This Week
end of season draws closer
The blankety mist this morning, followed by rich golden sunshine lighting up the fallen apples in the orchard and picking out the white sheep on the hills, is powerfully autumnal. We still haven't suffered a frost at the flower garden, where we are sheltered by excellent high walls, and although the dahlias and other powerhouses of the garden are slowing down, there are still some new...
bijoux opulence
For the last wedding of this season we picked buckets of decadent, plumptious flowers in shades of burgundy, cream and blush pink, along with lots of spilling foliages (jasmine and clematis tendrils; fruiting fig branches; lacy black elder leaves) for the wedding party to use for decorating their tables, and three big buckets of fragrant, silvery eucalyptus for twining up the bannisters. ...
country house flowers
What fun last week to fill the bothy up with buckets of interesting things from the garden - Chinese lanterns, great long boughs of climbing roses, a jumble of feathery old man's beard, fuzzy peach chrysanthemums, fleshy fragrant tomato stems, brilliant blue late delphiniums, the papery puffs of pink-turning hydrangea - with no especial colour theme, and then to transport them...
buckets of flowers
The leaves are beginning to turn golden and we feel the change of season in the garden, but we have still been picking buckets and buckets of flowers. In the last week we've sent buckets of flowers to London, Birmingham, Hereford and Shrewsbury, and we've provided wedding flowers to fulfill a light but very colourful brief, and funeral flowers for a lady who loved to garden. ...
new things
It's taken me a long time to feel confident enough to use things like fully blown roses and things going to seed in our floristry, even though I've often used mature seed heads - they look much more on purpose, whereas I think I worry that if an exquistely lovely stem has some bits fresh and other bits seedy, the customer may think that I'm fobbing them off with something not at its best or -...
Everything softens
As Henry rattled off with his trolley for collecting leaves this morning, taking the dog out, the sun was rising behind the apple trees and beginning to spread a warm orange glow across the far fields, but the air was still very cold and it felt like autumn; it didn't take us long to fill the little trolley with fallen golden brown oak leaves and little bits of twig. Now the sun is...
fresh wild colourful wedding flowers
For Rhia and David's marriage at Bromfield Church at the weekend we picked all our freshest, juiciest-coloured flowers in the garden: a rainbow of pinks, corals, shades of orange, palest lemon, cream, white, some bright greens and a sprinkling of mauvy blue. The wedding party bought buckets of our garden flowers with which to decorate the marquee, and asked us to decorate the church with...
foamy flowers
For a wedding in Wales this week we created foamy, frothy flowers in soft shades of pink and cream, with generous foliages in the form of fronds and tendrils. Fluffy white-and-pink hydrangeas, globular old-fashioned roses, sparkly panicum grass and creamy phlox creme brulee all featured strongly. It was sheer girlish pleasure to create! For a smaller wedding at the magical...
flower crown
We are always learning things about ourselves. I used to think that I didn't like making flower crowns, but it turns out that I just don't like not being able to make nice ones - I don't like to do something I'm not good at! If brides ask for flower crowns, however, of course we have to make them, so I have had some practice over the last few years and, guess what, now I find...
sunflowers
Along with zinnias and the brightly coloured dahlias, another flower which seems to be positively thriving in this heat is the sunflower. This year we have grown two varieties: Valentine, a shortish, stocky lemon-yellow variety, and Autumn Beauty, a mix with each plant producing individual softly blended flowers in shades from warm cream to chocolate brown. Both varieities are...