Just some of all the flowers and butterflies I made (and taught) this spring....
Hello friends. How are you? I had to make myself go for a walk yesterday - and that's not something I usually admit. After a week in Scotland - all that sky and space and the kind of quiet that helps you hear your own thoughts - coming home to the Wirral felt harder than usual. But I went anyway. And I came back glad I did.
πΏ Nature Notes
There's a pond I walk to - it's become my special place; I've got to know the plants and trees, I'm learning the birds. I grew up in North Yorkshire, and spent childhood summers in Sweden, at my grandmother's summer house in the woods beside a clean lake we could swim in. We were lucky, to grow up with nature as ordinary, unremarkable backdrop. I moved here a long time ago, for complicated reasons, and for a long time I think I quietly grieved that freedom of nature without quite naming it. It was the pandemic - the daily walks, the enforced slowness - that gave nature back to me. I found the pond. I started going at least twice a week, every week. That's where all my nature-connection talk comes from: not theory, but a specific path, a specific body of water, all the plants and trees, ducks and herons I watch.
And it's changed over the past few years. It's been "managed" - hedges cut back hard, trees pruned, the edges tidied in a well-meaning way that has taken away the tangled, imperfect, natural habitat I love. I notice fewer species than I used to. It hurts, honestly - there's no other word for it. But it's still my place, and I know as we get into the year things will grow back and new tangles will appear. And yesterday, I saw skylarks, a sparrowhawk, the resident terrapin, and buds on the Guelder Rose. Walking is always worth it.
If all you have is a tree outside your window, watch it. Watch the birds come and go, watch the leaves appear, watch the light change. Connection doesn't need a wilderness. It just needs attention.
Perfection - a spring dandelion clock
βοΈ From the Studio
I've been thinking this week about how I teach, specifically about what happens in that moment when someone who arrived unsure of themselves suddenly realises they can do this. It's not something I can hand to anyone directly; what I can do is slow things down, create the right conditions, and hold that space steadily enough that they find it themselves. Spring flowers are doing something similar right now: stopping you in your tracks, asking you to really look. That quality of attention is exactly what I'll be building Form & Freedom around.
π Come Find Me
Paper Bomb Peony
Summer Evening Classes - Roses & Peonies Two blocks of four Thursday evenings Β· Studio 3, Hoylake Β· from Β£120 per block
Block 1 (Roses & Hibiscus): 14th May - 4th June Block 2 (Peonies): 25th June - 16th July
Thursday evenings, 7-9pm. All materials and tools provided - along with refreshments and, naturally, biscuits. Each block is Β£120, including all materials, and if you book both series together you save Β£35. Suitable for makers with some experience, and plenty of encouragement for enthusiastic beginners.
Form & Freedom - A Wildflower Day Workshop Tuesday 20th May Β· Studio 3, Hoylake Β· Β£95
A full day working with wildflowers β less about following instructions, more about learning to trust your eye. We'll make, explore, and somewhere along the way you'll surprise yourself. A handful of spaces remain.
"You'll never look at a flower the same way again."
I'm Ling Warlow β artist, educator, and wildflower obsessive based on the Wirral. I teach paper flower making in my studio and at workshops across the UK, and I write about creativity, nature, and the making life over on Substack. If you've ever looked at a poppy and wanted to understand it from the inside out, you're in the right place.
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