Sarita Handa

We saw the house on a video call before we saw it in person, and it was impeccable. Every surface had already been decided, and decided well, which gave the flowers a narrower brief than usual: not to announce themselves, not to correct anything, but to take the mood the house already held and give it one evening.

The host loves the wild. She watches colour closely, how it behaves beside stone, wood, water, glass. So we worked with the house rather than over it.

The table was kept low and long so the room could still talk across it. Muscari and allium through fresh foliage, white ammi opening above the line, thistle for the dark note. Close enough to look gathered rather than arranged.

The foyer was the welcome, and it was deliberately grand: double-headed lilies at height, white against the dark of the entrance.

On the counter we built something raw. Driftwood laid the way you find it in a meadow, a trunk fallen and still holding, flowers growing out of its crevices, succulents settled in where moss would be. Nothing was trimmed into obedience there.

One night, cut for it.