Hello !
I am Elena, the person behind Bracken & Fleur.
I design and create beautiful pieces from beautiful dried flowers and any interesting and natural materials I can lay my hands on! I have a number of ready-to-go items for sale, and specialise in creating bespoke products to fulfil the precise needs and aspirations of my lovely customers.
I create for gifts, weddings, funerals, events, retail and hospitality - in fact anywhere beautiful, natural decor that is low/no-maintenance and long lasting is appreciated. I also offer workshops designed around you - location, time and content shaped to meet your needs whether that is for a relaxed creative activity with friends, or a really thorough immersion in the business of growing, drying and working with natural materials.
I live in Henley, Oxfordshire with my husband and two boys. In my little garden I grow many of the flowers that feature in my work. Though my garden is very small, it is amazing how productive that space can be when the planting is carefully planned to keep providing across the seasons. What I cannot grow, is all sourced from British growers who are also committed to sustainable principles, plus some very generous friends and family who are happy to share the bounty of their own gardens if I spot something I’d like to forage!
Nature is my inspiration - the colours, the myriad of textures, the quirky curly stems... As well as being beautiful, it is a priority for me that my creations should have a minimal impact on the environment; maybe even a positive one. It is, after all, our wonderful natural world that has inspired them and provided me with an abundance of material to work with.
A bit about me
Being creative and spending time enjoying nature have always been great passions of mine, so I feel very fortunate to be able to combine the two through Bracken & Fleur. I’ve also been a keen photographer from a young age, so what a bonus that I get to practise a bit of that too!
I grew up in South Wales surrounded by garden and then countryside that was fully open to explore! Since my childhood, I’ve always loved spending time in gardens and amongst nature, and seem to have absorbed a lot of the knowledge of the generations before me. As soon as I had a garden of my own, I was been keen to fill it with beautiful plants, though not without plenty of fatalities along the way! Now with a family of my own, spending time outdoors has taken on even greater importance.
Along the way I have developed a bit of an obsession for growing flowers for cutting. Encouraged and guided by many inspiring growers and florists, I have built myself a rather large and wonderful seed collection so that I can have arms full of flowers from Match to November. It really is a total joy! A desire to avoid letting anything go to waste first lead me to experiment with drying my flowers. I must admit, my first creations were pretty dire (thank you if you graciously received these as gifts) but practise pays off - I hope you will agree - and I’m now hooked on the results!
Elena xx
