About Us

Wild & May is a family enterprise based in East Sussex, covering Uckfield, Heathfield and Crowborough.  Named after my two daughters, one of whom has a tendency to the wild, and the middle name of the other is May.  And my hair is a bit wild - I used to have a “proper job” and had to keep it tidy, off the collar, presentable.  

After a career in public service, I have grown a passion into a business ... swapped the laptop for a potting bench, casework for compost.  These days I can be found planting seeds, pricking out, potting on, growing, pruning, and collecting cut flowers from our garden.  And my hair can be a bit of a mess. 

The family help - my husband takes care of the infrastructure projects, the heavy lifting and built a polytunnel for growing tomatoes … I have appropriated it.  My daughters give social media advice.   The dog, Wilson, sits faithfully in my workshop providing moral support as I design and make. 

I create seasonal, sustainable, slightly wild floral designs and specialise in natural funeral flowers.  

Here at Wild & May we aim to reduce our impact on the environment as far as reasonably possible.  

For all our designs we use flowers and foliage in this order - home grown, local, British & seasonal, imported (Dutch), imported (rest of world).   This reduces our carbon footprint, and that of the arrangements you buy.  

We also aim to minimise waste so we don't use plastic, floral foam, oasis or any sort of tat in our designs.  We are moving towards using British willow frames (rather than wire) for all our wreaths, thus avoiding the use of materials which cannot be composted.  

All plant waste is composted at home, and returned to the garden to feed next years flowers.  This reduces landfill. 

We also re-use flower buckets and delivery packaging, and recycle where we cannot re-use. 

Our commitment to sustainable practices sets us apart. 

We are fortunate to have a large garden where we grow cut flowers, a variety of foliage, fruit and vegetables, we keep hens and bees.  I have a lovely brick outbuilding for my workshop and sell at local markets and through commissions.

The addition of a polytunnel to the garden in 2023/24 was a welcome one although it already is too small! We are on a slope and it can be a frost pocket here, but we do get sun in the different parts of the garden all day.  There are plenty of brick or stone walls for climbing roses, space for a mixture of foliage and flowers, shrubs, perennials, bulbs and annuals. 

As the garden develops and the years progress, we are learning to make best use of the spaces, how to crop bulbs such as tulips, then mulch before growing on annuals for cutting in the same space - something of a juggle, and subject to the weather conditions.

We have a no-dig system, do not use any chemicals and are committed to wildlife-friendly gardening and flower growing. 

In 2024 we made the decision to move towards a more sustainable, zero waste form of flower growing and floral design.  We sourced British willow and learned to make willow wreaths which form the basis of all our funeral wreaths.

To check how well our designs composted, we created two 30cm diameter willow wreaths one with a moss base, and one with a straw base secured by natural raffia. 

The same selection of foliage and flowers were added to each wreath and they were placed outside on a stone patio for ten days until wilted.  Then they were placed on bare earth and the decomposition over time noted.

Both straw and moss were easy to work with, the moss base retained its shape for a few days longer than the straw although there appeared to be no difference in the speed of wilting of the foliage or flowers (and the Sweet Williams lasted for ages regardless of base).

After several weeks both frames are beginning to decompose, returning willow, moss / straw, foliage and flowers to the soil.  

In the spirit of experimentation, we also decided to check how compostable (or not) various forms of packaging and binding are.

We only use natural colour Kraft paper for wrapping designs and this can be re-used, recycled, burnt or composted depending on your preferences.

We avoid the use of plastics such as cellophane, which does make packaging for transport more tricky when the flowers need a water source due to length of journey for example.  So we might lend you a bucket, or a cool box instead!  We also never use poly-ribbon, but source British velvet and silk ribbons for use in wedding bouquets. 

Binding (wrapping the stems of a bouquet for example, or securing the base to a willow frame for a wreath) is usually done using wire or string.  We are trying to avoid wire because it is single-use and creates waste. 

To check whether the (green) string, raffia and silk ribbon we were using composted we cut lengths of each and placed them in the hot bin.  Having dug what remains of them up a few weeks later, we have established that they have all at least started to compost so we can be sure that when we sell you a "compostable" wreath, it will do exactly that. 

Moss is commonly used in floral designs such as the Christmas wreath which uses Sphagnum moss.  Other sorts of moss used include blanket moss and Reindeer (or Finland) moss.  

It grows naturally in clusters or mats in damp and shady places including woodlands in Britain where there are over 30 species of moss.  They can soak up more than eight times their weight in water and mosses play an important role in the creation and continuation of peat bogs.  

We are committed to only using moss from sustainable sources, which has been responsibly harvested.  This will help to reduce environmental degradation and unethical practices in moss harvesting.

We also experiment with other materials such as straw for the base of wreaths, use twigs, sand and pebbles to create the mechanics for some of our floral designs.