meeting a growing need

Georgia opened her flower school in 2010, prompted by her discovery that there was a gap in the market. After running a business supplying wedding flowers, she had moved to teach floristry courses at East Sussex’s Plumpton College. “I realised there were no courses I would want to go on,” she says. “Either you went to college or you became an apprentice, but there was nothing in between. I wanted to create a one-stop shop with flowers, food and tuition provided, where people could pick what they wanted to learn.” Her aim was to provide somewhere where students could choose courses to suit their needs and add to their skills as they progressed. Today, she offers bespoke one-to-one sessions and longer courses designed to help people do just that. At first, the school operated from a building in the garden of her previous home in the village of Laughton. “When the school got bigger, it became obvious that we needed somewhere that wasn’t at home, and at the same time we wanted to move house,” she says. Since 2012, home has been an Edwardian house in Eastbourne, with its walled garden, and the school is run from a workshop in nearby East Hoathly.