Prickly Meadows and the art of floristry

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonatha Rae

Prickly Meadows’ arrangements evoke the same tranquil beauty as William Wordsworth’s Daffodils.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Jazz Mill-O’kane and Victoria Alcorn are the artists behind Prickly Meadows.

Both trained in floristry, the mates were fed up with the homogeneity of traditional flower arranging.

“We started doing it because we really loved working with flowers, but not necessarily in such a retail environment where you’re making things for people that aren’t necessarily keen on it I guess,” says Jazz.

The chicks hand pick most of their flowers from around the neighbourhood.

But no one on their block has noticed yet.

“That’s my greatest fear – getting yelled at by someone,” says Jazz.

“I would never taking enough from the plant to make an impact, I don’t want you to tell that we’ve hacked at something and we always do it really neatly and if we need a lot of something, I’ll always take it from different places.”

When they can’t find a special bloom, they occasionally buy from the markets.

But they’re not keen on the lack of transparency.

“It’s a little bit disheartening when we first got into it just finding out that so many flowers come from overseas and what that means for the environment,” says Jazz.

“You don’t know where a lot of the flowers you get come from.

“When you’re at the market they don’t say where they’ve come from or what they’ve been sprayed with.”

Prickly Meadows is definitely unusual in the world of white rose bouquets.

There’s no plastic blossoms, feather/diamanté corsages or blue roses.

Their arrangements are laced with native beauties, are invariably unique and aren’t stifled by conservative expectations.

They love using ferns, poppies and camellias.

Jazz says wherever she goes she can see flowers she wants to work with.

“After I studied floristry I became so much aware of looking around for things I could use.

“I realised there’s so many little nice things around that I wanted to put in things. And that’s so exciting and fun and the variety you can get is so much different to what you can get at the market.”

In the end, the duo wants to create floral masterpieces for people who really appreciate flowers.

Expect to see more from these two pretty daffodils.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.