I love anything to do with flowers; studying them, gazing at them, talking about them, growing them and photographing them. I don’t believe I could ever tire of their innumerable colours, shapes and forms. I find flowers both endlessly captivating and indescribably beautiful, even the ones most people consider too plain and simple to worry about. A world without flowers would feel unbearably desolate to me.
Currently half way between Frankfurt and Cologne, I am on a typically smooth, fast, spacious German train. We sometimes do fast in the UK, but not smooth or spacious …. anything. I’ve been at Christmas World, the biggest trade fair in Europe for folk, like me, that live and breathe Christmas 365 days of the year.
Slowly but surely the show is being taken over by flowers and floristry. I assume this is because many of the biggest Christmas retailers in Europe are garden centres, and because Germany is the world’s biggest consumer of fresh flowers and plants. Christmas, Germany and floriculture go hand in hand. In 2017 there will be a new exhibition hall, Floradecora, the size of several football pitches, devoted to blumen of all kinds. Heralding its arrival next year was a vast display of floristry entitled ‘Design by Modern Nature‘, of which more in a subsequent post. Before we arrived at this shrine to contemporary floral art, I was stopped in my tracks by two pedestal arrangements overflowing with butterfly orchids, carnations, amaryllis, lilac and lilies: a heady concoction indeed. I had my iPhone handy so snapped away, playing with the focus, shadows and saturation whilst whizzing comfortably through Germany’s dark forests and orderly little towns. They do wifi on trains on the continent …. and waiter service at your seat too. It’s a shame I’m nearly at my destination.
Enjoy the blumen!
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
