Meet the Elderflowers
A family of gentle and playful visitors, Elderflowers visit dementia services, NHS and residential care homes across Scotland. Click “About +” to read their stories.
Lily
About Lily
Lily lives above a chip shop in Glasgow with a few of her siblings. Her favourite colours are yellow and green and her favourite flowers are daffodils.
She loves poetry, especially the one about daffodils. She loves singing, dancing and playing her clarinet. She loves words and collects them in her sparkly notebook along with lots of helpful advice that she receives from the people she visits.
One day she hopes to write a book, but she is very easily distracted.
Dotty
About Dotty
Dotty is proud to be from Devon and sister to Handsome and Tilly. You could always find Dotty in the sea in Devon; running from the school bus to the sea in all weathers was her hobby. She worked her way up to Scotland with stop-offs to lakes, rivers and puddles, eventually landing in Portobello with her swimming costume and backpack.
She likes to share her love of swimming, baking and singing with everyone she meets. Her aim is to get the whole family in the sea at the same time.
Handsome
About Handsome
One of the far flung cousins from Devon. Brother to Dotty and Tilly Elderflower.
A keen tinkerer, can turn his hand to anything, so long as someone does it for him. Enjoys whistling, folding and strolling. Dislikes ironing and has a mild phobia of hairdressers.
Will sing for compliments and is a hopeless romantic, or more accurately, romantically hopeless.
Spud
About Spud
Spud is the middle child of Ma and Pa Elderflower. A keen learner, he goes to the library most days to continue reading the dictionary from beginning to end.
He is well-known for telling jokes, and entertains his brothers and sisters so well that they sometimes have to beg him to stop.
Always smartly turned out, Spud wears a tie at all times. He is ready to sing and play his ukulele at the drop of a hat, sometimes without being asked.
Pickle
About Pickle
Pickle Elderflower is perfectly named. She’s sweet and sour! The family wallflower. And a secret poker champion.
She works in the library where she spends compulsory days rearranging the shelves to her tastes, filing Burns poems next to unrequited love stories, next to revolutionary texts.
Don’t be fooled by her quiet demeanour. Her worn out dance shoes are proof that when she goes out dancing she always misses the last bus and hitches a lift home on the milk float.
Bonnie
About Bonnie
Bonnie Elderflower is on the brink of a life changing adventure - she is going to leave the Partick chip shop behind her and cycle to France to make her living as a travelling troubadour, living on her wits and her varied musical talents!
She just needs to get started with building her bicycle. And learning a song on her Ukulele. Also map reading is a problem. And she doesn't speak French.
Dipsy
About Dipsy
Glamorous Grande Dame and Aunt of the family. She spent many years in Canada before heading to Hollywood where she worked in films with all the greats.
Now settled in Edinburgh she adores all her nieces and nephews but her ‘favourites’ change frequently.
She is generous, gregarious, loves to dance and hates to say good-bye. Favourite colour: PINK. Favourite song: “Fly Me to the Moon.” Carries favourite items in a very large “Kelly Bag.”
Blossom
About Blossom
Blossom resides in Leith with her many brothers and sisters. Tired of tidying up after them all, she'll sneak off to the quiet of the shed for a secret gin and her dreams of travelling the world.
Blossom loves hearing all the gossip from Great Auntie Dipsy, and sometimes can be found dancing on the table when no-one is looking. She went to Finishing School and likes to tell everyone that she is fully finished.
No-one can fold a napkin quite like Blossom.
Buddy
About Buddy
Buddy Elderflower thinks he was born in the 1960’s but can’t quite remember. Monthly he likes to full-moon-croon from his bedroom window and weekly he plays one-armed ballgames (badly) in the noonday sun and/or rain. Mostly rain.
Being a biggish Brother, Buddy has rather unusually for an Elderflower, a real-live-job battering, chipping & pickling eggs in a fish ‘n chip shop in Partick, not particularly far from the road upon which he lives, mostly harmoniously and almost harmonically in the attic of a ramshackle, old, one room per floor five-storey house near the River Clyde in Dear Auld Glasgow Toun.
Honey
About Honey
Honey is a proud Glaswegian who will tell it like it is; she's always keen to make new pals and have a laugh.
Her cute wee doggy, Rascal, likes cuddles and often tries to run away.
You'll often find her knee-deep in carpet swatches and paint brushes as she is currently renovating the “good room” in the house she shares with sisters Lily and Bonnie and brother Buddy.
Petal
About Petal
Petal is a wonder. Her siblings are forever wondering where she is and what she’s up to!
Most often found lying in the middle of Leith Links or Portobello beach gazing up at the clouds wondering why frogs jump and always what’s for dinner. Eating cheese, singing, having baths and dancing are her favourite things, preferably all at the same time.
Toots
About Toots
One of the many siblings from Leith in Edinburgh, Toots lives at the bottom of the garden in what is affectionately known as The Shed, with her husband, The Professor, who is a very busy academic in something or other.
Toots is a keen bagpipe player, having (nearly) mastered three Scottish tunes, and likes twirling and counting. Toots is not so keen on muddy footprints or shoving grannies off buses.
Sweetie-Pie
About Sweetie-Pie
Hello, it’s Sweetie-Pie here. I’m the youngest in the family. My Scottish accent has traces of Finnish when I speak. That’s because Ma and Pa Elderflower visited Finland when Ma was pregnant and I popped out there.
I have a weakness for farmers and I found my own farmer, Tom the Farmer, at a farmers market in Devon. It took him many years to arrive in Scotland as he was ploughing every field in the way.
I love Christmas, it’s so exciting so I’m counting days all year around. I like singing and my sisters and brothers and cousins. Thursday is my favourite day!
