IT was such a pleasure to welcome back Gretchen White from Teignmouth to demonstrate at Crediton Flower Club’s January meeting.

Gretchen has been a demonstrator for 12 years and a few years ago she became enamoured with French “shabby chic” furniture - a mix of rustic and refined decor inspired by homes of the French countryside.

This influenced her choice of containers in her displays.

“A taste of Spring” her first arrangement was a real treat with a medley of Spring flowers, tulips, daffodils, stocks and lovely catkins - all arranged in a cleverly created rustic pot.

She then moved on to a slightly contemporary design - a seed tray filled with lime green foliage, pink chrysanths and cerise carnations, which created a lovely combination of colour and texture.

Liatris and pussy willow were added to give height to the display and proved very effective.

Gretchen herself described it as “whacky”.

This was joined by a similar arrangement made earlier.

A tall cream stand proved to be ideal for the next display - a cascade of white spray carnations, white roses and longiflorum lilies tumbled out of a container to create a beautiful waterfall arrangement which was really lovely.

A more traditional arrangement was then created in a beautiful urn, the stars of the show were definitely the gorgeous red roses, which were set against an assortment of lime and mixed foliage.

For her finale Gretchen used a very pretty two-tiered container, certainly answering the brief of “shabby chic” (an unexpected find displaying scarves in a clothes shop) where the combination of stocks, freesias, lizzies and pink chrysanths brought the demonstration to an eye-catching end.

A vote of thanks was given by June Harry, club secretary, who said what a delightful and inspiring evening it had been.

The next meeting will be held at the Boniface Centre on Thursday, February 10 at 7.15pm when everyone is invited to take along their own containers and materials to create an arrangement to be entitled “As you Like it” - it will be very interesting to see the results!

Visitors and new members are welcome.

Any queries please contact chairman Gay Mullins on 01363 774791.

Ellie Taylor