What a difference a week makes

What a difference a week makes. Now the gardens are beginning to burst with flowers, already far too many to keep up with the picking. Delphiniums are fantastic this year, and white camassia seem to have spread hugely. Iris sibirica last for such a fleeting time in the garden but they are just so beautiful, I can stand in the middle of the patch and spend ages just looking at their subtly different forms, I have white, pale blue, dark blue and deepest purple, some with very mottled pale falls, some darker. Aquilegias have taken over the top garden for May and they are now going over, they are lovely for weddings, especially the paler ones and pink and green Nora Barlow. Astrantias are romping away, lots of shaggy ones as well as pale pink and dark red, and poppies are opening everywhere, though not lasting long in this fabulous sunshine. The tunnel is bursting with stocks, nigella hispanica, cerinthe and the first larkspur are opening. Alliums are appearing en masse, heavily scented pinks lining the top garden path.... it's all rather lovely suddenly. Bouquets this week will choose from all the above and may include sweet williams, libertia, cerinthe.... the choice is expanding.

This has been  the first of my busy wedding weekends, creating a very informal wedding with lots of wildflowers as well as lovely garden specimens for Jessica and Neil, and a country vintage style wedding for Kate and Robbie. Photos will be posted up when they arrive. Jess and Neil had huge buckets of cowparsley, buttercups, daisies as well as jugs of garden flowers, single species rather than mixed bunches. They had iris, campanula, aquilegia, stocks, bright red poppies, glamorous white poppies, astrantias..... and in the church as well as vats of cowparsley they had a central decoration with cardoon, delphiniums, euphorbia and camassia plus bits and pieces, and willow hearts with wound ivy. All very simple, everyone said it looked lovely. Jess's bouquet was white poppies and love in the mist, and buttonholes were shaggy pinks, euphorbia and sweet peas. Kate and Robbie had mixed jugs of garden flowers, and a bouquet of creamy peonies and rosemary. It was all huge fun to do, but a long day!