Studio visit: Botanical Tales
The drive to Botanical Tales takes in some of my favourite roads. I turn left out of the cottage and climb up the hill to the top of the Blackdowns. The top road, past Otterhead, has beautiful views over to the left, past Bishopswood to the rolling green pasture land, as well as having some of my favourite golden beech tree tunnels. Turn right onto the A303. The busy road slows here and winds a little, following the edge of the gentle Otter valley. Left up the Stockland Road and the landscape gets more dramatic, bigger, craggier. Drop down through Axminster and up the other side. I pause at the top by River Cottage HQ and look back from where I have come. Steep green slopes and wooded valleys as far as the eye can see.
I climb back in the truck and turn down a little lane, lined by trees with twisted and gnarled trunks. Off this lane is the home of Bex Partridge, better known as Botanical Tales.
No, at this moment I should probably mention that I spend about twenty minutes a day googling workshop space to rent. My sitting room is full of pans for dyeing and I keep spare boxes for packaging under my bed. I have been bursting out of my studio space almost since I moved in and I use its smallness as an excuse for much of the chaos that overflows into my cottage. Bex also has a small space. Inherited from the previous owners of the house, she has a shed at the end of the garden, next to her growing space, and surrounded by chickens. It is not chaotic. It is absolutely exquisite and it is stuffed to the absolute gills with beautiful, exquisitely dried flowers.
The first thing you see are the windows, giving a glimpse of what is inside. The two windows on either side of the door have curtains of the most delicate hanging garlands. Foraged and grown dried seed heads are threaded together with fine gold wire to give the most magical effect. This side of her workspace gets the sun full on it and the cape gooseberries glowed like jewels, and the fluffy clematis seed heads sparkled.
And inside the studio was Bex. Generous and talented and lovely. I can’t believe this is the first time we have every actually met in person because it felt like I had known her forever. We shared how lockdown had been for our businesses, how we were feeling about wreaths this year, and how life in a rural community is unlike anything else.
(An aside, I will absolutely be stealing her idea about hanging ribbons from a strung up, curvaceous vine. Don’t they look incredible? They are, of course, ribbons from Gather member, Ros Humphries of The Natural Dyeworks. Bex and I were, hilariously, both wearing our TND hand-dyed socks.)
