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

Wedding Flowers for Blackstock Barn

Last week we did flowers for a wedding at Blackstock Barn near Hellingly, East Sussex. The brief was "informal, country-style", with a blue/mauve colour palette. We decorated the tables with jam jars of relaxed style flowers, including the first of the alliums, purple aquilegias, sweet peas, bluebells and other early summer delights. The bridal bouquet was an eclectic mixture of things, including some lovely pink ranunculus, which seems to be enjoying the cool damp weather (glad someone is!) Also added an allium for texture - they don't have an onion scent when super-fresh, also doesn't hurt to combine with sweet peas!

Country-style bridal bouquet

Jam jars waiting to go into the van

Early Summer Wedding Bouquets

We recently did a bridal bouquet and bridesmaids bouquets for a wedding at a private venue in East Sussex. The bouquets were made with stocks, aquilegias, cow parsley, ranunculus, narcissus, foliages and the first of the English sweet peas. Our sweet peas are not anywhere near flowering yet - this time last year we were picking them but the weather etc etc... It's a stuck record... But hopefully once they get started they will go on until at least October (we can hope!)

Bridal bouquet with lace binding

Bridesmaids bouquets

Flowergirl posy

Altogether...

Tulips in May

The tulips are here looking lovely. We haven't got that many this year but we always plant at least enough for a wedding or two, and we make sure we choose the more unusual varieties that you don't see so often in the shops! They really are a versatile cut flower as they can come in several forms, my favourite being the double types, e.g "Angelique" (pale pink) and "Mount Tacoma" (white) which have more petals and look lovely in a mixed bridal bouquet. We are madly in love with double flowers here but always bear in mind that they don't make good flowers for pollinating insects so we make sure that we plant other nectar-rich things to make up for this. See http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Sustainable-gardening/Plants-for-pollinators

Spring hand-tied with tulips, narcissus and anemones

Tulips in our cutting garden, taken by James Balston

Tulips and Madge taken by James Balston

Tulips and larkspur taken by James Balston

Princess Irene tulips in our garden taken by James Balston

We love.....

....Peonies! Okay, so they're not out yet, but they are are growing well and we are still planting out the divisions that we potted up back in Autumn so deserve a mention... We have several plants in our cutting garden and then about 100 or so in the field that we will be constantly adding to until we run out of space as surely one can never have enough?!? They are still relatively young and will not produce many flowers to start with but will become more and more productive as the years go by... We have a range of colours, from white to ivories to pale pinks, deep pinks and reds. My all time favourite has to be Sarah Bernhardt as it is just so pretty and unashamedly blowsy.... Once we start making some bouquets with them will post some more pics...

Waiting to be planted in the field back in April

Peony bed in cutting garden in early May

Peony Sarah Bernhardt

So pretty!

New Greenhouse Excitement!!!

We have finally had our lovely new gabrielash.com greenhouse erected, and it has surpassed all our expectations, it is truly a thing of proper engineering and beauty. It means we can shelter all our vulnerable seedlings from the unpredictable weather, plus it has a divine scent of fresh cedar wood. We used to have a flimsy aluminium one that had panes of glass held in with hopeless little clips. Each time there was more than the gentlest waft of wind the glass panes would pop out and shatter all over the ground, not fun at all! So we now have the real deal, it is already packed full of seedlings and the odd tomato plant and sits happily at the end of our ornamental garden. We just need some polytunnels in the field now.... Pottering in the greenhouse is one of the nicest things to do if you're into gardening there's no doubt about it!

The Base waiting patiently

Lovely double doors...

Is this my best angle?

looking good from this direction also!

This Week....

...we finally finished planting out the bare root roses. They had been sitting in a nursery bed since December with their roots covered with earth waiting to be planted out in the field when the ground/weather allowed. But due to the frost, rain, waterlogged soil etc there were very few windows of opportunity to get them planted. But, hooray, they're all done now and we have what looks like a sea of rather unimpressive twigs sticking out of the ground! However, they have already starting to put out healthy shoots so will soon look much better. There are no two ways about it, roses are still the most requested flower for weddings, so we experimented with a few dozen plants last year and had some good results so decided to invest in a further few hundred plants to boost supply. We have chosen the most disease resistant varieties that we could find as we don't want to have to spray them, we have a range of colours from white to deep pink and lovely creams and pale yellows. Delicious!

Roses just planted

Rose Champagne Moment

 Rose Wendy Cussons

Rose Margaret Merrill

Rose Peace