La Dolce Vita
Umbria, Italy in JUNE 2026
Five lovely days staying in a 14th century stone hamlet overlooking a valley of olive groves in the Umbrian countryside …
As always we couldn’t wait to get there! This time we were all to be staying in 4 beautifully renovated ancient villas in the country just outside of the beautiful medieval town of Spoleto. And the location did not disappoint- Borgo di Pianciano would have to be one of the prettiest most peaceful settings for a retreat: ancient stone buildings overlooking an idyllic valley…. la dolce vita indeed! We were then given a private tour by the owner of our borgo’s family palazzo in the valley below us- and Francesco’s pride in his family’s heritage and kindness in sharing it with us made it a very special experience….
Once again we found beautiful locally grown flowers…
The lovely Silvia from I Giardini di Mafalda, and her friends from Idroflor, grew all the beautiful blooms for us- and the manger in the old barn we were setting up as our workroom proved to be the perfect place to display them!!
All I needed to do was unpack all the pretty paraphenalia we brought from home- vases, secateurs, aprons, tote bags, ribbons, course notebooks etc- and we were ready to welcome our guests…
let the workshops begin!
The WORKSHOPS…
in the mornings we created florals in URNS, BOUQUETS we tied with silk ribbons we hand dyed organically, and in small ceramic VESSELS for a farewell feast table
in the afternoons we dabbled with WATERCOLOUR paints, creating botanical sketches and landscape impressions of our valley view…
PICKING BLOOMS…
A huge highlight of our overseas workshops is always picking at a local flower farm. This time we visited the beautiful small flower farm planted by Silvia at I Giardini di Mafalda on her family farm about an hour south of us.
It was so lovely to see Silvia again- she drove 6 hours to deliver flowers to us in Puglia when we ran our workshop there in 2025…. so it was wonderful to visit her this time- especially as she had a year of tribulations- including floods and wild boar rampaging through her farm.
We filled our buckets to overflowing with garden roses, foxgloves, achillea, queen anne’s lace, corncockle, scabiosa, rudbeckia, larkspur and so much more floral beauty… and played with her lovely dogs Posy and Joe Cocker
The Farewell Feast…
all too soon la dolce vita was drawing to a close! The people, the flowers, the beautiful setting- and the FOOD!- were all wonderful and it was going to be hard to say goodbye….
Once again Mark and Sandra cooked up a storm for the entire retreat- and the final dinner was a truly epic feast: picture pretty aperitivi, porchetta stuffed with herbs and raisins, roasted peppers, red onions and tomatoes followed by a divine Torta al Limone
Our rustic meadow inspired vases and installations added to the ambience- and it was a lovely night!
But none of us were looking forward to returning to real life!
