This the time of year that our neighbour's clematis goes potty and covers the fence between us. It's like a waterfall of pale pink flowers with lime gree centres that cascades from a great height (much taller than me), a vertical sheet of blooms that looks like an incredibly pretty wallpapered wall.
I've been thinking about floral walls recently because a few days ago at RHS Wisley I also saw the huge pansy pyramid that is outside the shop there (no idea why) and loved scale, the mix of colour and the way that a vertical surface covered in flowers has a very different effect to a flower-filled horizontal surface (aka a garden). It's rather like looking at quilts (see below), but this time with a very nice smell.
Big vertical floral arrangemens are spectacular, as are big vertical foliage arrangements. The one below is part of a plant wall also at Wisley at the moment, and it reminded me of the amazing living plant wall I'd seen in Anthropolgie on Regent's Street and the enormous living wall at Westfield Shopping Centre (both worth marvelling at). And it seems at the m0ment that the more one looks, the more one sees living green walls creeping up the insides and outside of buildings all over the world.
Of course, they are just a modern version of old-fashioned wallpaper. And if I can't have my own living wall, then I can at least have my own floral wallpaper. Maybe it'll just be the digital variety as seen here (although I would seriously like to print some of the pictures out and wallpaper a small room with them). Or maybe one day I'll be rich enough to afford a single roll of Cath Kidston's fabulously over-the-top digital wallpapers that feature blown-up flowers that look as though they've been on steroids ('Pulbrooke Rose' is the one I'll buy when I've saved up; our local Cath Kidston shop has it going up the staircase and it looks fantastic).
Years ago I worked for Sanderson at a time when flowers were running riot on the walls of Britain, and I swore I'd never succumb to floral wallpaper. But as Simon always says, you are allowed to change your mind...
