As with many years of my life in Newport, I have met and befriended a host of talented people through the Newport Flower Show. In 2019 I met Sandra Sigman, founder of the gorgeous lifestyle and florist establishment, Les Fleurs, in Andover, Massachusetts. This year she introduced me to another kindred spirit, Lucy Hunter, who hails from the mountains of Wales. You’ll be very glad she did! Just in time to welcome fall and the glorious colors that come with this season. And one fact will become quickly apparent…Lucy has an impeccable eye for color!

Royal Horticultural Society Gold Medal Winning Garden Designer, floral artist and gifted, self-taught photographer, Lucy Hunter’s new book is The Flower Hunter: Creating a floral love story inspired by the landscape. Yes, there are many books on flower aranging, but this jewel is like no other. Not uncoincidentally, her last name has provided the provocative titles for her first two books…leaving opportunities for what would be a much-anticpated series! From the romance of the countryside, the ever changing light of the coast, the drama of the mountains, and yes, even uncovering beauty in the most urban of cities, she has arrived at the ultimate understatement, the truth of which we need to be reminded…”there is a raw honesty about nature that cannot be bettered”.

When asked “what do you gravitate towards in nature?” her reply is “The imperfect.” And the same is true for the arrangement itself…none of these are “perfect”, but they have their own abstract, assymetrical sense of balance, scale, and rhythm (those terms we flower arrangers have been schooled in).

Her evocative text encourages you to marvel at the intricate cycles of the natural world, develop your own innate creativity, and…look for beauty in the everyday. She captured so well that poignant moment in my garden that I know many of us share, when the closing down “for the season” becomes a subtle rush to find any way to prolong the pleasure of the garden, flower by flower… and the flowers that become featured in arrangements…even if it’s only 3 lone roses with rhubarb leaves. “My bowls and urns are my imagined gardens, recreating memories of walks in dappled sunshine and grassy meadows…creating a vignette where life seems a little simpler, held in a rose-tinted moment, just for a while.”

Her beyond-abundant naturalistic arrangements recall the painterly beauty of a Dutch still life, in vignettes and settings, that what in another era might be referred to as “shabby chic ” (her Maine Coon, Fred, seems to fit right in).

In her subtle way, this “floral hunter”opens our minds and souls to the beauty of nature, allowing it to kindle creativity and encourage a sense of experimentation…or, thinking outside the box, as I like to say. Anyone who can accomplish this, if only a bit, deserves to be applauded! Here, a peek at how an arrangement, “Summer Carnival,”comes into being, step by step.

I promise that Lucy Hunter will have you looking at the world through a more rarefied lens! You’ll learn to love a weed, value a seed pod, find glory in dried, end-of-summer favorites, and discover an endless list of plants that have dried on their own, beseeching beauty. And discover the boundless opportunities awaiting each of us…from creating wall art to making natural dyes from roots.

The last word from Lucy? “I want my floral arrangements to look as if they are having a delightful conversation in the bowl”. Certainly these nasturtiums seem to be doing just that!

Happy Fall to All…

©Lucy Hunter The Flower Hunter: Creating a floral love story inspired by the landscape. Ryland Peters & Small, New York