A schoolteacher in her 40s became the chosen florist for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation: the extraordinary story of Constance Spry who blazed a trail with flowers. 

Adored by her many female protégés, and revered for her wit, grit, and creativity, Constance Spry was a sheer force of nature. Though her career began with a few modest floral commissions for movie theatres and friends, her immense talent would soon be sought after by all of high-society London. Her business savvy and love of teaching left a legacy for women in the floral arts forever.

Spry founded Flower Decoration Ltd. at the age of 41, after a successful career as a school headmistress. Her earliest creations included unconventional flora like seed pods and cabbages arranged in bird cages, shells, or even fish pans that she rustled up from her pantry, demonstrating her creativity, frugality and irreverence. This avant-garde style of flower arranging is documented in her 1934 book, the now classic, “How To Do The Flowers.”

FLOWER DECORATION LTD. 

In 1929, Constance Spry (who went by Connie) unveiled her first floral shop on posh Belgrave Street in London, called Flower Decoration Ltd. She shocked London’s elite by using common hedgerow flowers and the window displays drew so many people the crowds had to be dispersed by police.

Despite her prodigious floral commissions, Constance Spry kept her head on her shoulders and her sleeves rolled up: she is said to have done all her installations on-site and in person throughout her storied career, and when her house was bombed during the Blitz, she just went on working. 

Once the shop was open, frustrated with the lack of vases to accommodate her wide, airy, crescent-shaped arrangements, she designed her own, with one of her assistants making them out of papier maché. She would send the designs to Fulham Pottery who would then cast them in Devon earthenware. The resulting matte-white unglazed Constance Spry urns are highly collectible to this day.  

The Spry florist shop was a hub of activity where the shopgirls wore chic grey dresses designed by the couturier Victor Stiebel and the arrangements were elegant and jewel-like. It was also the location of high society hi-jinx, such as the time they delivered a single flower in a glass milk bottle to the flamboyant playwright and composer Noël Coward, who was staying at Claridge’s. It was said to have delighted him.  

Similarly, a commission of a bouquet for the opening of the studio of the cross-dressing artist Hannah “Gluck” Gluckstein pleased her so much she immortalized it in the painting “Chromatic.” The top fashion houses also commissioned arrangements for their salons, and it would not be long before the royal family, too, took note of the avant-garde and inspired florist.  

By 1934 Spry opened a larger shop in Mayfair to accommodate her now 75 employees and would establish her first school, which taught women business as well and the art of flower arranging – a revolutionary concept at the time.

CONSTANCE SPRY’S WEDDING FLOWERS

It’s hard to believe now that the idea of specially designed flowers for a wedding wasn’t a thing until Spry came along in 1930s London. Gone were the fusty and formal bouquets of the Victorian era when Spry hit the circuit. For the 1933 wedding of celebrated photographer Cecil Beaton’s daughter Nancy to Houston Smiley, which was covered by British Vogue, she created a metres-long white-washed garland of fresh flowers that wrapped around the five bridesmaids in the wedding procession. The all-white floral bouquets were filled out with sprigs of eucalyptus, pampas grass and green hydrangeas which, even now, look highly contemporary. 

For the occasion of the 1935 wedding of Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott to Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, she fashioned a bridal headdress from waxed crêpe-paper replicas of orange-blossoms and forget-me-nots that appeared to be floating on gold wire. 

In what came to be known as her signature design, these light and airy floral arrangements made with white flowers, often Calla lilies, became the de rigeur look for society weddings of the era. There was hardly a wedding at St Margaret’s or St Paul’s Cathedral in London that didn’t showcase Spry flowers, including those of the literati, such as Somerset Maugham, who hired her for his daughter Liza’s nuptials. 

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CONSTANCE SPRY, ROYAL FLORIST 

In 1937, American divorcée Wallis Simpson hired Spry to decorate the Château de Cande, in Monts, France where she wed King Edward VIII, causing his abdication from the throne and changing the monarchy forever. The controversial union remains one of European history’s best love stories, and though the wedding was small and no other members of the royal family were present, the rooms were lavishly decorated with vases of cascading lilies, peonies and rambling roses. 

Years later, Spry was asked to design the flowers for Queen Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation. The flowers were donated from grand private residences and shipped in from other countries in the British Commonwealth, including lavish displays of lilies, roses, carnations, sweet peas, gladioli, peonies, delphinium, lotuses, frangipanis, and protea. Her Majesty’s all-white Coronation bouquet included stephanotis from Scotland, orchids from Wales, carnations from Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man, as well as her favourite flower (also featured on the invitations,) English lily-of-the-valley.

A lesser known fact is that Spry’s team was also asked to prepare the luncheon that followed the Coronation, with the students at her Winkfield Place school for the domestic arts (including her collaborator Rosemary Hume’s soon-to-be-famous Coronation Chicken).

Spry and her team also decorated the Covent Garden Opera House for the occasion of the Shah of Iran’s visit hosted by a young Queen Elizabeth II in 1959. They created dresses out of white carnations to cover the naked statues to make them more discreet for his royal tour. 

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THE CONSTANCE SPRY ROSE

When famous British rose cultivator David Austin set out to grow Spry’s eponymous rose, it was to be a full and robust pink rose with the musky scent of myrrh that was a climber, much like the woman herself. It remains a favourite of English gardeners.