What does a simple arrangement actually take?
Simple Willow Works makes flowers for people who want something considered, not complicated. Cut stems, honest materials, no filler foliage padding out the price.
Oliver Mercer started Simple Willow Works in 2014 after three years working in a large commercial florist in Bristol, where the job was mostly processing bulk orders for hotel lobbies and corporate receptions. The work was fast and the flowers were fine, but the arrangements were built to a formula: filler first, feature stems second, ribbon to finish. He left in the autumn of 2013 and spent several months working with a grower in the Wye Valley, learning which stems hold and which collapse, which combinations are genuinely complementary and which are just traditional. Simple Willow Works opened the following spring with a folding table at a local market and a very small float.
The name came from a willow tree at the edge of the grower's field in the Wye Valley. It is not a brand concept. The first year was mostly small bundles and a few wedding orders passed on by word of mouth. The turning point was a garden party commission in the summer of 2016 for a family in Numazu who wanted flowers that looked like they had come from the garden rather than a shop. That job took two days of preparation and produced something Oliver still considers the clearest statement of what the work is for. The photographs from that event still get shared occasionally, which is how most new event enquiries arrive.
