Sally Hambleton: "As a little girl, I would open my eyes in my room and see flowers everywhere."

Sally Hambleton's childhood was surrounded by flowers. Despite the fact that life led her to work for 10 years in the cold world of numbers, in 2003, she pursued her dream of devoting herself to what she is passionate about: floral design. Since then, her brand is a reference of creativity, beauty, and quality in the flower industry and her unique bouquets are a real luxury to the eyes and for the heart.

Who is Sally Hambleton? 
My Sally Hambleton brand is a true reflection of who I am and what I like. My husband always tells me that the market research I do is based on myself. It is a floral design company where access to materials and containers is linked to arranging the flowers that lead you to many more things: to textures, textiles, colors, sensations ...
I capture a lot of what has made me very happy during my 50 years of life, so England, for example, is very present in my universe.

My mother is English, I am the eldest of 4 sisters and my mother, after 50 years in Spain, is still 100% British, she keeps her customs and that is what she has transferred to us. When I was little, I would open my eyes in my room and I saw flowers everywhere: on the curtains, on the wallpaper, on the cushions, and on the clothes...everything had flowers around me. 

How did you get into the world of flowers? 

I studied interior design but ended up working in stockbroking for 10 years and got laid off in 2001. I found myself with my severance money and nothing to do and I went to England to study floral design and, when I returned to Madrid, I set up a small workshop in my house in 2003 and it immediately took off and I started to grow.

I spent the first 5 years without social networks, without investment in advertising and from the beginning we were sending flowers to well-known personalities and for very special moments. There are people who have come from abroad to live in Spain and, thanks to word of mouth, have ended up being our customers. We have been in the media from day one. Now with social networks, all this has changed and our exposure and the diffusion of our brand has increased exponentially.

When you look at a flower...what do you see in it? What does it convey to you?

Flowers often say things without you having to write anything on a card. For example, this morning we made a funeral wreath, which I love. Our flowers accompany people in very important moments of life: when a baby is born but also when someone dear to them dies. Sometimes there is no need to write anything, flowers express everything. It is magic what happens in this sense with flowers. 

Everyone likes flowers and it is difficult for this to happen with any other type of product or object. In general, everyone who receives flowers will always tell you that it is the best gift you can give them.

How do you advise someone who comes to buy a bouquet from you?

First of all you have to be clear that flowers are a perishable material. Today I can have beautiful ranunculus and next week they may not be so good. Now we sell online but when people call on the phone we ask who the bouquet is for, what their home is like, what the bouquet is for.

I choose the flowers and try to match everything more or less. But in my store you will never find tropical flowers. I don't work with them. They come from far away. They are not very sustainable and, for me, they have very aggressive colors and textures that don't fit my style.

And which ones are your favorites?
For me the ideal flowers are those that you can find in an English garden in June or in a bulb garden like the one at Sissinghurst, a romantic, lyrical, and sometimes wild garden, created by the writer Vita Sackville-West in the 40s of the twentieth century in Kent. Divided into plots or "garden rooms" and inspired by the "Arts & Crafts" movement. 

 For me it is important that the bouquets of flowers reflect the time of year we are in although the florist is a couple of months ahead of the seasons. In winter we have bulbs like tulips, hyacinths, ranunculus. In summer roses, peonies, hydrangeas... For me the trends are set by the seasons and the flowers that nature gives me at any given moment.

What is the most curious or original bouquet you have created?
The most original we have sent was, for Valentine's Day, a bouquet of 500 red roses ordered by a woman for a man.

How does a flower get from a garden to a vase?
Flowers are produced in the cultivated fields. The seeds are planted there. They are cut bit by bit as they bloom. Many times, when it's domestic, they're harvested and packaged the same day, so between the time the flower is harvested and you have it in your vase, it's only been three days. If it comes from Holland, that increases to a week or 10 days and, if it comes from Colombia, that rose may have been out of the water for 12 days.

In Spain, the flowers are harvested manually and less aggressive fertilizers are used than those used in Holland so the Spanish flowers are somewhat more fragile but carry fewer chemicals, something that I increasingly take into account also.

What can be done to make flowers last longer at home?
In the end it comes down to common sense. The flower does not want heat, or sudden changes in temperature or drafts, and needs water. Maybe you can extend their life a day or two. The average life of a bouquet is 4 or 5 days. 

Dried flowers have become very fashionable but to me they are corpses that have lost the colors and vitality of the fresh flower. But I understand that people want to keep their bouquets dry, precisely because of how expensive they are, although there are flowers that do not dry well at all as tulips, for example.

Virginia Woolf said, "Until we are able to understand the seductive beauty of a simple flower, we are unable to understand the meaning and potential of life itself." what can we learn from flowers? 

From flowers we can learn about hope and patience. I think it's a great act of faith when you plant a seed in a pot, it sprouts and turns into a flower. It's pure magic! Flowers also teach us that sometimes it is necessary to stop in order to sprout again. For me, the world of flowers is a huge field of knowledge and continuous learning.

You organize trips to visit gardens in England linked to the Bloomsbury group, in the region of Sussex and Kent. Explain to us a little about this type of trip.

These are themed trips around the world of flowers. We visited different beautiful gardens in the area of Sussex and Kent and some mansions like the one of the painter Vanessa Bell, sister of the writer Virginia Woolf, who belonged to the so-called Bloomsbury group, along with other artists and intellectuals like the economist John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, or E.M. Forster. This group was ahead of its time. They grew their own vegetable gardens, made and painted their own furniture for their homes...

While flowers are a very traditional element, you have managed to innovate in this sector with your beautiful hatboxes, ice boxes, picnic baskets or Zubi bags, for example. What is creativity for you and what role does it play in your day to day life?
I have been making hatboxes for 20 years I have been making hatboxes for 20 years. When you work with a material as attractive as flowers, it gives free rein to creativity and to do different things. I make a lot of bouquets in hatboxes, picnic baskets, water jugs, and coolers, because I want to counteract the ephemeral part of flowers with something more durable that you can then store and reuse. For me, it's important that the container for the flowers is special as well. We put flowers inside anything that can hold water but that, at the same time, is viable, that does not increase the price excessively.

What is the creative hallmark of a Sally Hambleton-designed bouquet?
Our bouquets have a loose flower aesthetic, irregular in the heights of the flowers. They are not compact bouquets. There are many shades in the colors but also in the textures. There are contrasts between the flowers and they must always have some foliage of the moment. It is the style of a bouquet that you could have created with wild flowers from an English cottage garden. A light and romantic style.

You have also created a "Flower School" and a "Flower Club". What are they about? 

The "Flower Club" is a club that works by subscription. You subscribe and we send you bouquets of seasonal flowers every week or every two weeks or once a month without you having to go and buy them. It's a way to always have flowers at home without having to worry about it. At the moment we have opened 25 places in this club and, if everything goes well, in the future we will open it to more subscriptions.

 In the "Flower School" I give workshops to people and professionals who want to learn how to make a Christmas wreath or who want to dedicate themselves to the world of floristry, which there is more and more interest in now.

Do you meet people who want to copy your style?
Yes, of course, although I always tell them not to copy because they will surely get a bad copy. I always remember a phrase that is not mine, but with which I feel I identify with, that says: "Do not do what I do. See what I have seen. Nourish yourself with all the beautiful things in life and your own style will come out of it". I have been nourished by all the ballets of the world (my mother was a classical ballet dancer), opera, museums, gardens, old houses, travel, and decoration. That has always been very present in my life.

Do you have any new projects in mind?
Well, I am planning to write a book. I was supposed to write it during the pandemic, but at the time I felt it wasn't the book I wanted to do. But now I think it is time to write a book and I would like it to be didactic and inspirational, with the aim of bringing flowers to the final public and let them learn what flowers to buy, how to mix them, how to decorate and beautify spaces with flowers.

What does travel mean to you? 
Travel for me is excitement and I get excited easily because I find beauty in every corner. To travel is to stop, to absorb everything. Traveling is also surprise. Now I'm going quite a lot for work to Castellón and Valencia and I'm excited about that light of Valencia and to see the orange trees and return on the train with a bag full of oranges. Traveling is getting out of your routine and discovering new things.

I have seen the best gardens in the world in England, Spain, Belgium, New Zealand, Colombia, and Morocco. Spectacular nature in Mexico. But, for me, the gardening country par excellence is England. One of the most watched programs on British prime time television is about gardening.

What is luxury for Sally Hambleton? 

For me luxury, on a personal level, is being where I want to be, when I want to be, with who I want to be, and surrounded by the things I want to be.

On a professional level, at Sally Hambleton we have the best quality flowers, the best floral designers. Mixing the best product with the best team, that's what creates those little works of luxury craftsmanship that are our bouquets. No two bouquets are the same.

You would never get tired of traveling to...

I go to Africa quite a bit and would love to go see the Valley of the Roses in Morocco but I never get tired of traveling to Mexico and Colombia. I love to travel to Latin America.

Your next trip? 

Well, to Mexico where I will go to teach and give some workshops.