'My everlasting flower displays are magical and ethereal'

Floral artist and founder of Botanical Tales, Bex Partridge

- VIVIENNE AYERS

I’ve always loved gardening, even when I was a child and I helped my mum in the garden. It’s been a constant thread throughout my life,’ says oral artist Bex Partridge of Botanical Tales, who lives in rural Devon with her husband Ed and sons Henry, 10, and Arlo, seven. Botanical Tales came about through serendipity. In the spring of 2016, Bex was on maternity leave from her job in marketing. The family had moved into a house in Surrey that was built on the old garden of a townhouse. ‘We’d been allotment owners for more than 20 years,’ says Bex. ‘I’d never gardened in a mature garden before and suddenly all these amazing traditional English owers like roses, bluebells and lily of the valley were popping up. Inspired by my surroundings, I set up an Instagram account called Botanical Tales to share photos of the fowers blooming in my garden. The garden became my sanctuary, the perfect tonic to my stressful day job. Around the same time, I rediscovered dried owers after accidentally drying a bouquet of owers gifted to me. I was enamoured with their understated, graceful beauty. Those owers were woven into the first wreath I ever made. I began to share things I was making with dried owers on Instagram and found a community who loved what I was doing, and things grew from there.’

Bex became increasingly obsessed with dried owers and developed her creative style through years of practice. ‘The power of Instagram meant I could access other people who loved dried owers as much as me at a time when they were still considered quite niche. My wreaths were distinctive, in their half-moon shape style, and I gradually began to sell to customers. That led to workshops and events.’