Over the past week I’ve shown over 100 people how to make Christmas wreaths, my proudest moment was the one my curmudgeonly daughter made for a lady who was unwell. It never fails to amaze me how the same materials in different hands make such unique and gorgeous wreaths. On Wednesday night I attended a Christmas event at Re London’s stunning shared workspace on the 5th floor of County Hall. I hadn’t been there since Ken Livingstone’s days! The walk over Hungerford Bridge at this time of year is spectacular and the sight of floodlit St Paul’s never fails to move me. I’m not really sure what I was expecting from the night I had half hoped to meet a wealthy philanthropist over a mulled wine but I was sadly disappointed. ReLondon you might recall is about generating a circular economy and I thought it would be full of enthusiastic change makers. Sadly, it was just an evening to promote clothes swapping, recycling coffee cups and helium balloon recycling which on closer inspection simply meant that she was a collection point for old helium balloons! It sounds harsh but it really felt unimaginative and I certainly didn’t meet anyone with any creative solutions let alone a wealthy philanthropist! Have a great week. Ursula

The table centrepieces I collected from the Royal Lancaster Hotel last week saw me through all my morning workshops this week. On Monday I paid my annual trip to Grahame Park’s Independent Living Group, the ladies in that group don’t appear to age, including the wonderful Barbara in the photograph. and we turned the centrepieces into topiary trees. On Tuesday we used them to make a low coffee table arrangement and on Friday we used the foliage to make Christmas decorations. Yes, the Christmas madness is here as I officially held my first Christmas wreath workshop for 25 women at Foulds Primary School on Friday night. Next week I’ve got wreath workshops galore and I couldn’t get through it without the help and patience of my daughters Mathilda and Ella. I also managed to squeeze in a delivery of 8 table centrepieces on Thursday night to the Institute of Physics on Caledonian Road and was plagued by roadworks the entire way! Have a great week. Ursula

Roadworks are the bane of my life at the moment. Getting out of New Barnet is an ordeal and Central London is no better, as I discovered on Monday morning bound for Elephant & Castle and the Gisela Graham showroom. Traffic was at standstill as buses, taxis and every other form of vehicle was diverted into Roseberry Avenue because of a closed Farringdon Road - blood boiling the journey took 3 hours. My frustration soon disappeared when I saw all the wonderful decorations they were kindly donating! On Wednesday I had a film crew come to the shop to film me make a wreath for Set Creative’s e-Christmas Card. Set Creative are a production company that works for Bentley, Cartier and Google to name a few of their clients. In fact Set Creative are the company that have me collect their surplus from the Google away day at The Grove each year. Believe me, the camera always lies, after hours of adjusting lighting and tinkering with props they were ready for me. The 3 hours worth of filming will be edited to a 2 minute film and I was in awe. On Friday I used some of the Gisela Graham material in my dementia group, the photograph shows Ola, 90 year old Maria’s carer, they’ve been coming to the group since the beginning and Ola’s floristry skills and creativity are now second to none. On Friday afternoon I was back into town to collect 42 table centrepieces from the Royal Lancaster Hotel in Bayswater - I planned my route much better this time and there were no hold ups! Saturday morning was my final journey of the week into central London, a route I know very well into Soho. I love watching Regent Street come to life at 8 am every Saturday morning. No driving for me today! Have a great week. Ursula

When I was a PCS Trade Union activist at The British Museum, way back when, the 3 South Kensington Museums were a regular haunt. There was trouble at the V&A when management refused trade union recognition and the ‘potterygate’ scandal at the Science Museum when Management created a pottery studio for the incoming Director’s wife at a huge cost! All this history was with me as I drove to collect flowers from The Science Museum at midnight on Tuesday. I calculated that I hadn’t been round there for at least 15 years, let alone driven so I didn’t recognise Cromwell Road when I arrived. The transformation of the area was staggering and I couldn’t get over the dominance of Imperial College as I passed some students struggling to carry a model of a nuclear reactor home. Anyway, I got talking to one of the security guards as they escorted me to my flower collection. He told me that apart from the curators and academics, no staff are in house anymore but before I had chance to ask about zero hours contracts we’d arrived at our floor. The flowers were spectacular and I had huge fun using them all week and even better I got home in 40 minutes as the roads were empty. On Thursday night I demonstrated wreath making to New Barnet Amateur Gardeners - it was my first wreath of the season and until I get my eye in I’m quite slow. My allotted 90 minutes flew by as I regaled the 40+ members with tales of my late night floral escapades. We’ve started to decorate the shop for Christmas hastened by 2 things, the first I’ve got a trip to Gisela Graham’s warehouse at Elephant & Castle to collect their surplus samples tomorrow and second I’ve got a film crew coming to film me make a Christmas wreath on Wednesday afternoon. The company said we’re only going to focus on your hands, well my hands currently look atrocious so my daughters have kindly promised to give them a glow up. Have a great week. Ursula

I’ve been the recipient this week of some very generous donations and I’m beyond grateful. On Monday morning my flower and foliage stocks were really low but being a Micawber I felt sure that something would turn up and sure enough it did, in bucket loads. My first donation came from a civil ceremony at a most gorgeous tucked away house, hidden down a one car wide, hedge scraping private road in Golders Green and the second from a bar mitzvah at Sopwell House in St Albans. I was able to use their floral loveliness for workshops for 20 women, countless bouquets and to make 2 urns for a memory event at Noah’s Ark children’s hospice today. Just as I was getting to the end of my supply of foliage I got a phone call to see whether I’d be in the market for the foliage from a wedding at The St Pancras Hotel (see photo attached) I never need to be asked twice and spent yesterday morning unloading bags of foliage. Next Tuesday at midnight I’m collecting bunches of flowers from an event at the Science Museum I’ll make sure I up my caffeine intake that day. Have a great week. Ursula

On Monday I was interviewed by Spacehive for a short piece to inspire new Project Creators starting on the path of Crowdfunding. I think my story/journey is atypical and it feels as though I’m the “if she can do it, anyone can” feature. I always find these occasions humbling and grateful to you - my supporters, so thank you. Until a few weeks ago I was completely unaware of ReLondon’s existence and it came as a real surprise. ReLondon is a partnership between the Mayor of London and the London boroughs that’s aiming to improve London’s waste and resource management and transform London into a leading low carbon circular economy, finally! So I filled in a support finder and eligibility form and thought nothing more of it until I received a Welcome Pack to the Programme earlier this week and a pledge of £5,000 worth of business support! Things are really beginning to ramp up in preparation for Christmas and November at a glance looks as though it’s going to be full of trips to Central London including a trip and rummage to the warehouse of Gisela Graham off the Walworth Road! I’m booking in wreath making workshops galore and have just added one at the Sebright Arms in High Barnet on Sunday 1st December. Don’t worry it’s not dynamic ticket pricing! Have a great week. Ursula

On Monday I met Andy the Director of Hendon Crematorium and Cemetery to discuss the feasibility of a trial to re-use their single use plastic funeral tributes. He told me that they’d previously used a company to recycle their funeral tributes but the company had disappeared and besides the carbon footprint of recycling was as great as putting them into landfill so they’d decided that the only solution was re-use. I also had a moan about polyribbon and banning their us and he agreed. They have on average 100 funerals a month so how much, he asked, could I use? I really didn’t know and envisaged me drowning in letters, but to start with I had Pat’s funeral on Thursday and would love to take a stand and 3 letters. Andy told me of a potential fly in the ointment, which wasn’t insurmountable but that as I was going to be collecting waste I might need to become a registered waste collector which meant bureaucracy and a £150 registration fee. He would check but in the meantime I was told to come back on Tuesday evening, before dusk for my collection. On Tuesday late afternoon I parked by the grave of Lynsey de Paul and waited and waited for the mourners to disperse so that I could retrieve the letters without causing any emotional distress. Unfortunately there was no gap and I felt like a hitman waiting for its prey or some creepy stalker so I returned the next day for the letters. There were no funerals on Wednesday morning which made the job of retrieval easier. There were lots of A’s, T’s and B’s but no P’s so I started to panic, finally by the bin I found a P and my relief was immense. I took my finds back to the shop pressure washed the stand and letters re-patched the foam shapes and got to work. On Thursday I delivered my first recycled funeral tribute to the local undertakers proud as punch and re-connected with Andy. He had some good news for me at a conference the previous day he’d met his equivalent from Wigan Council who were ahead of us on the recycling front. The good news is that I don’t have to be a registered waste disposer as until the tributes enter the bin they remain donations. He’d also thought that the plastic trays which are the base for other arrangements could be gifted to floristry colleges so I got in touch with Capel Manor College, my alma mater. In other news, I’ve had over 40 coat donations this week for Colindale Food Bank which is astounding so if you have any old warm coats you’d like to donate we’d love to receive them. Have a great week. Ursula

A few weeks ago I said I was going to write to Barnet Council again to ask them to consider a ban on polyribbon and single use plastic in their cemeteries. Well, I did and I have news. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning with Adam the head of Hendon Cemetery who is sympathetic to my cause. I told him that I’d like to see a ban on polyribbon in line with other woodland cemeteries in Essex and that I’d like to retrieve their funeral letters and stands, power wash them, patch up the foam letters and re-use them. He told me that they used to have a company that would come and dispose of the letters but he was more excited about the prospect of their re-use. I’ve actually got a funeral on Thursday for Pat which will be a test run and Pat’s family are delighted to be involved. I had 2 new D of E volunteers start on Wednesday afternoon they’re tech savvy and have already signed me up with a TikTok account and posted on Instagram. They launched our annual warm coat collection for Colindale Food Bank and I hope they can get behind my single use plastic campaign. They’re so good at conveying The Flower Bank’s ethos to a younger and wider audience. Have a great week. Ursula

It’s been a bit of a crazy week from starting a new group in Colindale on Wednesday to collecting 63 centrepieces from the Camden Roundhouse on Thursday! For 30 years I was a daily commuter and never considered myself a driver but now I swap from cars to van hires with alacrity. The centrepieces were from an Attitude event where A listers like Elton John, Ed Sheeran, Lulu, Vanessa Williams plus a whole host of drag queens had been present and I had a plan for them. You see, Thursday 10 October was World Mental Health Day and after driving them back to New Barnet I turned them into bunches of flowers and did some flower bombing. Flower bombing or “bunches on benches” is where flowers are left in random places for unsuspecting passers by to find. I post their locations on my Instagram page (@the_flowerbank) and hope they’re found. Heather, my agent in the field confirmed that no sooner had she placed one on a bench in Tudor Park than it was taken. I don’t know if they cheered the finders up but Heather and I certainly had great fun doing it. I’d been silent on Instagram for weeks and now I was bombarding followers hourly - I think I’d got caught up with all the talk about the toxicity of social media so I’ve decided to post only positive stuff. Have a great week. Ursula

On Tuesday morning I delivered 3 wreaths with stands to Hendon Crematorium for Winnie’s funeral. I wanted the stands back after the funeral so spoke to Chris the helpful attendant there who explained that funeral flowers are on display for a week after the funeral and then binned. He told me that I was welcome to take anything I wanted if it could be re-used and agreed that funerals were the biggest waste of single use plastic. I thought I’d have a go at writing to Barnet Council again asking them to consider at least a ban on polyribbon in their cemeteries. The reply I got last time from them was that they didn’t want to cause offence to grieving families by imposing any restrictions on designs. I really couldn’t do my job without my car but the request to collect 63 table centrepieces from the Roundhouse in Camden next Thursday 10 October has meant that I’ve had to hire a van, last year from the same event I was only able to get 30 arrangements into my car. The 10 October is World Mental Health Day so we’ll be turning some of those arrangements into bunches of flowers and flower bombing later in the day. Have a great week. Ursula