonholes and we filled the hotel for her wake with jam jars of spring flowers as ‘favours’ for the guests.
Today I’m going to think about Mum as I deconstruct the topper and make up arrangements to deliver to our local care home and hospice.
Jo runs Gloucestershire-based flower farm, Wye Valley Flowers.
The base was a compostable raft construction which Dad and I made together from twisted willow branches and moss, bound with hemp. It was sad, but we also chatted about Mum as we figured out the mechanics for the base: it was the last thing we could do for her.
I’ve never experienced a loss so close before and I so glad I was able to spend time choosing and creating her final flowers. When I did the reading below at the funeral service, I looked across at Mum’s casket and at her flowers. They were so beautiful, they lifted my heart at a very difficult time.
If roses grow in heaven,
Lord please pick a bunch for me,
Place them in my Mother’s arms
and tell her they’re from me.
Tell her I love her and miss her,
and when she turns to smile,
place a kiss upon her cheek
and hold her for awhile.Because remembering her is easy,
I do it every day,
but there’s an ache within my heart
that will never go away.
A close up of the casket spray details. It was very important to Jo that her mum’s funeral flowers were made in a fully compostable way.
I think Mum would’ve loved the flowers and I hope I did her proud. There is a list below of the ingredients we used.
FOLIAGE
The foliage was gathered from the farm and the garden, with additions of verbena and soft magnolia buds from @pauntleypetals and beautiful hazel catkins from @theledburyflowerfarmer. The foliage also included rosemary (for remembrance), bay, varigated pittosporum, ivy trails, lilac buds and choisia.
Flowers included hellebore, hyacinth, three types of double tulips, several different narcissi and white alstromeria. Nearly 300 stems altogether.
Thank you also to the lovely Shanna from @harebelle&bee for supplying some dried flowers for the buttonholes.