The Amazing Sugar Flower
Topiary Tree!

When I saw a picture of a stunning sugar flower topiary tree made by the very talented Nicolas Lodge……….it got me thinking!  My first reaction on seeing it was thinking how much I would like to create one too – having mentioned it to our lovely CP Cake Club members we decided to all make one together.

In keeping with my usual style this idea escalated into something much bigger, not just a sugar flower topiary tree – it is 5’ 1” and then the pot and then then flowers so overall it is over 6ft tall – WOW!!

- Annabelle

Team effort...

Sugar Flower Tree

One of the things which made this project even more exciting is that our Cake Club members range from complete beginners through to professional cake decorators and EVERYONE could get involved by making flowers (or butterflies, ladybirds and so on) for the tree.  All our demonstration flowers from our are featured – it is a true team effort.  Emma (our Cake School Manager) and Sue Scott-Smith (one of our Cake Clubbers who’s passions include sugar flowers and spreadsheets!) are co-ordinated the project.

More ideas...

The next idea was to include an A-Z of flowers.

Workshops

We arranged lots of workshops so our cake clubbers could come and make flowers and leaves.  Many more of our cake clubbers also made flowers at home often experimenting and trying flowers they had never made before – it was a mammoth project but such good fun and really exciting.

Building the tree

Emma’s Dad constructed the polystyrene support for us (in sections to make our transporting easier).  It took over 3 days to position all the flowers, l eaves and insects.  The final bit was done at Cake International, NEC November 2014.

Where can you see the tree?

The tree was transported in sections, completed on Thursday 6th November and was on display throughout the Cake International Show, NEC, November 7th – 9th.  It is now in our shop window but will be coming to Cake International Excel 27-29th March 2015.

WIN an amazing hamper

Win this hamper

The equipment and colours kindly donated by our sponsors were put together in a hamper of flower making loveliness.  To win this prize we asked you to guess how many individual items there are on the tree – flowers, buds, leaves, butterflies, ladybirds, berries.

Having gone through all the entries (guesses ranged from 56 to 1.5million!) our winner was Claire Harvey.  Claire guessed 3556 items on the topiary tree (flowers, buds, leaves, ladybirds, bees, ladybirds and the caterpillar) - this was the closest guess.  The actual number is 3549.