After 17 Years in Floristry, Natalie Davis Is Learning to Make Flowers for Herself

To be honest I almost got into floristry accidentally. At the end of high school we had to do some work experience units and I found a local florist to do mine at. I ended up starting an apprenticeship there and staying on for a few years. The industry was so different then! But I loved working with my hands, being creative and learning about flowers. It’s something I did on and off until moving to London, where I started working for this very large/established florist. This fully changed things for me and made me realise there is so much more possibility in floristry than I had realised. We were working on these crazy jobs doing massive installations with incredible flowers I’d never had access to before. There was such a wealth of knowledge around me from all the amazing experienced florists in the team. I think that’s when I realised like wow okay this is something special, I want to see where this can go.

I just had my first exhibition which was a collaboration between myself and a talented friend Alyssa Nuttall who’s an amazing ceramicist. It was so refreshing to work on something fully for ourselves. We were exploring the disconnect between commercial industries working with natural products and nature itself. I’m excited to continue exploring delving into this concept and working with flowers without the constraints of designing for a "purpose".

Depending on what I’m designing for, my creative process either starts with a brief or conversation, an idea or something that has inspired/annoyed me. Lately if I'm just designing for myself it’s an emotion I want to express somehow. If it’s a bigger project I’ll talk it through with a friend and flesh it out. I’ve been loving using books and art as inspiration over Instagram . I'll do some bad sketches to help get it out of my head and onto paper, create a mockup, then emotionally flip flop until it’s done. I’m trying to work on having a little more faith in myself! But after years of working for other people that confidence is a fairly new muscle I'm growing. I’ve been collaborating with a few photographers recently which has been so lovely to have someone else's eye on the finished product.

It’s really important to me for my practice to be as sustainable as possible, I only work with foam free designs and local materials. I use seasonality and foraged plants/materials to inform my work. I’m drawn to finding materials that are interesting shapes or textures rather than how “pretty” or perfect they are.

Books! Friends! Nature! Galleries!

Patience, forcing something never really works. To notice and appreciate what’s around you.

I think it’s so important for people to push back against trends in floristry/flowers (I know easier said than done). This is an industry that has grown so much over the years and I think the general public are becoming more aware of the work that goes into working with flowers. But trends are creating all this pressure to recreate a photo from instagram over and over again. The more we do this the more autonomy we lose. If we lose our individuality and style people will shop around. I would loveeeee for this industry to thrive and for everyone to finally start getting paid what they deserve to be paid <3.