Making Room

There’s something slightly misleading about the way we talk about new beginnings.

We make them sound very clean.

A fresh page. A new season. A door opening. Something lovely beginning while everything we already had stays neatly where it was.

But I’m beginning to think that most new beginnings require something else first.

Room.

And sometimes, making room means allowing something to end.

I’ve been thinking about endings a lot lately. Not necessarily the dramatic kind. More the quiet ones. The things we perhaps know have run their course long before we’re actually ready to admit it.

A friendship. A habit. An idea of who we thought we were supposed to be. A version of a business. A season of life that was once exactly right for us, but somehow isn’t anymore.

I think I’ve always found that difficult.

There’s a part of me that wants to hold onto things because they have history. Because they once made me happy. Because I’ve invested time and love into them. Because surely something lasting a long time must mean it is supposed to last forever.

The garden, as usual, has absolutely no interest in this theory.

It is very good at endings.

Flowers bloom magnificently and then they’re done. Leaves fall. Plants die back. Things get cut almost to the ground and, for a while, the garden looks emptier because of it.

We don’t call any of that failure.

We understand that it’s part of the cycle.

And then September arrives.

Tiny green shoots appear on branches that looked completely bare. The roses wake up. The days stretch out. Suddenly there are sweet peas and blossom and buckets of spring flowers at the market.

New things begin because there is room for them.

Maybe life is allowed to work like that too.

Maybe we don’t have to turn every ending into a villain and victim story. Maybe something can have been wonderful and still be finished. Maybe we can be grateful for what something gave us without needing to carry it forever.

And maybe letting go doesn’t erase the years that came before it.

Something ending naturally doesn’t mean it meant nothing.

I really love that thought.

There are things in my own life that I’m leaving behind as I walk into this spring. Some deliberately, some reluctantly, and some that I think I simply outgrew without noticing.

At the same time, there are so many new things appearing.

New friendships. New creative ideas. New people around the table. A new season for Where the Roses Grow. A slightly braver version of myself, perhaps.

And instead of gripping everything quite so tightly, I’m trying to trust the season I’m in.

To let what wants to grow, grow.

To let what has finished, finish.

And to stop assuming that every empty space needs to be immediately filled.

Because sometimes an empty patch in the garden isn’t sad.

It’s where the next thing gets to grow.

In the Garden

Ohhhh, she’s waking up.

After months of staring lovingly at what was essentially a collection of sticks and damp soil, there are finally signs of life everywhere.

The roses are throwing out fresh new growth, seedlings are beginning to move, and I am once again wandering outside approximately seventeen times a day to inspect plants that have changed absolutely nothing since I checked them twenty minutes earlier.

Spring gardening is back.

This month I’m feeding the roses as all that beautiful new growth begins, keeping an eye out for aphids on the fresh shoots, sowing warm season annuals and attempting to stake things before they become a sprawling disaster.

There will be cosmos. There will be dahlias. There will be far too many flowers crammed into every available patch of soil because apparently I learn nothing from previous years.

Mostly, though, I’m just enjoying watching everything return.

There’s something ridiculously satisfying about seeing a plant you’ve fussed over for months finally decide to do its thing.

At the Flower Market

This is when being a florist becomes particularly dangerous for my bank account.

Spring flowers are arriving.

The market starts changing almost weekly at this time of year, and suddenly all those delicate, floaty stems begin appearing again.

Sweet peas. Ranunculus. Anemones. Blossom. Tulips. Poppies. And all the tiny little things I absolutely did not go there to buy but will inevitably bring home anyway.

After the restraint of winter, spring flowers feel almost extravagant.

There’s movement again. Scent. Colour. Fragility.

Nothing behaves particularly well.

Perfect.

Back in the Studio

September also marks the beginning of a very full season here at Where the Roses Grow.

Wedding season is waking up alongside the garden, and the diary from here starts becoming a lovely blur of early flower market mornings, buckets lining the studio floor, ribbons everywhere and my car permanently smelling like foliage.

I’ve also recently come home from a few days in Byron Bay for Oh Flora’s Design & Dine, and creatively, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

There’s something really special about being around other creative people and making things simply to experiment.

No brief to fulfil. No Pinterest image to reference. No pressure for the finished piece to become anything in particular.

Just flowers and play.

I came home wanting to make things.

Not necessarily better things.

Just things that feel more like me.

And I think that’s something I’m taking into this spring season with me: a little less perfection and a lot more curiosity.

From the Kitchen

Lemon, Raspberry & Buttermilk Cake

This is exactly the sort of cake I want at the beginning of spring.

Nothing elaborate. Nothing requiring a piping bag or an engineering degree. Just a soft lemony cake dotted with raspberries that you can make in the morning and eat in the garden with a cup of tea that afternoon.

You’ll need

125g unsalted butter, softened
180g caster sugar
Zest of 2 lemons
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
200g self raising flour
120ml buttermilk
150g fresh or frozen raspberries
Icing sugar, to finish

To make it

Preheat the oven to 170°C fan and line a 20cm round cake tin.

Cream the butter, sugar and lemon zest together until pale and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla.

Fold through the flour, alternating with the buttermilk, until everything is just combined.

Gently fold through most of the raspberries, then spoon the mixture into your prepared tin. Scatter the remaining raspberries over the top.

Bake for around 40-50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Allow to cool before dusting rather enthusiastically with icing sugar.

Serve with thick cream if you fancy.

Preferably outside.

Preferably with tea.

Preferably while staring at your garden and mentally identifying seventeen more plants you apparently need.

Things I’ve Been Loving

Flowers

Roses.

I realise this is perhaps the least surprising revelation ever published on a website called Where the Roses Grow.

But I’ve fallen in love with them all over again lately.

Not the perfectly behaved ones, either. I love the blown open garden roses with strange centres and petals going everywhere. The ones that change completely over a few days. The ones that look slightly different every time you walk past them.

They’ve become such a huge part of the visual language of my work that I’m not even going to pretend to be cool about it anymore.

Give me all of them.

Listening

Music has been a very big part of the studio lately.

Classical music one minute, 70s rock the next, Taylor Swift somewhere in between - essentially no theme whatsoever.

I’ve realised I design very differently depending on what’s playing.

Some arrangements apparently require strings.

Others require Fleetwood Mac.

Wearing

Spring dressing in Adelaide: the annual sport of leaving the house dressed for winter and regretting every decision by 1pm.

I’m ready for lighter knits, blue shirts, ballet flats and dresses again - preferably all looking slightly like I might be on my way to potter around an English village despite actually being on school drop off in Adelaide.

A girl can dream.

This Month, I’m...

♡ Making room for new things.

♡ Letting some old things end without needing to rewrite the whole story.

♡ Choosing the people and places that feel good to be around.

♡ Saying yes to new friendships.

♡ Trusting my creative instincts a little more.

♡ Watching the garden come back to life.

♡ Getting ridiculously excited about spring flowers.

♡ Opening the windows whenever Adelaide weather permits.

♡ Making things simply because I want to see what happens.

♡ Remembering that not everything is supposed to last forever.

And perhaps most importantly -

Being grateful for what was, while still being excited about what’s next.

 

There’s something hopeful about September.

Not in the big, dramatic everything is changing! kind of way.

It’s quieter than that.

A tiny green shoot on a bare rose.

A friendship you didn’t expect.

An idea you suddenly can’t stop thinking about.

The first warm afternoon with the windows open.

Little reminders that there is always more life ahead of us than we can see from where we’re standing.

So this spring, I’m making room for it.

For whatever wants to grow next.

With love & roses,

Kels x ♡