Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
National
Shiler Mahmoudi

Woman, 53, covers her house in cascade of 1,000 home-made poppies

A woman covered her entire house in 1,000 remembrance poppies that she made herself.

Fiona Hooper, 53, decorated her terraced house with a cascade of poppies made from bottles that reach from the ground to her first floor window.

The display is 12ft high and is made of bottle ends that she collected over a year.

Fiona, who works in an arts and craft shop, cut the ends of plastic bottles and painted them black and red and fashioned them into poppies.

After attaching them to wire, she created a sea of poppies that she draped over the front of her home.

Fiona created the installation with 1,000 poppies that she made from bottles (Graham Hunt/BNPS)

Fiona, from Dorset, said: "Other people also collected for me and I even had a lady from Derby I met on holiday who sent me two boxes worth.

"There must be 1,000 bottles and I cut the bottoms out of them into flower shapes and painted them with acrylic paint.

"I bound them together with wire and when the 12ft display was complete I rolled it out of the first floor window and it worked perfectly.

"I’m thrilled with the result and the response has been amazing, with people from as far afield as America donating to my JustGiving page."

She was inspired by the Tower of London poppies art installation in 2014, which consisted of 888,246 ceramic red poppies, each one representing a British or Colonial serviceman killed in the War, to create the display.

Fiona was inspired by the Tower of London poppy art installation (Daily Mirror)

Remembrance Day has a special place in her heart as her dad was in the RAF, her grandfathers in the Navy, and her uncle was a Royal Marine.

Remembrance Day or Armistice Day falls every year on November 11 and is marked with a one or two-minute silence held at 11am.

It recognises the precise time that the first world-war ended in 1918, this being the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

In the UK, poppies are worn to commemorate the day, and wreaths are often placed on war memorials in ceremonies across the country.

The origin of this tradition lies in the opening lines of war poem In Flanders Fields by Canadian officer John McCrae, first published in December 1915: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row”.

The second weekend of the month, which is closest to November 11, is known as Remembrance Sunday.

On this day, the Armed Forces and their families from Britain and the Commonwealth as well as emergency services and any others who lost their lives due to conflict or terrorism are all remembered.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.