Photography by Clare Coulson.
When Melissa Richardson closed her London model agency seven years ago it was her childhood passion for flowers that inspired her to launch a second career—working with the sort of naturalistic flowers that she had collected when she was growing up surrounded by a fabulous walled Edwardian garden in Sussex.
JamJar Flowers has swiftly developed from a kitchen table business to a seriously-in-demand London florist with clients ranging from Instagram and Google to Mulberry and the Chiltern Firehouse.
Naturalistic arrangements which combine wild flowers with more cultivated stems have always been key to Richardson’s aesthetic.
Here delphiniums, astrantia, ammi majus, birch foliage, alchemilla mollis and sanguisorba sit in an old metal bucket.
A detail shot of the arrangement.
When Melissa opened the studio, she commissioned a local forge in Wandsworth, south London to make the scaffolding-plank shelves that fill the entire front windows.
Melissa’s business partner found the studio space, in a cobbled Kennington yard, on Gumtree.
The space is filled with antiques and market finds and Melissa is a life-long hunter of interesting pieces, visiting well-known antiques markets at Kempton Park and Ardingly and picking up new vessels on her travels.
Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ is a deep red-orange accent in a single-stem display.
Her father who transformed three walled gardens at their family home in Sussex has been a big influence on Melissa’s career. On the wall of her studio is a collection of Japanese woodblock prints, a gift from her father, that were originally used as a marketing tool by Japanese flower growers.
Collaboration is key, with myriad skills needed for different commissions.
She has recently acquired another unit a few doors away to create more space and to host the very successful flower school that Jamjar runs too, which says Melissa, are informal and fun but packed with information from learning how to wire flowers or create button holes to making flower crowns and arrangements.