Paper Wildflower Workshop: Form and Freedom

I came to paper flowers unexpectedly – and changed my life to fit them in. I'd been running a stationery business for years when lockdown brought it to a sudden stop. I started walking - every day, with my twins - along the Wirral coast and through the hedgerows near home in Hoylake. And during those walks, I rediscovered something I'd had as a child but quietly lost: a genuine, slightly obsessive love of British wildflowers.I started recreating them in paper. One flower led to another. I couldn't stop. What hooked me in was, quite simply, looking. I spent a lot of time that summer just looking. To make a convincing Corn Poppy or a wild Dog Rose in crepe paper, you have to study it properly - the way the petals sit, how the stamens emerge, the position of leaves along a stem. You have to see it, really see it, in a way we almost never do when we're just walking past. That, more than anything, is what I teach.Why I love teachingI'd been making on my own for a while before I started teaching, and – honestly – I think teaching made me better at it. There's something about having to explain exactly why you shape a petal a certain way, or how to get that particular curve in a stem, that forces you to understand your own craft more deeply. And I love teaching because of what I see happen in the room. People who've told me they're "not creative" (I hear this a lot!) - pick up a piece of crepe paper, and an hour later they're holding something beautiful that they made themselves. It never gets old.I also find that making paper flowers together is genuinely connective. It’s absorbing, genuinely mindful, oddly relaxing – it seems to make people talk more honestly than they would in most social situations. I've had the loveliest conversations in my studio.A bit of backgroundI was funded by Arts Council England to develop my work as a paper botanist, which still makes me smile a little every time I say it. I've created large-scale wildflower installations for National Museums Liverpool, been commissioned for photoshoot and TV props, and taken wildflower-making into over 29 schools and community groups across the Wirral, working with more than 600 children through projects including The Paper Meadow. I also contributed work to the Hillsborough Memorial Banner, which now lives in the FIFA Museum in Zurich.My work has been featured in Country Living and Country Homes & Interiors, and I write a Substack called The Paper Wildflower - a long-form letter about nature, natural colour, and the particular magic of making things by hand.I teach regular weekly evening classes at my Hoylake studio, day workshops including my new Signature Day - Form & Freedom - and occasional multi-day Paper Garden Masterclasses in Norfolk and Wales for those who want to go deeper.All levels welcome. All you need is curiosity and a willingness to look at a flower for longer than usual.Ling Warlow, Paper Botanist — Studio 3, 3 Wood Street, Hoylake, Wirral