The blue and yellow

After three years and six months with the same profile picture - a romantic table arrangement full of pink roses, white freesias, and lots of late summer flowers hand-picked from Blooming Green that was used for Zula and Jody's wedding - I've decided it's time for a change.

I could just add a different flower arrangement, which would definitely be this one - the 500 Days of Summer blue and yellow, lavender field bridal bouquet.

But I've decided to use Wendy Bell's wonderful logo, since it took weeks of chatting and reworking to perfect. There's more blue and yellow, and they tie in with the delicate forget-me-nots that Wendy drew. The flowers are a symbol of faithful, undying love.

Great British Flowers

I want to wax lyrical about the fantastic British flowers I got for two events that I did at the start of autumn. I bang on about using local, seasonal flowers, at least in the warmer months, and hopefully these photos demonstrate why.

Firstly, there was the pick-your-own bucket of flowers at a local flower farm. We picked a stunning collection of white and pink flowers for the London Zoo wedding, with some blues for the 500 Days of Summer photoshoot, and some foliage, grasses and seedpods. The delightful Jen at Blooming Green, near Maidstone in Kent, gave me the metal bucket that is their ‘measure’, and we filled it with as much as we could gently cram in. Cutting the flowers from the acre plot is a joy in itself, although it was a scorcher of a day so we had to work fast so that the flowers in the bucket wouldn’t wilt before we’d even left the farm! I separated them out into different buckets when I got home – Blooming Green provide two plastic buckets to take the cut flowers home, but I’ll take a few of my own next time, as it’s a bit of a squeeze, and things like dill and sweet peas tend to get tangled up with everything else.

Secondly, there was the special delivery from Cornwall! Tregothnan, which is famous for being the first farm in Britain to grow tea, also grows cut flowers and foliage, and sells these along with ready-made garlands and bouquets. I bought some delicious-smelling rosemary and glossy myrtle, and some white dahlias, sunflowers and baby blue hydrangeas. The sunflowers and hydrangeas were stunning and they lasted so well.

Finally, there was the rest of the foliage, which I mainly used for the garlands and the registrar’s table arrangement, and it all came from the garden: eucalyptus, laurel, jasmine, Japanese quince, and a few mystery trees and shrubs. There was still some pink hydrangea in the garden, so that was cut and used for some of the table centres.

For the wedding, I would say about 80% of the flowers and foliage were British. Just the white hydrangeas and matricaria were Dutch, and the snowberries…I’m not sure where the snowberries were from, but I assume they were Dutch, too. I did cut some snowberries from Blooming Green as well. But everything else – stunning hot pink cleomes (I’ll overlook their nasty, tiny thorns), snapdragons, cute zinnas, cosmos, dahlias, delicate ammi, clary, veronica, ageratum and agastache, and gorgeous foliage from eucalyptus to senecio – was all from the south-east (or south-west) of England.

But for the 500 Days of Summer photoshoot, I’m pleased to say that the flowers and foliage were 100% British! I used some Mayfield lavender in the bouquet, and of course the photos were shot in the beautiful Mayfield Lavender farm. There were sunny, Cornish hydrangeas and sunflowers, and romantic rosemary and myrtle from Tregothnan, and cornflowers, scabious, dill, grasses and seedpods from Blooming Green, as well as some purple sweet peas from the garden.

I hope this gives a taster of beautiful and varied British flowers, and encourages you to buy local when you can!

500 Days of Summer: Day 1

So, what if I'd gone to the movies? What if I had gone somewhere else for lunch? What if I'd gotten there 10 minutes later? It was...it was meant to be.

500 Days of Summer is one of those films that became an instant modern classic in my mind when I first saw it. I remember going to the Odeon West End after work one day in 2009, and I really hoped that it would live up to the hype that I'd read about in film columns. It did. I was smitten with it and counted down the days until its DVD release so I could watch it relentlessly. I'm not that bad in reality though; I've only seen it about 17 or 18 times. That's not relentless, is it? Just mildly obsessive!

Anyway, since my mind runs around making strange links between flowers and films and books and art, it didn't take long for me to imagine a 500 Days of Summer inspired, flower-filled photoshoot. As Summer's outfits and apartment and the way Tom sees her are so important to how the film looks and feels, I wanted to see if I could channel that into a photoshoot, without being too obvious and just replicating scenes. Her style is quite vintage, so Tobi Hannah's modern vintage wedding dresses are perfect for a Summer bride. There were several dresses from the new collection which would have been very Summer-esque (Briggs, Carter, Fairy and Vanish), but in the end I went with Tobi's suggestion, Gold, which works really well.

So I had the dress, I had a model (my fabulous dancer friend, Helen), I had several locations in mind but opted for Mayfair Lavender. The lavender is going to be harvested in the next few days, so we were cutting it fine when we went there today! I knew I was going to use blue flowers and blue accessories (see the costume designer Hope Hanafin's interview to see why blue is so important in the film), but later I decided to get sunflowers, some delicate yellow dill and lots of seedheads and grasses, to represent summer and autumn. The English lavender had started to go grey, but it still looked beautiful. We took photos among the grey English and bluer French lavenders.

There are several references to the film, but I'll come back to them, with more photos, on another day. But on day one, you can see these. Oh - but I will tell you where the non-lavender flowers are from: the hydrangeas, sunflowers, rosemary and myrtle are from Tregothnan, the sweet peas are mine, and the scabious, dill and other flowers in the bouquet and Helen's hair are from Blooming Green. Yes, that's right - I used entirely British flowers and foliage for this!

A tale of two symbols

The day my cousin and her family visited, I cut a few bluebells and Yellow Cheerfulness narcissi and put them in my little bottle set. My cousin also has a baby boy, and there is something about the gentle blue and yellow colours and the sweet, small flowers that makes me think that a bunch of these would be lovely to welcome a new baby.

Bluebells represent constancy, which is a great sentiment for a baby starting out in life. To me, narcissi represent new beginnings, although when I first looked them up I could see that there were different meanings. There’s an interesting article specifically about the different meanings for narcissi by The Daffodil Society.

I avoid using flowers or herbs in floristry that only seem to have a negative meaning, such as basil which means hate. Having said that, if someone especially wanted basil in their flowers, then I would use it. I remember using this ethereal-looking photoshoot in lavender fields on the Ruffled blog as inspiration when I was doing my floristry diploma; lavender symbolises mistrust, but it's hard to care when it creates such a dreamy blue backdrop. Scabious doesn't exactly have a pleasant flower meaning, but I find the flower far too pretty for me to care. I enjoyed picking them at Blooming Green near Maidstone and they added to the cottage garden feel of the wedding flowers I was doing, and I saw rows of them when I visited Green and Gorgeous near Oxford. I'm growing some pink and red scabious now and I can't wait to mix them up with other flowers that I'm growing. These are my 'Pink Mist' scabious.

Generally, when there are contradictory flower meanings (e.g. hydrangea, which can mean heartfelt emotion and gratitude at being understood, or heartlessness), I choose the positive sentiment, which is the sentiment that I wish to convey. And I think that personal sentiment, ultimately, decides what flowers symbolise when they are given or used for an occasion. This is especially the case when it comes to using seasonal flowers – I think it’s great if people decide to use peonies for early summer weddings or cherry blossom for spring ones, rather than relying solely on air-freighted flowers.

This is a big bouquet I did for my friend Jo's grandparents, who were celebrating their anniversary on the same autumn day that Jo got married. Hydrangea symbolised heartfelt emotion, the snowberries fate, and the lilac 'Memory Lane' roses, apart from their appropriate name, stood for enchantment and love at first sight. Definitely no heartlessness here!

I've mentioned this before, but Mandy Kirkby's book, The Language of Flowers, is a wonderful introduction to the symbolism of flowers. She has a lovely writing style and the cover and illustrations by Katie Tooke are beautiful. This book, along with the RHS Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants, has been my dusk and dawn reading for a few years.

Wherever you're going, I'm going your way

Last autumn, I had the pleasure of doing wedding flowers for a lovely couple, Zula and Jody. They had their wedding in a barge on the River Thames, and it was my kind of wedding – a cool and intimate venue, lots of personal touches, and family and friends helping out. Jody and his friends did a great job of setting up the venue, including an inviting-looking sweetie table and a show-stopping cake table. Jody’s mother brought a lovely tea set with her for me to fill with flowers on the morning, and although it’s a bit of an adrenalin rush, as reception flowers often are, there was such a warm atmosphere and it felt like a privilege to be amongst the good-humoured family, friends and the (surprisingly calm) groom in the exciting few hours before ‘I do’.

Although I spoke to Zula on the phone and through emails to discuss the flowers she wanted, I never got to meet her. Jody and his friends told me what a lovely person she is, and that’s certainly what I thought when I corresponded with her. I was delighted when she sent me photos taken on the day, and I could finally see the beautiful bride whose flowers I had so enjoyed doing!

Here are some photos of Zula and Jody’s big day - the first five are by their photographer and the last seven were hastily taken by me! I wish the couple a long and happy wedded life together. (This post title is from the song Moon River. I had the song in my head every time I looked at photos of this wedding - I guess because it was on a river!)

Sweet charity

I recently did wedding flowers for a lovely couple who sourced their containers for their ceremony and reception flowers from charity shops. I was so thrilled to do their wedding and the containers they chose were fantastic - they had so much character and really fitted in well with the style of the wedding.

Here's a sneak peak of the arrangements before they were delivered and set up at the venue, which was a barge on the Thames.

I'm collecting tea caddies for my own flowers, so I was certainly glad to arrange flowers in this vintage tin. I like the pops of colour from the roses, pale blue ageratum and white snowberries (which you may remember means 'fate' from the wedding I did for my friends a year ago), the trails of jasmine, and the mysterious-looking pink scabious.

This beautiful glass vase was filled with Sorbet Avalanche and pink spray roses and later topped up with freesias, which were the main flowers for the bridal party. The vase was for the ceremony table, so I thought I would do an arrangement that was less rustic-looking and more romantic and pretty-pretty, with fairy-like ammi/dill (I'm not sure which - it looked like bishop's flower and the stems were tiny) and panicum 'Frosted Explosion' (which looks like a kind of fountain grass). As well as plenty of jasmine, meaning 'attachment' in flower language, and a pretty foliage to use in wedding flowers.

This cute cake vase ended up being used on the sweetie table, and it fitted right in with the pastel sweets! I love the scattering of delicate white cosmos, panicum, and nigella - it looks like a vase of pick 'n' mix!

You can barely see it in this photo, but I like this ivory and gold vase - to me it looks both simple and opulent. As it's taller, I included some bright cosmos on their long, wiry stems, curvy snapdragons, and trails of foliage.

I have to admit, I am a little bit envious of this birdcage. Look how beautiful and dramatic it is...and that's before it's in situ (on an amazing cake table). It's an incredible find, and one that was just asking to be filled with flowers! As it's a bit of a fiddly job and it uses floral foam, I mainly used stronger-stemmed pink Michaelmas daisies, pink and white snowberries, spray roses, pittosporum and senecio.

If I can find beauties like these, I think I'll spend my spare days touring charity shops!

Now, about the flowers. The bridal flowers, which I've not shown here, are mostly Sorbet Avalanche roses, pink spray roses, and white freesias. The jasmine and pittosporum is from the garden. But the rest of the flowers and foliage - nigella, ammi/dill (not sure which!), scabious, snowberries, ageratum, verbena, clary, cosmos, achillea, flowering mint, Michaelmas daisy, veronica, snapdragons, panicum, senacio and eucalyptus - were from Blooming Green Flowers near Maidstone in Kent. It's a flower farm run by two friendly and very hard-working women, Bek and Jen, who I met a few months ago when I was looking for growers. They grow all sorts of wonderful flowers and foliage for cutting, which you can either ask them to arrange, or you can pick yourself. If you have any aspirations to do flower arranging and you love seasonal, British flowers, it's well worth experiencing the pick-your-own bucket. It felt like the first time I went to a charity booksale at my old place of work, where there were tables and tables of fantastic new books being sold for 50p each, and I was like a kid in a sweet shop. I know I cut flowers from my family's garden (and that is awesome), but being in a field full of different flowers is something else!
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