Dried flowers are enjoying a renaissance as people look for alternatives to fresh bouquets and arrangements, inspiring one Pembrokeshire grower to create her own designs from home-grown blooms and woody plants.

Christine Bevan’s enthusiasm for growing and gardening originates from her childhood on a dairy farm at Llanddewi Velfrey, where she helped manage the flower and vegetable gardens.

“We were pretty much self-sufficient before it became fashionable,’’ she recalls.

A career in landscape garden design and as a National Trust gardener beckoned, and – just as a garden evolves – so too has her career with her new collection of decorative dried flowers wreaths and bouquets.

The eye-catching designs are made from plants she has grown from seed and air-dried herself, species that are well-suited for drying including alliums, hydrangeas, grasses, cornflowers and montbretia to name but a few.

They are all brought together on frames she fashions from locally-grown dogwood and willow, soaked overnight to make it pliable.

Dried flower arrangements have evolved considerably since the 1990s when they were at the height of fashion, with designs now based more on a loose, cottagey-style that appeals to all generations.

This is well reflected in Christine’s approach to her own garden where autumn-flowering tall perennials and grasses currently bask in a rich colour palette of oranges, sultry reds and purples.

Designing wreaths and bouquets is a natural progression from gardening, she suggests, where design is key.

“Design comes into gardening all the time, that need to combine colours and textures. You have to know your plants, know what will look good and where.’’

She doesn’t have a favourite plant, there are too many to narrow it down to one, but aside from flowers she loves grasses and plants with coloured stems, which add welcome splashes of colour to the garden in the depths of winter.

If you snapped Christine in half, the word plantswoman would run right through her core and, just as gardening was a shared family experience when Christine was growing up, her eldest daughter, Holly, a doctor, has inherited her passion for gardening.

Together they have produced the branding for The Wild Welsh Flower Co.

“One of the joys of gardening is that it can be a shared experience and it can be enjoyed by all generations,’’ says Christine.