Powell is as interested in working with nature’s finest which includes fruit and vegetables—the influence perhaps of a peripatetic childhood on a farm in Tanzania, and between England and the South of France, his earliest memory is the air thick with the scent of mimosa—as he is embracing materials for their own inspiration. “I’m very intuitive in my work, I don’t often have a plan. The stem I place inspires the place of the next stem and it creates itself.” A huge inspiration is Wagner Kreusch, a former tutor and also co-founder of the London Flower School: “He’s an absolute expert in the choreography of botanicals, he knows how to make them dance. Everything he touches is perfection even if it’s a small, crumpled leaf on the pavement, he could make it sing”. Expressive, curious and with the lightest hand on the tiller, expect a voyage of discovery along with the unexpected in Powell’s creations.  

“This Micheluzzi Glass vase has a wide aperture, but it’s necked so has a narrower opening than the widest point of the vase. I started off with a kenzan but switched to a more playful mechanic that would allow a more organic shape and chose the fruit from the phoenix date palm.

This bunch of fruit doesn’t need water and I have literally placed it on top of the opening of the vase so that some of the fruit goes into the vase and some sits on top. It serves as a structure and gives you direction for stem placement. The power is no longer in my hands, and it is nature dictating how you arrange it.

There was a sort of firework feel to this arrangement, like an atom exploding. You have the nucleus, or mass in the middle, and then you trace the lines outward because ultimately with flower arranging those are the two principles: visual density and a line for you to follow.  I thought this worked well with the grevillea (spider flower) and the slipper orchid.

I love to arrange with non-floral botanicals: fruit, vegetable, roots and branches which add something interesting and unexpected. Beauty is everywhere if you only look for it.”

“I chose this vase as it was a clear vessel compared to the others which were opaque or translucent; it makes you think about what’s happening below and not just above the vase. A lot of people know to strip anything off the stems to prevent bacteria forming and to ensure the water doesn’t look dirty. Often when I’m using a clear vase, I’ll also add a bit of bleach.

When it came to arranging, I tried a spectrum of techniques, such as directly into the vase which is an organic way of the flowers representing the vase as you are following what the vase is allowing you to do. The other method is to make the arrangement in your hands, like a bouquet, and slot it in afterwards. That gives you great control of the stems and keeps it in a nice, neat spiral and gives it a different mood as you have made something external to the vase.

I chose these red anthuriums which are enjoying a renaissance as they’re glossy, sexy, a bit weird and long-lasting. Typically viewed as a tacky flower, they were a 1960s staple frequenting hotel lobbies. But in this new wave of floristry, a lot of designers haven’t lived through that so there’s no societal bias. And the red swirl of the Carlo Moretti vase definitely had a Sixties feel to it.

The anthuriums have a very clear linear stem and very bold mass flower at the end. I thought it would be fun to experiment with this junction of line and mass so the first of the arrangements is head-to-head and bulky and focuses on mass; the second one is line-y and wavy and focuses on the line. And the one in the middle is spider-y and the focus is a contrast of mass and line.