Snapdragon's garden

Wedding favours

Earlier in the year we were contacted by Elena, a Spanish bride to be, who had received one of our initial mirrors as a present and who wanted to give personalised mirrors to all the women who would be gathering in Barcelona for her wedding in July.

There were a lot of guests and much of June was spent carefully embroidering Spanish names onto pouches.

I have been desperate to know how it all went - and yesterday I got a lovely email from Elena saying how pleased they had been, and how all the guests loved the special gifts.

She also ordered more mirrors as thank yous to people who hadn't been able to travel to Spain.

It has spurred me on - for I have been intending to make a wedding section to the website for ages - we get masses of orders for hen parties, bridesmaids and favours, but I have never publicised the service - which is a bit dim really.

for there aren't many businesses which can produce such a personalised service - we can use bridal fabrics, match colours, embroider names and dates - at such an affordable price.

Something to get on with as soon as I tidy up the bright section . . . .

And the sun is shining

It is always great to wake up to blue skies on the morning of a wedding.

Today's wedding was at Ross Priory on the banks of Loch Lomond and Valerie and I headed out there first thing to make flower collars for the pillars at the front of the house.

first the wire collars filled with oasis went up.

Then the greenery,

alliums

and finally the cerise primulas

The brief for these flowers was that they were to be any colour but white - we decided to go zingy in a Sarah Raven kind of way.

A week ago I certainly didn't think that we would be wearing sunglasses while flower arranging

This is Valerie putting in the last of the alliums - and this is the view behind her

2 bouquets and some buttonholes

The bride lives far away and her dress was a stunning black silk woven with golden medalions

I sent a couple of bouquets with her bridsemaid so she could chose which worked best

tight and bright with allium, primula and daisies

and something more classical and airy with columbines and cow parsley.

There were also lots and lots of hellebore buttonholes.

Another green wedding.

Where Fleur and Jethro's wedding on Wednesday was all about colour and flowers; the wedding I did a bouquet and bits for on Saturday was all about foliage, seedheads and grass.

The bride works for the National Park here and wanted something simple, small, natural - the ceremony was to be at a local viewpoint, the reception a local village hall.

The brief was that her favourite colour is green, her favourite thing in my garden the honesty seedpods.

So the buttonholes were honesty, poppy seedheads with tiny teasels; the bouquet mixed in some stipa, echinacea, sedum and fennel - all in that beautiful creamy lime that you get at this time of year.

and the corsages equally simple with a bit of mint.

The bride and groom popped by the cabin today to say thanks - they had had a wonderful day, the sun shone, and now they are off round Europe in a camper-van - my kind of people.

Fleur and Jethro

My first job after University was cataloguing all the fittings for the as yet unbuilt House For an Art Lover on the South Side of Glasgow.  It is a recreation of a building that Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed for an architectural competition and as such, there were only plans for a few of the rooms and the outside.

This makes it the ideal venue for events - there are the beautifully recreated rooms - a music room, a darkly paneled hall, a dining space - and then there is acres of space left for all the back up functions like kitchens, admin and storage which are often so difficult to fit into historic buildings without compromise.

I was delighted when Fleur and Jethro asked me to arrange the flowers for their wedding - there is actually a florist who has the contract for the events there but Fleur wanted something different from these very cookie cutter cream flowers and grass in vases on offer from them (below- as they were automatically put out on the tables and I had to get them collected up).

The theme of the wedding was vintage - Fleur's dress was heavy cream lace, their cakes were to be displayed on old mismatched cake stands and we carried this onto the flowers with table arrangements in tea cups.

a mix of sweet peas and scabious with mint.  All the girls who were setting out the tables commented on how it was lovely to be able to smell the flowers.

I was most pleased however with the 2 large arrangements which were to flank the ceremony - the hall is a very dark, formal space with black paneling so I decided to go completely against that and create meadow like effects in 2 large urns with teasels and Scotch thistles

Softened with a froth of thalictrum and white cosmos.

My favourite effect was the delicate flowers of thalictrum glowing out against the black paneled background.

It was lovely to see how pretty it all looked and great to be working in such a beautiful venue. 

Culzean wedding

Today's wedding was a wedding I tried not to do.

Initially I said no because I had a wedding last weekend and we go on holiday tomorrow.  I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to weddings - they take up so much head space.  It is so easy to get tired and I don't ever want to do them on auto-pilot.

Then, when the list of flowers came in, I said no again and suggested another florist as it was all roses and peonies (see post below).

Then I got an e-mail from the bride.

Anne is an American Professor -  She wrote "I am an environmental health scientist who researches pesticide exposures among pregnant women and young children in the United States, Thailand and elsewhere.  One of the populations we study are floriculture workers in Thailand and Colombia, so we are not eager to buy a bunch of those kinds of flowers for our wedding, at least until the occupational health and safety regulations are beefed up in those places."

Well after that, I couldn't not do the flowers. Really.

So we did a deal where the flowers were collected from here and I spent yesterday and this morning making up vases and bouquets of garden flowers, untouched by pesticides.  The table centres are a mix of wild looking flowers - every colour - crammed together into glass cubes.

Anne's bouquet was peonies and dicentra - her bridesmaid's peonies and climbing roses.

There is a large arrangement of delphiniums and peonies and corsages with all sorts of tiny blooms.

This was the garden table when I finished making the buttonholes.

I am now very glad that I found time and flowers to do this wedding.

And best wishes to Anne and Tom and baby Jasmine.

Thank you to everyone who has voted for me in the Dorset Cereals Little Blog competition - I'm now in the lead, though not by much, so if anyone has still to vote - and would like to vote for me -, please could you?

J x

Roses and peonies

When people come to see me about wedding flowers almost the first thing that I say to them is "I'm not a rose and peony florist"

I hate the easy option, cookie cutter, roses and peony blowsiness of many wedding magazine flowers - made out of available all year, order by pantone, fly across the world unreal flowers.

However it turns out that in season . . .

I just might be a rose and peony florist.

These are for a wedding at the romantic Culzean Castle.

Making buttonholes

While I can see that making up elaborate flower arrangements for a wedding could be daunting, I do think that most people could have a go at making buttonholes.  Its fun and a bit more like jewellery making than floristry. 

It also means that you don't end up with those dull rose, fern and sea holly buttonholes that many flower shops seem to go in for.

First you need to choose flowers, get creative and look at seedheads and buds as well as flowers - remember that you can use bits of flowers if the whole is too large. You also need silver rose wires and floristry tape - both available all over the place.

This weekend I was making buttonholes for a wedding where I knew that it would be very hot so I chose seedheads and flowers with sturdy bracts - alliums, siculum, honesty pods and sea holly - rather than something soft like daisies or sweet peas.

Each individual part of the buttonhole needs to be wired - I use a fine rose wire for everything for simplicity sake - you can always use a few strands if its too floppy.

I doubt that my techniques are officially approved - but what you are wanting to do it to replace the stem of the plant with a piece of wire while still supporting it.  No-one is going to come and peer at your lapel and judge it - so don't worry.

With things like sea holly I poke the wire up the stem until it comes out the top of the flower.  Then I make a hook at the top and gradually pull it back down till it is secure.

Same technique for allium flowers

 

With something like honesty - I pierce the seedpod and then twist the wire round the stump of stem.

It doesn't really matter how you do it - as long as you end up with everything secure with not too much wire showing.

Then it is just a case of arranging your components together until you like the look of them - here I put eucalyptus and salvias behind sea holly with cut up allium and siculum flowers in front.

Twist all your wires together neatly to make a stem.  Cut to length.

Then use green floristry tape - it is slightly crinkly crepe like tape that will stick to itself - cut a length about 20 cm long and, starting just below the flowers wrap it round and round the wire to make a green stem.  It will be obvious how to do this when you are actually doing it - all my photos made it look complicated and its not.

And there you are- an interesting buttonhole.  Pin it on and be proud.

I would love to bring back the fashion for beautiful buttonholes worn every day - small special things.

The sun shines on the green wedding

It has been an absolutely glorious week of sunshine here in central Scotland - clear blue skies, searing sunshine.  All the flowers that I had been worrying about burst into bloom at once.

This weekend I have been arranging flowers for a wedding up at Kinlochard - at a marquee in the grounds of Altskieth House.

I dropped off the last of the flowers before lunch, just as they were taking the sides off the marquee and moving all the chairs outside.  Bliss.

This was the view from just outside the marquee.  Sunshine sparkling on Loch Ard.

Of course I should have realised that it would be fabulous hot weather - it always happens when I am decorating a marquee with globes of flowers.  Flower globes need to be put in place early - before the tables - so that means that they are hanging for 24 hours (at least) before the event.

They are hoisted up to the hottest part of the marquee and flowers are arranged at unnatural angles.  Of all arrangements flower globes are the most precarious that I do.  I live in fear of them wizening and wilting in the heat

However - when I went over to check this morning, there they were, fresh as a daisy - not a single wilted stem

The globes are lady's mantle; box; cow parsley; sweet rocket; and allium christophii.  I love the way that they go so well with the paper globe lampshades.

It really is a testament to how resilient garden flowers are - if picked and conditioned correctly - some people vere away from using the flowers in their gardens, supposing that they will not last like imported florist shop flowers but really that isn't true.

The bride's bouquet was a cool elegant mix of Cerinthe, Dicentra, Budding hosta flowers and Duchesse de Nemours paeonies.

The corsages and buttonholes subtle shades of green, cream and purple with salvia, siculum, sea holly and eucalyptus.

Table centres were simply apple mint in plain creamware pots.

Cool, simple, fresh, just what you need on a bright sweltering day.

Making a hanging globe

Hanging globes are pretty much as glamorous as you can get - great arrangements of flowers strung above you in a marquee or hall.

They are, however, pretty straightforward to make, if time consuming.

This afternoon I shall be making some globes for a wedding on Saturday, but I thought that I would post some step by step photos here of ones that I made last June.

You need an oasis ball - the largest size; cling film; a square of chicken wire and lots and lots of foliage.

1 Float the globe in water and allow it to gradually take up water.  Do NOT push it down or you will get air bubbles inside and your foliage will die.  If you are short of time make the water warm.

Wrap the wet oasis in cling-film - you want to make it water-tight but not have too many layers in one place (or stems won't go in).  The cling film keeps moisture in the oasis and stops the wire cutting in.

Wrap the globe in chicken wire for strength - again make it secure but try not to make it too overlapped or stems won't go through easily.

Form a hook at the top.

Don't worry what it looks like at this point - it will look awful - just check that its strong.  Hang at an easy height to work at - ideally where you are going to hang it eventually as it saves having to move it.

Start with one type of foliage - cut stems at an angle and poke in confidently - of your stem is too sappy to poke through the wire etc you can use a knitting needle to make the hole.

Then just carry on - adding in a variety at a time so that you can ensure that the circle shape is kept neat.  For this globe we used euphorbia, sweet rocket and cow parsley - we kept it very light and airy to compliment the marquee.

Then hoist the globe to hanging height and secure.

These also look wonderful with holly and ivy at Christmas.