Having a love for flowers, I put my name down to help at our Federation’s Celebration of Flowers held at St Pauls Church in Chichester in July, as part of the WI centenary events.

Beryl did the same. Neither of us had contributed to a flower festival before so we decided we could work together on the arrangement.

We arrived at the church with our bucket of flowers and greenery, and were given a pedestal to display our arrangement on.   Our budget, from our WI, allowed us to buy white peonies, alstroemeria, dark purple gerbera and spray carnations, which we arranged with a few flowers and greenery from my garden.

The atmosphere while we were preparing our display was relaxed and friendly, although busy in the background.   We spent just over 2 hours on our arrangement and felt pleased with ourselves. We had not let our WI down.

We returned on the next morning, when the event was open to the public, to help with the refreshments.   We were pleased to see our arrangement just as fresh as when we had left it.   The flowers had opened and the arrangement looked even better.

As a “celebration of flowers” it was disappointing to see so few flower arrangements compared to the size of the church and the number of WI members who could have been involved. Although the organisation was not as clear as it could have been at the beginning, I enjoyed the part I played in the event.

Sheila Farmer