Wick’s Amanda Coghill takes medal at Chelsea Flower Show
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Amanda Coghill pictured prior to setting off for the Chelsea Flower Show. She said winning a silver medal is ‘amazing’.
A WICK florist has been awarded a silver medal at the Chelsea Flower Show after beating fierce competition to take the award.
Amanda Coghill, of Amanda’s Creative Florist in Dempster Street, won second place in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Florist of the Year 2011 today (Thursday, May 26) for her jockey’s silk design.
The 26-year-old said it was an experience of a lifetime and that she is overjoyed to have won an award in her first year of entering the competition.
“It was amazing,” she said. “In the flower world it’s one of the highest awards you can get.”
She added: “Just to be there was brilliant but to actually get an award made it even better.”
Amanda secured the medal with her entry which consisted of flowers carefully arranged to look like a jockey’s silk shirt.
“We actually had to design and make a jockeys’s silk, the shirt that they race in, made from at least two thirds fresh flowers and foliage material,” she explained.
“I had a layered base of cut aspidistra leaves along with layered leucadendron leaves and from there just built up layers for the main pattern from textured materials and other flowers.”
Back in October Amanda claimed her place as a finalist in the RHS Chelsea florist-of-the-year competition at the Glasgow heat with a 90 out of 100 mark for her floral shawl, which the judge described as “gorgeous”.
She was the only the only Scottish finalist in the senior section.
Sarah Horne, of Sarah Horne Flowers in Leamington Spa, took the gold medal and was named as the RHS Chelsea Florist of the Year 2011.
