Dahlia & Cosmos Workshop

Back in September, I had the absolute pleasure of travelling up to North Yorkshire to collaborate on a dahlia and cosmos workshop with Janne Ford. We combined the art of sugar flowers with floral styling and photography to bring students a unique creative workshop.

Day 1

We welcomed Dimple, Tracey and Margaret to Janne’s beautiful studio – three cake artists keen to grow confidence with their sugar flowers and learn more about working with fresh flowers and photography. I’m sure they would all agree that Janne’s studio is a very calming and inspiring setting. Janne has an eye for vintage furnishings and props (which you can spot in her photos) and there is a heady scent from the buckets of dried flowers that she has preserved from her garden.

After settling in with cups of tea and copious flapjacks and brownies, we set to work on creating our dahlias and cosmos from sugar. We had vases of flowers to line the centre of the table as inspiration, grown by myself and Janne. I can’t stress enough how helpful it is to have fresh flowers in front of you when you work. Being able to closely analyse and capture those little details is what will really elevate your flowers to a lifelike quality.

After a busy morning, we took a break for lunch. Janne had prepared us a delicious tomato galette with accompanying salad. Even the weather was kind to us and we were able to eat out on the terrace with the cows in the neighbouring field for company. Time ran away with us in the afternoon as we had such a lovely chatty group. But everyone did fantastically well creating such lifelike cosmos and dahlias.

Picking the flowers

As soon as the students had headed home for the day, Janne and I went to visit Sahra at Willow View Farm. Sahra has been growing cut flowers on her farm since 2017. It was such a treat to be able to explore her cutting beds and pick the flowers for our arrangements the following day. We picked buckets of dahlias and cosmos, snapdragons, zinnias grown from Floret seeds, amaranthus “hot biscuits” (one of my absolute favourites). Plus achillea colorado mix, the most incredible lisianthus, setaria italica and some other grasses. We also foraged some blushing crab apples on the way back to the studio to complete the Autumnal feel.

Day 2

We started the day bright and early and spent the morning putting the finishing touches to our sugar flowers, bringing them to life with dust colours. Janne prepared us another delicious lunch of roasted butternut squash, couscous and pomegranate salad. We then cleared the deck as it was time to get creative with the fresh flowers! Janne demoed a hand-tied bouquet (of course making it look effortless!) And it was then our turn to have a go. The students all took it in their stride and created three wonderfully unique bouquets.

Styling and photography

Having completed the bouquets, Janne talked to us about image composition and styling. Margaret, Tracey and Dimple then each took it in turns to style and photograph their bouquets. We slipped the sugar flowers into the arrangements as well. I can honestly say, it was so hard to tell which were real and which were sugar! As an extra bonus for our three cake artists, we invited them to bring a dummy cake along with them to photograph and style. The sugar flowers looked absolutely stunning creating a statement on their cakes. Having the opportunity the style and photograph them under Janne’s expertise was invaluable. Everyone’s resulting images are a testament to Janne’s wonderful guidance.

A thank you

The two days absolutely flew by and I left feeling as inspired as the students! I want to say a huge thank you to Janne for so generously hosting us as well as to Dimple, Margaret and Tracey for being such a lovely group to teach.

If you would be interested in any future workshops with Janne and I, then please do get in touch. Our next one will be on 22nd – 23rd March 2026 celebrating hellebores and the arrival of Spring.