Meet Harald Altmaier: the go-to florist for royals, the super rich and trendiest fashion brands

It’s barely November but the sleek yet discreet Battersea headquarters of Pulbrook & Gould has already been transformed into a pseudo Santa’s grotto.

The atelier’s blank white walls are being studded with oversized wreaths prepped for the festive rush (which begins in October) while a team of five florists beaver away on elaborate Christmas arrangements for some of their more daring clients (goat-horn centrepieces covered in real snake skin? No problem).

To an outsider, it feels, well, a bit premature. But for Harald Altmaier, the company’s senior florist, it’s perfectly normal. ‘We started working on Christmas in January,’ he deadpans.

Altmaier, 53, heads up the creative vision of one of London’s most prestigious flower houses. Established in the 1950s by Lady Susan Pulbrook and Rosamund Gould (one of Constance Spry’s protégées) the company operated out of ‘Lady P’s’ basement at her Halkin Street home before moving to a proper shop off Sloane Square (the shop relocated in the Nineties to Mayfair, driven out of SW1 by the hike in rents). The clientele was naturally from the upper echelons of London society, ‘weddings for the Duchess of Kent and Princess Alexandra, or the ladies of Kensington who would send their butlers for the London house on Monday and the country house in Norfolk at the weekend,’ says Altmaier.

These days Pulbrook & Gould’s client base might remain faithful to the ‘aristocracy, politicians and high-net-worth individuals’ (the aforementioned wreaths start at £300 and can cost up to £2,500) but the work is often far more international. ‘We fly to Rio, Los Angeles, Monte Carlo, the UAE to dress private events and residences —whether it’s a chalet in Switzerland or a yacht on the French Riviera.’ Anyone we might know? ‘The thing is, Pulbrook & Gould is notorious for not bragging about who they work with,’ Altmaier demurs (although a quick scan of the @pulbrook_and_gould Instagram account shows its most recent — and fabulous — collaboration with the rebooted Fiorucci brand along with various royal houses).

You wonder to what lengths Pulbrook & Gould goes to satisfy its customers. ‘Anything is possible. Except planes. We once tried to dress a private plane for a pop star who wanted to impress his girlfriend on a flight to an exotic island, and he wanted the inside of the plane completely decorated with flowers. They wouldn’t let us take off. On planes, everything has to be secured or stowed away. We had to abandon the project.’

Altmaier learnt his craft back in his native Germany, in the town of Saarlouis near the border with France and Luxembourg. With no family link to floristry (his mother was a seamstress, his father a mechanic) he had ambitions to ‘go into visual merchandising, photography or floristry’. He settled on the latter, training as an apprentice for three years — ‘learning all the botanics, how to run a business, how to deal with clients’ — and attending floristry school once a week in nearby Saarbrücken, before moving to Australia to work with the floral wizard of Oz, Kevin O’Neill, in Melbourne. ‘Oh he was the darling of the social scene. We did all these huge weddings, balls and parties throughout the high-flying Eighties, for the Kerry Packers and Alan Bonds of the world.’

Moving to London in the early Nineties was a pure fluke: ‘A friend of mine suggested it and I said “Well, London? It’s all smoggy and smelly and they have bad teeth.” She laughed, and said I was more English than I thought.’ And she was right: the blooms and materials that Altmaier had worked with in Australia paled by comparison. ‘I love the softness of English flowers and the greenery of London — the trees, the parks and beautiful private gardens. It’s like a collection of villages sewn together.’

Altmaier’s adopted village is Kennington, and a home he shares with his partner, Terry, a baker. His home is nothing like the floral cacophonies that are the Mayfair shop and Battersea HQ: ‘I have a little garden with nothing but white roses, olive and bay trees and buxus balls.’ Inside the house, it’s ‘white jasmine and white hydrangeas’ — the lack of colour quite deliberate. ‘I work with colour and patterns all day long so I just need to keep a quiet eye at home, to relax me.’

Returning to the shop, Altmaier says that Pulbrook & Gould’s high-net-worth male clientele seems to be its biggest spenders. Are more men starting to take more of an interest in flowers? ‘It depends on what sort of man. There is a type of man who doesn’t “see” anything — the type of furniture he has at home, how his wife wears her hair. They have a nervous breakdown if their wife spends £70 on tights, but think nothing of spending £2,000 on a cigar or blowing money on a weekend fishing. They don’t see beautiful things. But you’ll be surprised at the growing number of men that have a great eye, are extremely detail conscious. That’s the market.’

And what of the proliferation of those trendy online companies, jostling for ‘likes’ and so keen to woo millennials? ‘Online is different. It’s for people looking for a quick and efficient way to send a thank-you. People come to us because they like the generous lush look of our arrangements. They want to feel that they get given a proper service. And that you know them by name.’