autumn arrives

This weekend was the last of my summer weddings, so I officially consider it autumn now. We held a wedding in our field this weekend, and amazingly the sun shone throughout the weekend so it was all rather wonderful, happy bride and groom, much festivity, many merry campers.... the groom had asked if sunflowers could be the main flower feature, and happily I had plenty at just the right time. The bride had asked for nothing pastel so I made hanging sunflower and ivy balls, a huge arch with hops, sunflowers, brightest dahlias, daisies... the way into the field for guests was down a tree lined secret pathway which I adorned with flower balls and an arch, again using hops and brightest dahlias and sunflowers and rudbeckias. Outside the marquee was a huge container of gladioli, rudbeckia, bright red dark leaved Lobelia cardinalis Queen Victoria and other bits and pieces, with hugely long maroon red trails of amaranth. The tables had bright daisies and cornflowers, rudbeckias and snaps. The brides bouquet was all bright, reds, white, greens and yellows tied with red ribbon, a first for me to work with a bride with a bright red dress.

And on the other side of town..... I also prepared flowers for an opposite sort of occasion where the bride was much more traditional and wanted to major on bronze and ivory flowers. She had asked for bronze chrysanthemums which I do not grow so I had organised to get some from another grower. I collected masses on Thursday. Tried to find ways to use them on Friday. Threw them all away on Saturday and used beautiful bronze rudbeckias instead. Sometimes chrysanths can be beautiful, these were just not good enough quality and I couldn't bring myself to use them.  Meg pointed out to me that it's never worth me using flowers I don't like, I always end up throwing them out of the arrangements. I must learn. I won't use that grower again, but I think I have found a brilliant chrysanth grower for next year as they really can be beautiful.

No doubt photos of the flowers from the weddings will follow at some time!

Points to remember

Point One: Picking takes twice as long as I think it will, and then a bit longer, so it is a really good idea to have a very firm picking list before starting, and don't veer from it

Point Two: Wedding preparations are never relaxed

Point Three: It takes two people two long days to prepare for even a local wedding for church and marquee displays, plus driving and setting up time, plus de-rigging time

The problem with growing everything here is that it's terribly tempting to keep picking - Oh a little bit of this would be nice, Oh I haven't got any of that and so on. Because the weather had been so rough I fell victim to too much random picking for this weekend, so it took far too long. I picked in a couple of rain free hours on Thursday evening, then picked between 5-9 on Friday, then Meg continued picking all Friday morning. And I still hadn't finally made up my mind about bouquets and buttonholes as lots of things were slightly less than perfect because of the rain so I picked final subjects on Friday evening after we got back from decorating the church. 

But happily the church looked stunning, we did nothing too complicated, a simple pedestal near the main altar with clouds of white michaelmas daisies, white and dark red gladioli and other bits and pieces, rood screen decorations with pittosporum and eucalyptus bases covered with ammi, stocks, mauve Michaelmas daisies, blue cornflowers, mauve perovskia and a few dark pink heads of sweet williams as the bride's main theme colours are blueish toned pinks. The side altar had a huge arrangement, massive spires of purplish liatris, cream gladioli with purplish throats, lots of tall green ammi and strong large headed white ammi plus other foliages. The font was completely filled with a foaming mass of gaura, gypsophila, white phlox and perovskia, a jug at the back had largely delphiniums, ammis and Michaelmas daisies. 

The marquee had hanging globes with the broad umbelliferous heads of different ammis over green and grey foliage, lots of pinks and whites dotted in, jugs were predominantly cosmos with a few scented stocks and phlox and lovely old roses. The bride had asked for dynamic hearts which I  made out of willow covered with eucalpytus and tied with big ivory bows. Bouquets were largely a mixture of pinks and ivory whites, including lots of heavenly scented stocks, roses, achilleas, deep pink cornflowers with touches of eucalpytus... the children just had cornflowers and achillea the Pearl. I had no time to take photos, just a couple of the marquee, but I am quite sure there will be some from the bride and groom in a few weeks and I intend to put up a wedding gallery from this year at some point. It's useful for me to see what I've been getting up to as things move on relatively fast in the gardens and when it's a completely different season it's really useful to know what I may expect to have in the gardens at specific times next year.

WIND

What to do if it's so windy that it's virtually impossible to pick? This weekend's wedding needs stacks of cosmos as that's the main feature in the marquee display (as requested). But I've discovered that you absolutely can't pick cosmos when the wind has been blasting through it as it is too crispy and dried out. I have masses of lovely varieties in the field, but I can't get at any of them. Nor at anything else. I have four flower globes plus a large garland as well as all the usual decorations to make and am rather wondering how........ I don't usually get stressed but sometimes it is a logical reaction!

Autumn arrives

Nothing to do with flowers, but seasons. When spiders appear in the basins autumn is definitely here! I'm sure there is a quasi-folkloric saying in there somewhere....

Ah, rain

Torrential downpours and galeforce winds mean many flattened flowers though most are managing to stand well, though very soggy. Glads hit the ground as they give up the will to stand, and the dark red varieties get water damage really quickly though paler ones don't seem to mark in the same way. Dahlias aren't mad on being picked in the rain, cornflowers refuse to revive, ammis droop, sweet peas have to be chucked.... but hopefully there are still plenty, today I am in love with eryngiums because they withstand just about anything! This morning there was a lull in the weather and I picked all the snapdragons that were still pickable after their battering, bright pink phlox, lots of dark cosmos in a brief spell between rain, nicotianas, clarkia, lime green, dark red and amazing fuchsia pink dahlias and lots of different greeneries for a wedding. Tomorrow I'm hoping for a sunny day as I have the last of this year's pastel summer flowers weddings to pick for, plus a selection of bright yellows, reds and oranges for another party. Happily the cream and white stocks are just about ready in the tunnel, I have been relying on them opening in time and I think there are about enough.

Ordering roses

This weekend the bride only had one very specific request, she would like cream roses, preferably scented and full faced. I knew I wouldn't have any now, and the garden I can usually get good roses from didn't have any either so I said that I would order from the UK's main cut rose supplier for her. So I ordered her roses from David Austen. These arrived in good time and good condition and the roses were very beautiful. But they were completely the wrong roses.

I had a few moments of utter panic thinking that perhaps I had been on some other planet when I had ordered and had actually ordered the bright orangey-peach coloured blooms that arrived. Fortunately I had ordered the right roses. And had put very specific instructions on the order that only buttermilk roses might be an appropriate substitution if my choice of roses was for some reason unavailable, and that the company must contact me if there was any problem and if they needed to substitute. When I called them to question why I had the wrong roses and see if they could ship me the correct ones immediately they said they had sent me the orangey ones because they didn't have any cream, so they could not rectify the situation as they couldn't send me any appropriate roses.

So I had to spend the whole of Friday morning, when we should have been preparing other things for the wedding, trying to track down cream roses and eventually Meg had to go off for several hours to every garden we could think of to see if we could possibly pick any potential bouquet roses. We did find a few, incredibly beautiful - thanks very much to great gardeners in Dilwyn who offered what they could - cream blooms and cream with a hint of gold but they were more fragile than those I would normally have wished to use. The bouquet looked exquisite but I was very worried how it would stand up to the day. Fingers crossed all was well, no doubt I will hear. (And no doubt a proper photo will appear in due course!)

Now I know none of us always get everything right all the time, and a couple of weeks ago I had to send off bridal bouquet and buttonholes, wrist corsages and table flowers after weeks of incessant rain, so I was concerned about the travelling and keeping qualities. A couple of things didn't survive as they should but I had sent plenty of spares and felt I had to offer a substantial discount even though the job had taken longer than usual because of the weather. It was not ideal but I did communicate with the recipient. 

I was surprised that a large and reputable company such as David Austin should fail to check before making an uncalled for substitution. It was probably just a silly error in one of their departments failing to pass on the right information, but think how disappointing it would be for a bride to order a bouquet direct from them to arrive on the morning of her wedding only to open it up and discover it was entirely the wrong colour?

The joys of work

It is curious how many enquiries I get from people who would like a few encouraging words about setting up or growing on their own cut flower business.  I don't really know how to help as everyone works differently. When a journalist visited me recently she asked me if I could give advice on how gardeners should set up a cutting patch, but she laughed even as she asked as she had been with me for over an hour by that point and realised that my flower gardens are rather more chaotic than most, rather more scattered than most, and possibly not the best way forward for anyone but me!

I think if you are really passionate about something you can make it work if you want to. There are lots of caveats about turning hobbies into jobs, how people end up hating the job and discarding the original hobby, and that's probably right. Growing was never a hobby for me, much more ingrained than that. And I do love it. It is exhausting getting any business going, and growing is possibly more exhausting than most. I have done easier work, in fact every job I have ever done has been easier than this. I get disheartened some days, of course, and physical exhaustion is a little too ever present, but I am also constantly terrifically excited by what I am doing. I cannot imagine that this business will ever pall, for me,  because I can think of so many exciting directions it can go in. 

And when I go down to the main field and it looks like a real garden, it makes me smile. Deeply.