Secrets of Eternal Life
Bex Partridge’s summer allotment billows with pretty flowers: it’s a tightly knit patchwork of colours and textures, dancing with butterflies and abuzz with bees. A gardener and floral artist, Bex is passionate about growing, mostly from seed, the flowers and seedheads that she uses to create her long-lasting floral arrangements, decorative wreaths and larger installations. She’s inspired by nature, working with the seasons to capture their ephemeral beauty and preserve and prolong precious moments in time by desiccating and drying flowers, fronds, seedheads and leaves.
She happened across the art of preserving flowers by chance. A neglected vase of formerly fresh blooms, inadvertently left to desiccate,) and cornflowers, (), brilliant for both flowers and their seedheads; bold and colourful zinnias; the trailing chenille tassels of love-lies-bleeding () in greens and pinks; sphere-headed giant garlic, ‘Elephant’; spires of larkspur; star-bright linen flowers, ‘Bright Eyes’; and drums of rattling poppy seedheads.
