EMILY PARDY

Wiltshire, Hampshire & Dorset

A BIT ABOUT ME

Art, design and all things creative have been a huge part of my life ever since I was small. This passion for all things artistic spurred me to try and find a career within a creative setting after leaving school. Studying architecture at university and having worked in an array of different creative jobs from architectural assistant to furniture designer, I’ve had my fair share of experience in working in front of a computer. Even though these roles allowed me to be creative, it just wasn’t enough.
Outside of work I have a black called Basil, who I’m not ashamed to say is the absolute love of my life, besides my husband that is! I have always loved musical theatre since I was a child and am a member of my local amateur dramatic society, where I’ve been involved in a number of productions over the years. I love all things creative interior design, architecture and hope to get back into sewing soon to start making my own clothes.
I fell in love with gardening and all this botanical when we moved into our first house which had a garden. It wasn’t much but it was our little space to tend to. Having grown up in a small village in the countryside, having an outdoor space to call mine had always been important to me. The idea of growing flowers, plants and vegetables, to see something appear from nothing was so exciting! The joy I got out of seeing spring bulbs emerge out of the ground and seeing things that I had planted flourish in the summer months brought so much joy!
It soon became obvious that flowers were becoming a huge interest of mine and I just wanted to learn more about their care and how to design with them. I started studying at the Academy of Floristry and completely fell in love with the industry. In discovering floristry I found my true passion!

My favourite flower… Butterfly Ranunculus or Anthuriums

EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS

Level 2 Technical Certificate in Floristry - Results pending

During my Level 2 Studies I carried out my work placement in a traditional floristry shop in Salisbury where I went on to become a full-time member of staff. During this time, I gained a huge amount of experience in a customer facing floristry role and developed my commercial floristry skills in gifts, weddings & events and sympathy work. Because of this I believe I have a well-rounded knowledge of commercial floristry.
In my own business (From Eden Floristry, which I started at the beginning of 2022) I am trying to focus on weddings & events, particularly more unusual & larger scale installations where I can more unusual and creative briefs. By working as a freelance florist, I hope to get the opportunity to develop these skills further in my own work by learning from the expertise of other florists. I love to learn new and different ways of creating pieces and so working alongside other florists would be a really exciting opportunity to do this!
I’ve been lucky enough to work on many different work experience opportunities including projects with the Academy of Floristry, such as being part of the team working on the 2022 Festival of Flowers held at Salisbury Cathedral in May. I have also aided the flower team at Salisbury Cathedral for some of their Christmas display preparations.
I have a background in architecture, having studied this at university and worked as a junior designer, and I have a range of experiences in many different creative fields. I feel that this artistic side of myself has always been there, but needed to find the right medium for me to express it fully. I feel these different avenues of creative forms, whilst at university and in employment, has allowed me to explore a variety of different techniques and gained a wide range of skills and insights into different styles/mediums which I am now able to bring into my floral work.

Experience:

Intermediate / 2 years