Rachel Carlyle says fake flowers have moved on a lot since the 1970s horrors you might have spotted in a funeral director s window. Here, she reveals the best blooms you can order online in the UK.
Playful: Cutter Brooks in the Cotswolds stocks New York’s The Green Vase collection
Credit: Cutter Brooks
Warming to the idea of dried flowers? They were so 2020; this year it’s all about trompe l’oeil blooms. “I would normally be opposed to fake flowers,” says Amanda Cutter Brooks, author and owner of Cutter Brooks, a beautiful Cotswolds boutique selling impeccably curated homewares. “But these just don’t have that feeling, because they are exquisitely crafted and assembled.”
Brooks is referring to the playful paper creations by The Green Vase, which she sources from New York, of whose jaunty foxgloves (£170) and charming hollyhock stems (£180) her shop sold out in the run-up to Christmas. “They just light up a room and bring the inside in. I placed a giant order and they have been hugely popular. I think our customers love them for the same reason I do – they last forever and don’t require any care.”