the collective
The power of the collective means that we can support each other, take on exciting large-scale projects, and ultimately share the workload and joy of both making and growing beautiful flowers.
Julie
There is a thoughtfulness about Julie that is so achingly wonderful. Not only is she the kindest person you might ever meet, there is a natural generosity and tender-heartedness that pervades her floristry too - each element is so carefully contemplated and placed immaculately, with the most calming lightness of touch. And as for the subtlety of a perfect palette, Julie is - and always will be - the reigning queen.
Born in Herefordshire, Julie’s family then moved to a village in rural Cambridgeshire where her tender affection for flowers began, spending a lot of time pottering and playing in the garden alongside her parents who were – and still are – keen gardeners. Julie eventually left village life to go to university in Edinburgh, studying nursing and midwifery. After graduating she spent some time working in London before returning to Edinburgh to work as a midwife. Julie loved her job and worked alongside and was inspired by “many wonderful people,” but there was a desire to work with flowers, with the earth and in nature that she just couldn’t ignore. And so, soon after her second child started at nursery, she made the decision to leave nursing and began a new career filled to the brim with flowers.
Needless to say, Julie has never looked back. And if she’s not now pottering and playing in her own garden, her spare time is spent combining family trips to the beaches of Fife with peeks into other gardens around Scotland. Or, if the weather doesn’t play nice – “l love nothing more than sofa time; under a blanket, a nice candle, watching a film with my family and the fire on.”
Marion
One of those rare souls that can make anything and everything be its most beautiful, Marion has a touch that will create pure gold wherever it lands, but always - and this is important - in a way that seems so perfectly and flawlessly effortless. There’s magic in Marion.
Born in South Africa, Marion spent her formative years – from age eleven to twenty-five – in Cape Town. “Although I wasn’t born in Cape Town, I very much feel that I grew up there. I lived there longer than anywhere else – although Scotland is hot on its heels now.” Marion’s British ancestry provided her with an aspiration to move to the UK. “I had tried London on for size after I finished school but it wasn’t a good fit, so when I looked at coming back to the UK after art school I was enticed by Scotland’s beautiful scenery. Edinburgh looked charming, culturally rich and not as intimidating as London in its scale so I leapt into the unknown and haven’t really looked back.”
Marion has turned her creative hand to a number of jobs – a copywriter, a visual merchandiser and a marketing officer. Her marketing skills led to a job with a flower shop where she then honed new skills as a florist, and her love for flowers and for growing them developed apace from there. She offered her time as a volunteer at Granton Castle Walled Garden, and from that relationship the beginnings of the Ochre cutting garden first came into being.
Settled now in a coastal village in East Lothian, Marion’s spare time is spent “going on adventures with my favourite human(s) and our beloved dog Mack.”
Sophie
For those who know Sophie, she is a wondrously creative spirit who celebrates the wildness of nature but can somehow pare it right back to its most beautiful essence. Sophie’s artistry with flowers, and often vegetables too - the gentle and exquisite nuances she can bring out in the simplest placement of a leaf or two of radicchio are quite honestly breathtaking - is considered and always captivating.
Growing up in Perth, Sophie spent much of her time growing up exploring the surrounding countryside and journeying northwards for wholesome outdoor activity holidays. Perhaps a little unsure of where to channel her artistry, her career path took her from luxury brand fashion retail in her teenage years and early twenties, on to hospitality and then to floristry.
Last year she set out on a new adventure, which took her right back to the same Highland landscape where she spent many of those childhood holidays, this time with her partner Jamie, a chef. Together they have founded Fat Pumpkin Farm – ‘a small scale market garden and flower farm serving the seasons.’ Of course, we miss having Sophie here in Edinburgh, but our hearts are full to bursting knowing that she has found a place where she and her creative talents can call home – growing her own flowers and organic vegetables, hosting cosy candlelit supper clubs, and extending Ochre’s reach northwards. Watch this space.
With all of these exciting new ventures, life is busy for Sophie, but if she does have any spare time, you’ll find her in the kitchen rolling out a slab of homemade pasta dough. “It keeps my mind peaceful and at ease. I love the creativity it allows.”
Sarah
She will deny it, but Sarah has an ethereal and graceful elegance about her that is quite captivating. Like a dancer, there is a wisping line that flows through her, but it also appears in the way she works with flowers. If anyone can ensure that combination of stems, petals, ruffles and tendrils will hit that perfect golden spiral, it’s her.
Sarah grew up in the south of England – “From Edinburgh, go south. All the way through England until you reach the ocean. I grew up surrounded by some lovely things: warm seas, flint built houses, big ancient trees; and some, in my opinion, less than lovely things: Top Gear fanatics, impossibly expensive everything, a disjointed feeling of not belonging.” Moving to Edinburgh to study history at university, Sarah worked part-time at a flower shop, and a sense of belonging started to take shape.
After graduating, Sarah spent some time in London and Madrid teaching English, but her heart still yearned for flowers and she returned from Spain to work on a flower farm in East Ayrshire, “learning so much from the wonderfully knowledgeable late Andrea Jones and then also to the ever inspirational walled wonderland of Pyrus in East Lothian.” She also returned to work again at that same flower shop, which is where she went on to meet her new Ochre family.
When she’s not flowering or working in the garden, Sarah still likes to be outdoors – often cycling through the countryside (in her pre-Ochre days she took part in competitive cycling races) but also just “walking amongst woodland, noticing and observing. Foraging for mushrooms plays a big part of that too, especially in the autumn. The quiet joy of scuffling around tree litter, finding (and not finding) delicious or deadly delights – though more often than not they’re neither.”
Fiona
An absolute dynamo, Fiona is flawlessly unruffled by absolutely any floral challenge. Without batting an eye, she brings the romance, the colour, the passion and her absolute dedication every single time - but always with the purest precision. If you have Fiona in your corner, then you have absolutely nothing to worry about.
Hailing from the sandy stretches of Broughty Ferry – once known as the Brighton of Scotland – Fiona initially studied Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee. When she left art school, she wanted to make sure she could continue to use her creative talents, placing her artistic skills at the centre of whatever career path she might choose. A love of flowers combined with that desire to express herself brought her to floristry and so she embarked on a college course to learn more. A newly professionally trained florist, Fiona moved to Edinburgh in 2019 to work for the wedding team at a flower shop, meeting her future Ochre family there and completely falling in love with her new city.
Having begun her floristry journey directly after art school, Fiona didn’t have to dabble in too many careers before she found her calling. “But when I was a student, I worked in a pub which I really loved. Whenever I go back the regulars are always keen to know how I’m getting on.”
They say once an artist, always an artist, and Fiona still paints – but now just for fun and to help her wind down. She also enjoys switching off by heading into the various worlds that video games can offer. Or you can also find her refocusing her mind and body alike, lifting weights at the gym. Which goes some way to explaining how she can carry the heaviest of wedding urns without even breaking a sweat. As already said, always unruffled.
Claire
She’d say it was the mother in her, but the truth is Claire has always and forever been a good listener, a supporter and a nurturer. A hopeless romantic that will always be the first to cry at weddings, a lover of all things blousy and soft, with a keen eye for gathering beauty. Claire has a sharp sense of order, and a soft spot for spreadsheets; she is always holding things together and checking each and every elegant detail.
Born in Yorkshire – and after a very brief spell in Saudi Arabia – Claire grew up in the Highlands, right at the foot of Ben Wyvis in an old Victorian shooting lodge turned family-run hotel. Although her and her younger brother spent what might be seen as an idyllic childhood clambering through heather and swimming in freshwater pools, Claire was always utterly desperate for the fast pace and bright lights of city life – and is reminded of this by her father, often. Glasgow came first – to study History of Art at university; and then New York where she interned at art galleries and wrote for fashion magazines by day and slung cocktails by night. With her bright lights and city-that-never-sleeps cup very full, perhaps over flowing, Claire returned to Scotland six years later and only then began to fully hold dear and properly see the sheer beauty of the natural landscape that she had once deemed so colourless and dull.
On moving back to Scotland, Claire continued to work predominantly in the arts, as a press officer for an arts festival, for the development team at the National Galleries of Scotland, and latterly as a fundraiser for the Fruitmarket (an incredible art space full of wonderful people). But flowers had always held her attention, so after a twenty-year career path in the arts, she made the decision to change things up and fill her world with flowers. And here she is.
And as for where you’ll find her when she’s not flowering, she is happiest at home with her family all sat around the kitchen table, nose in a cookbook, a cat on her lap. A far cry from those dazzling city lights, but exactly where Claire now needs to be.