Pretty Pastels at Hendall

Back in the summer we had the pleasure of working at Hendall for some lovely weddings. It's one of our local venues and it's a truly beautiful setting with the "wow" factor.

For one of the weddings we were given the brief to do some summery, pale, pretty and natural flowers with a simple, just-picked look. The bride liked the delicate prettiness of meadowy flowers like feverfew, cosmos and scabious, which is always music to our ears! We tied little jars of cosmos and feverfew to the ends of the chairs and included a simple mixed foliage garland along a handrail. For extra impact we used two large free-standing urn arrangements with hydrangea "Annabelle", the wonderful dahlia "cafe au lait" and blue larkspur.

Ceremony table

Garland - 7m long!

Urn arrangement 

Perfection! Cafe au Lait growing in the polytunnel

Queen of Sweden Roses

We've had a difficult year with our roses as they have been plagued by aphids and suffered from water logging over the winter which was not good! They are perking up now, but one rose which has definitely been our star performer is the beautiful David Austin blush pink variety Queen of Sweden. Despite its delicate appearance it seems to be really robust and has been flowering non-stop since June. It has a good vase life, lovely strong stems and is fantastic for weddings. We love it! It starts out almost coral / apricot before fading to a wonderful pale pink which is simply beautiful. It looks wonderful with just some foliage in a bridal bouquet or combined with other flowers for tables etc.

Table flowers in our lovely vintage Wedgwood urns

Wedding table flowers with roses, peonies, and hydrangeas

Bouquet of Queen of Sweden Roses for a wedding at Wakehurst Place

Perfect Wedding Magazine Article

Really pleased to discover that we are featured in a beautiful article in Perfect Wedding magazine this month about a gorgeous vintage inspired wedding from last year. The flowers were all in tones of nude / dusky pinks, and we used some lovely cosmos, achillea, astilbe and dahlias with silvery green foliages like senecio and eucalyptus.



I hope you all agree it looks rather fabulous!

Shades of Plum and Peacock Feathers!

Back at the end of the summer we created some bouquets for a lovely bride who wanted to incorporate some beautiful peacock feathers into her vintage-inspired scheme. So we used an array of plums and purples and pinks to reflect the intense colours of the feathers, including dahlias, scabious, cosmos, ageratum and eryngium, plus lots of blue-green eucalyptus foliage. The wedding has been blogged on the site of the hugely talented photographer Sara Reeve who is based in Brighton, it's definitely worth a look! http://www.sarareeve.com/weddings/firle-place-wedding-%E2%80%93-tanya-nick%E2%80%99s-elegant-1920s-inspired-vintage-wedding  In the meantime here are some of her beautiful photos...

Bridal bouquet with trailing eucalyptus foliage

Bridesmaid's bouquet with teal ribbon binding

Beautiful colours!

We're on Love My Dress!

Really excited to have been part of a lovely wedding that took place back in August at Gildings Barn near Dorking that has now been featured on the fabulous blog Love My Dress. This blog is amazingly popular and always has gorgeous weddings for ideas and inspiration. For the full story see http://www.lovemydress.net/blog/2013/10/1920s-1930s-vintage-barn-wedding-jane-bourvis.html

In the meantime here are some pics of the flowers we supplied... Lots more in the feature! All these beautiful photos were taken by Heather at www.brighton-photo.com

The bride wanted a palette of antique/dusky pinks for a 20's garden party vibe

We used ammi, achillea, zinnias, feverfew and astrantia among others...

The bride and her bridesmaids arranged the flowers for the tables

Bridal bouquet

We love dahlias!

Yes, I'm officially the worst blogger ever. It's very bad indeed to not have posted anything for so long... We have had a really busy summer doing lots of lovely weddings and just never seemed to have a spare minute! Now things are quiet as we are winding down for the end of the 2013 season. The last of the dahlias are being picked and just couldn't resist a little post to show off their loveliness. They start flowering from mid-July and carry on until the first frosts. They come in all shapes and colours, from little pom poms (great for buttonholes) to huge luscious beauties perfect for big displays. The medium sized waterlily types are best for bouquets as they last longest. 

Bouquets from a wedding we did at Upwaltham Barns, dahlias mixed in with phlox, salvia, fennel etc

Orange pom pom buttonhole from the same wedding at Upwaltham Bans

So pretty!

Dahlias growing in our cutting garden

Dahlias of all shapes and colours in jam jars waiting to go to the church

Close up of a lovely crimson beauty!

Wedding Flowers at Farbridge

Farbridge is a lovely wedding venue near Chichester, which is a bit of a journey for us from here in East Sussex. Quite fortuitously though it is literally 5 mins away from West Dean gardens, which is one of the most inspiring and well-managed walled kitchen gardens ever. So... once we had set up the flowers we had a little outing...
Anyway, back to the flowers... the brief was informal, country style, using just whites and greens to complement the rustic but chic stone barn.  So we used a mixture of larkspur, roses, sweet peas, cow parsley, astrantia and some stocks with foliage like senecio. For the tables we put the flowers in some zinc jugs and the bouquets were bound with some hessian and raffia. It all looked really pretty and the bride was very happy! It's always at the forefront of our minds when selecting flowers and making up the scheme to avoid a "twee" effect when doing unstructured, country arrangements. I think we managed it!

Bridal bouquet bound in hessian and raffia

Bridesmaids' bouquets

Table flowers in zinc jugs and church candles

Ceremony room with garland

View of the main reception area

Jugs for plinths