The studio sits behind the shop.
One room, north-facing, lit by a strip of skylight and a 1980s anglepoise. A long zinc-topped bench, a cold room that hums, two pairs of secateurs and a kettle. Esme has been arranging flowers since 2009. Petals & Stem opened on South Street in 2017.
Esme Whitlock.
Esme grew up on a smallholding in mid-Wales and went to art school in Bristol intending to be a printmaker. She spent the year after graduating cutting flowers for a wedding florist in Frome and never went back to printmaking.
She trained for two years at Scarlet & Violet in north London — the studio that did the flowers for half the things you’d recognise from a magazine in 2013 — before moving back to the West Country in 2016. Petals & Stem opened on South Street in May 2017 with a single fridge, a part-time apprentice, and a contract to do the flowers for The Bull Hotel.
The shop has grown a bit since then. The fridge has not.
Three things, repeated every week.
We buy at dawn.
Three mornings a week. Mostly Common Farm in Somerset, sometimes Tregothnan in Cornwall, and the Dutch auction for whatever we can’t source British. Esme drives. The van smells of eucalyptus.
We make to order.
Almost nothing on this site is built in advance. You send us a brief, we tell you what we’ve got, we agree on a vibe, we make it on the day you’re collecting. Same-day quotes, two-day turnaround minimum.
We don’t keep stock.
The cold room is full on a Tuesday and empty by Saturday afternoon. We don’t hold roses for a fortnight. We don’t dye carnations. If a flower has been in the fridge longer than four days it goes home with whoever’s on shift.
Six things from a Tuesday in April.
The shop is open Tuesday to Saturday.
Come and have a look at what’s on the bench, talk to whoever’s in, and walk away with something you didn’t know you wanted. Or send us a brief and we’ll quote you back the same day.
Visit & Order →