Bush Flowers Book Review

We love books that bring us to a new world and this one does — unless of course you live in Aus­tralia! Bush Flow­ers: Aus­tralian flow­ers and foliage for dec­o­ra­tion and design was writ­ten by authors Cas­san­dra Hamil­ton and Michael Pavlou. They do an amaz­ing and com­pre­hen­sive job high­light­ing the beau­ty and details of native Aus­tralian flow­ers, from the fan­tas­tic waxflower to the beau­ti­ful­ly sculp­tur­al gre­vil­lea and the fab­u­lous­ly tex­tur­al banksia.

Chapters on Australian Flowers

The chap­ters include top­ics like sourc­ing, get­ting start­ed, arrang­ing, dry­ing and a love­ly plant library of focal flow­ers, tex­tur­al flow­ers, foliage, sculp­tur­al ele­ments and seed pods. We love all types of Aus­tralian native flow­ers, but espe­cial­ly blooms like waxflower!

TAble of Contents Bush Flowers Book

While our favorite sec­tion is the Plant Library (Sec­tion 05), but we know that you’ll love the Arrang­ing sec­tion. The authors encour­age you to break the rules, but as with all art, it’s impor­tant to first know the rules of good design before you can bend them to your will.

Christmas Bush

Christ­mas Bush is one of our favorite flow­ers from Aus­tralia! It lit­er­al­ly can last a month in a vase!

From the publisher:

Aus­tralian flow­ers are tru­ly unique. Banksias and flan­nel flow­ers, wat­tle, and waratahs all offer their own mag­ic of colour, shape and tex­ture. All across this coun­try there is botan­i­cal beau­ty right in front of us.

Native flo­ra and foliage offer a beau­ti­ful alter­na­tive in the sus­tain­abil­i­ty-chal­lenged cut-flower indus­try. Our diverse land­scape and cli­mate pro­duce incred­i­ble flow­ers that inspire our gar­dens and fuel our cre­ativ­i­ty. Here are over 50 plant pro­files with notes on grow­ing, cut­ting, con­di­tion­ing, arrang­ing and dry­ing, with florists’ insights on what makes them so special.

Bush Flow­ers will give you every­thing you need to bring Aus­tralian native plants into your home, and to see the bush around you in all its beauty.

Bush Flowers book Intro

Who should get this book

If you are in love with gre­vil­lea, waxflower, and euca­lyp­tus, this is the book for you! I love the details on fab­u­lous flow­ers like flan­nel flow­ers and paper­bark. Each sec­tion on the type of flower goes over details like its Botan­i­cal Name, Com­mon Name, Ori­gin, Avail­abil­i­ty, Grow­ing notes, Tips and Insight. For exam­ple, the insight on strawflow­ers pair­ing well with Banksia. Anoth­er great insight in this sec­tion is that Ago­nis is also called ‘After Dark’ which I love and that it dries well!

About the authors:

Authors of Bush Flowers Cassandra Hamilton and Michael Pavlou

Order the book