It’s Flowerona’s 3rd birthday! Here’s a review of the last 12 months…

Today is Flowerona’s 3rd birthday! Thank you so much for reading my blog and for all your lovely feedback via email and social media over the last 12 months. I thought I’d share with you some milestones…

• The main highlight has to be winning the award for Best Wedding Flowers Blog at the Wedding Magazine Blog Awards at The Ritz! I can’t quite put into words how much it meant, and still means, to me.
• Being privileged to attend the RHS Chelsea Flower Show Press Day and visiting the show that week was such a wonderful experience. I wrote the most blog posts ever in a week.  It resulted in May having the highest monthly statistics in terms of unique visitors and page views for the year.
• I was in ‘flower heaven’ when I travelled to Holland to visit two floriculture trade fairs and the Aalsmeer Flower Auction.
• Interviewing Shane Connolly at Heal’s in London. It was a real pleasure to speak to Shane in such convivial company. I’d love to do more of this kind of work in the future.
• Attending courses at fabulous flower schools and receiving stunning bouquets from florists.

And there have been lots more highlights including attending events and press shows, plus meeting people in person and online.

I still find it funny that sometimes when I meet someone new and they ask me what I do, that it’s very common for their next question to be…how do you earn money? It’s quite a personal question, isn’t it? But I think it’s because the blogging industry here in the UK is relatively young and some people are still trying to get their head around how it all works.

Well, I write for magazines and websites, have advertising on my blog, occasional sponsored blog posts and train florists on social media at flower schools. It’s still my dream to become ‘the floral correspondent’. If I say it out loud and share it with you today, perhaps, maybe…it really might happen! Just as you have a royal correspondent who appears on television when royalty are in the news, I’d love to be the floral equivalent. So, when the next member of the royal family gets married, I’d be given the role of telling you all about the flowers which were used for the event…rather than someone saying ‘a white and green bouquet’. It would help educate people about flowers, which would in turn help the floristry industry.

I LOVE writing Flowerona and am so grateful for the amazing opportunities I’ve had over the last twelve months. Thank you very much for accompanying me on my floral journey so far and do let me know if you have any feedback or comments. I’d love to hear from you…

(Image: Rona Wheeldon for Flowerona)