' "Well, I've got no time for the Floral Club ... it doesn't matter which house you go into within a radius of six miles, you can always tell if the mistress goes to the Lulling meetings.
You know what I mean ... April! Everybody's got some prissy little workbox fished out from the attic and stuffed up with primroses and moss. May! Dam' great boughs of cherry blossom, impaled on wire, and perched up above eye-level somewhere where they're bound to get blown down. June! One iris, Japanese fashion, in a "cool-grey" or "celadon-green" vase!
July! Three gladioli in a horrible flat white object, and arranged like a one-masted barque, with one up in the middle, and the other two horizontally fore and aft! And as for Christmas ...." '
From Thrush Green by Miss Read (the picture is from the cover illustration of my old Penguin edition, design by Jannat Messenger).
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For rather more contemporary and stylish flower arranging, I'd recommend Georgie Newbery of Common Farm Flowers.
