It was cloudy yesterday. Not the dramatic kind — just a flat, grey morning that made the studio feel smaller than usual. We had the lights on from the start, which I always notice. Natural light does something to a room that artificial light just can't replicate, and on workshop days especially, I feel the difference.

Still, six people walked through the door and the room warmed up quickly.

The workshop was inspired by The Artist's Garden painting by Monet. Not a literal interpretation, more a borrowed feeling. The softness of Giverny.

Before we started arranging I talked about Impressionism for a little while — about painting atmosphere rather than accuracy, about colour working in masses rather than in single, isolated moments. I wanted everyone to hold that idea loosely while they worked. Not as a rule, just as a way of seeing.

The flowers were delphinium, ocean song rose, lisianthus, alstroemeria, statice, limonium and mimosa leaves. The colour story was something I'd been thinking about since I first planned this workshop. Pink and lavender are an easy pairing — soft, familiar, a little expected — but the touch of dark purple from the delphinium is what gave the whole palette its depth. Without it, the bouquets would have been pretty. With it, they had weight. That's the thing Monet understood about colour: that softness needs an anchor, something darker underneath to make the light parts glow. The deep violet spires sitting behind all that blush and lavender did exactly that. Every bouquet in the room felt like it had a shadow, which made it feel alive.

There's a moment I watch for in every class. It usually happens about halfway through — someone has been carefully placing each stem, checking, second-guessing, moving things an inch to the left. And then something shifts. They stop looking at the individual flowers and start seeing the whole thing. The hand reaches for a stem before the brain has decided which one. The bouquet starts to look like theirs. That’s the part I look forward to most.

By the time we finished, the clouds had thinned. We moved the bouquets to the pedestals, gathered by the window for the group photo, and the light was exactly right — soft, a little diffused, the way it gets on overcast afternoons when the sun is trying. Very Monet of it.

The next workshop in the Inspired by Artists series is 20 June — a vase arrangement class, this time inspired by Van Gogh. A different painter, a different mood, the same idea: flowers as a way of seeing.

Details and registration are open, and seats are filling. I'll see you at the next one.

— Nixie