British Flowers Week 2026 | Meet the Designers Panel Talk

Andy is a London based florist, flower grower and dancer.

With an established career in dance, he retrained in 2020 in floral design at London Flower School, freelancing with growers and floral designers in the UK and New York, before launching his own design studio in 2022.

He now balances a freelance dance career with floral design, focusing on weddings, events and brand work. A passionate gardener, he took on a three acre site in Hampshire in 2024, focusing on shrubs and perennials to enable him to grow the garden whilst maintaining dancing and film work.

Andy creates floral designs with seasonality and a garden led approach, incorporating a dancer’s aesthetic, bringing shape and movement to his designs, believing that both sides of his career constantly inform each other.

Cynthia Fan is an artist and researcher whose practice explores plant morphological development through a combination of scientific inquiry and visual expression. She holds a PhD in plant molecular biology from University of Edinburgh and the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, where she investigated the genetic mechanisms regulating leaf shape variation in Begonia.

Her work reflects an ongoing relationship with the plants around her, weaving together research and artistic practice to examine the intricate networks connecting plants, humans, and their environments. This inquiry takes shape through exhibitions, installations, writing, and curated projects.

Cynthia has presented work internationally, was an artist-in-residence at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and contributes to The PLANT Magazine. Her first book, Among Willows: Essays on plant form and family, will be published in May this year by Batis Books.

Hannah is the owner and creative director behind Elder & Iris, a floral design studio based in Leeds in the North of England. Her work is inspired by the garden, and informed by the seasons, using what is available here in the UK. Her love for the garden started as a young child, following her Dad around and admiring her Granddad’s garden in Nottingham where she grew up.

Having trained and worked as a nurse and midwife, Hannah started working with flowers and her garden to help her unwind, slow down and process grief in her previous career as a nurse. She fell in love with how they can change the way we feel and experience a space and time.

Hannah has been running Elder & Iris for almost four years and is passionate about showcasing seasonal ingredients from the UK, and doing this as sustainably as possible.

Nate Moss is a lifelong gardener and nature lover, guided by a deep reverence for the natural world. Seeking to unite these passions, he joined the slow flower movement and founded Goldwell Flowers in 2023. From his farm, Nate cultivates seasonal British flowers for use in his own work, as well as supplying florists and the public. Committed to sustainability, he continually seeks to refine his growing practices and broader landscape work to support biodiversity. He champions the use of native flora in his design work, which is rooted in biophilia - an approach that aims to foster a meaningful connection between people and nature.

Vervain is a floral design studio founded in 2014 by partners India and Christopher. With backgrounds in design, they approach growing and working with flowers as art, shaped by a lifelong immersion in nature. Each of Vervain’s compositions balances an intuitive use of colour, wildness with intention, celebrating texture, movement and imperfection. The result is floral chaos, orchestrated by nature.

They have been growing flowers at their studio for over a decade, allowing for an intimate understanding of their medium and an unwavering respect for seasonality. They have become known for their collection of bearded iris varieties through @fallsandstandards_, which informs and inspires much of their work.