Saying it with flowers

There was the day she had to do the flowers for the wedding of designer Zandra Rhodes.

Or the time she sat in the back of a car at six o’clock one morning, furiously making up arrangements for a TV film set.

Or the years she spent working for the BBC, supplying everything from the floral tributes for late EastEnders, to the plastic blooms in Del Boy Trotter’s flat, to the Christmas tree used in the annual broadcast by the Queen herself.

Now she spends her days at her shop in Christchurch Road, creating spectacular displays for pubs, clubs and the RussellCotes Gallery as well as the usual round of Valentine’s Day, Mothering Sunday and brides, but it wasn’t always like this.

“My parents split up and I basically had to leave school and earn my own living,”she says.

“I went to this very posh flower school, the Constance Spry, and when I first started work we had to prepare buttonholes for the men travelling to work in the City of London.”

After having her first baby she managed to get back into education, gaining her Fine Art degree and a job when she was 30.

“I saw an advert for a florist and went along to this place that was like a huge aircraft hangar,” she remembers.

The position was with a prop hire company and: “They needed someone who could re-create the flowers of historical periods for television and films.”

There was no internet then and her degree made it easier for Lizanne to know where to search out the information.

“They’d say the film or programme was set in 1760, or the Tudor period, and I’d do all the research and deliver the goods,”she says.

After setting up her own business, work rocketed. “All the set designers from the BBC and ITV would come in,” she says.

“I was asked to do the flowers for the Wogan set, and for Esther Rantzen’s Hearts of Gold.”

This was a big break and a steep learning curve, too.

“I didn’t realise at first how important the Health and Safety was,” she says “Everything artificial on a set must be fireproofed so I sent in a sample bouquet of artificial flowers and they set fire to it.

So we tried to fire-proof the next one and the same thing happened. Eventually I realized you’d have to wrap and fireproof every single stem and petal in every single flower.”

But there were perks; meeting the gracious Sir Terry Wogan: “An absolutely lovely man,” and Esther Rantzen: “She was very jolly and pleasant.”

Her most prestigious arrangement was for the Queen. “I had to supply the decorated tree used for her Christmas broadcasts.”

Did she ever meet Her Majesty? “Sadly not! Our driver would deliver it to Buckingham Palace and have all the fun of watching the security people check its roots, and go through the branches, but I was always too busy.” She did manage to meet director Steven Spielberg, however, who gave her the object lesson in perfectionism.

“When you meet him he’s extremely quiet and he doesn’t say much but his attention to detail is immaculate,” she says.

They worked on the movie Empire of the Sun, set in Shanghai in the 1940’s following the Japanese invasion, although Lizanne’s stint was filmed on set in Surrey.

“In one shot there is a grand piano with a photograph of the boy’s parents,” says Lizanne. “Spielberg got us to make a bouquet to be used in the photo where he’d got the actors to pose in 1930s wedding outfits.”

This image wasn’t even scheduled to be in the film but: “Spielberg wanted it done in case the camera picked it up as it panned round. In the end it didn’t even appear on screen.”

News of her attention to detail spread and she was asked to do the ultimate setdresser’s flower scene; the room occupied by tragic Miss Havisham, the jilted bride surrounded by her mouldering wedding feast, for a production of Great Expectations.

Surely all you must have to do is decorate the scene a few weeks in advance and let nature take its course?

Lizanne gives a hollow laugh. “You’ve forgotten health and safety, you can’t have mould spores floating around and the smell would be disgusting.”

So once again she enjoyed herself, creating, then ageing, artificial flowers to produce the heart-rending display.

“I love creating beautiful displays, it’s what florists do,” she says.

“But when they asked me to do Only Fools and Horses and EastEnders I loved that, too.

“For EastEnders I’d have to do floral tributes for funerals – these would be very lavish and traditional to the East End. If I was asked to do flowers for something like Pauline’s birthday I’d have to work out the kind of flowers she would be given by her husband and how much he'd spend on them."

She adored working for Only Fools and Horses. “They would ask me to do something really kitsch, like an arrangement for a nightclub that Rodney was visiting, or the flowers for a wedding.”

So were the truly appalling plastic flowers that used to grace the sitting room at Nelson Mandela house hers, then?

“They were! I loved doing that. You’d often have to go to charity shops and buy the worst vase or old plastic flowers.”

And she did have the fun of attending the set where the legendary OFAH cast would be larking about.

It’s different to working in a florist’s shop but, says Lizanne: “I don’t think I’ve met anyone in my career who hasn’t been nice. I think flowers bring out the best in people.”