It was very exciting and a huge honour to be asked to arrange flowers for Ned Salisbury and Annalie Emmott who were married at Wesminster Abbey just before Christmas.
We have been asked to do Christmas weddings before but since we don’t have any flowers, we’ve always decided against it. This time around we just couldn’t say no.
So, the challenge for us was how to do it in a way that looked fabulous and used as many seasonal British grown flowers as possible.
After our initial consultations, we’d decided on a ‘secret garden’ feel to the designs. Soft and natural arrangements, each slightly different, created as if either growing from their containers or cascading down from candelabra. We limited the palette to white flowers and dark green foliage. The main flowers were some highly scented ‘paper whites’ narcissi from the Isles of Scilly, of which we bought by the hundred! (www.scentednarcissi.co.uk )It was truly amazing how their fragrance filled the vast rooms of the Horseguards Hotel where they had their reception. I used them in all the table centres, in little posies hanging from Christmas trees and had scattered heads at the base of candelabras. Amaryllis added a sense of scale. We also planted hellebores and cyclamen into silver bowls, which created stunning low-level table centres when surrounded with night-lights and scattered flower heads.
We needed more foliage than the garden could provide, so I found a great supplier of British foliage at Convent Garden Market called GB Foliage (thanks Dave, you’ve been so helpful and it is much appreciated!) We used a selection of ivy, camellia leaf, viburnum, rosemary, magnolia leaf, choisia and moss.
We had some wonderful feedback, so feel we rose to the occasion quite well. We’re now waiting on professional photographs but for now, here’s a snap shot from the abbey.
Rachel and I are excited about the year ahead. We have lots of weddings booked in and the course dates are up on the website. We are now offering gift vouchers for the courses, so we’re hoping they will make great presents for Mother’s Day.
While making the most of the mild weather, Rachel and Ash and have planted all the new stock. It seems ages to wait before we’ll see the flowers. January/February is our quiet period, so we are charging our batteries before the spring, when things will get pretty busy again. Rachel and Ash are off to South Africa for three weeks for a well-deserved rest. I’ll be responding to all the enquiries, organising the photographs from last year, trying to get our press pack together and working on our ‘ladies club’ idea. Hopefully see you all in the Spring.
Happy New Year!
Jo Wise
Exciting news! Green and Gorgeous is going to be featured in the Gardener's World Christmas Special this Friday 9thDecember at 9.00pm. Last month Rachel de Thame and film crew spent a day with us filming a piece on how to make a Christmas wreath from natural ingredients foraged from the garden and hedgerow. Jo pulled out all the stops in the flower studio bedecking with it all the things we like to use on our wreaths. I gathered myself for appearing in front of the camera, not something I am used to. Rachel was great, very friendly and a real professional .... she made a pretty good wreath too, you will see it at Monty's garden. We spent the morning picking seedheads, berries and old man's beard from the farm and in the afternoon I showed Rachel how to construct a wreath from a whole range of natural ingredients.
Rachel's is a moss base on a wire frame with larch twigs, privet berries, old man's beard and chinese lanterns (physalis).
Mine has the same moss and twig base with the addition of chillis, crab apples, snowberry and viburnum.
Here are some more wreaths we have made this week, now available at Pierreponts cafe in Goring.
I could not finish this season without a blog about dahlias. They have always held a special place in my heart being the first cut flower I ever grew, back in my early 20s. I was captivated by their saturated colour and impossibly perfect forms and have grown them ever since. I also love their productivity, anything that responds to being picked by producing more flowers has got to be a winner. They are a controversial flower; you either love them or hate them. I think a lot of people say they don't like them because they associate them with earwigs and garish rows of flowers on the allotment. I always say "there is a dahlia for everyone" and will do my best to convert any dissenters by showing them every shape, size and colour in our dahlia beds which house about 80 varieties. Dahlia breeding has come a long way since being Grandad's favourite, with smaller, more delicate shapes and colours working well in mixed borders. I favour the Karma range, a relatively new strain bred by the Dutch for the purpose of cutting. They have lovely long stems, are mostly waterlily in shape and have a longer vase life.
We have just been lifting a few hundred tubers this week which need to be divided and relocated next spring to free up the spanish tunnel for more roses. The tubers are drying off (upside down) for a couple of weeks before they get stored in the barn in crates of compost over winter. In the other dahlia bed I have left the tubers in with about 70cm of compost and straw on top. It worked well last year despite geting down to minus 20.
I have had some really good whites and creams this year for all of our weddings. I have always found white very difficult in dahlias as it is prone to weathering very easily, but 'Eternal Snow' and 'Nathalies Wedding' (both waterlily shapes) remained pristine and featured in many bouquets this year.
I will keep an eye on the tubers for rot through the winter months. In February/March my favourites will come out of store and on to a heat mat to get them to shoot. These will provide cuttings for plants to sale in late spring.
My first blog for many months... I did have very good intentions but they got swept away by the demand for our flowers which seemed to take up every waking hour. Not that I'm complaining....
Anyway, the season has drawn to a close so I am now able to waffle on all winter about....well, flowers. If I'm not working with them I have time to talk about them and all the lessons learnt this season, and maybe squeeze in some ideas for 2012.
I found lots of inspiration in Holland last week when we visited the Hortifair, an annual get together of amongst other things, cut flower breeders and growers from all round the world. I made some useful contacts with a few Dutch nurseries, who specialise in growing plants for cutting. It was sad to see the UK only represented by one grower (David Austin's roses); the fair was dominated by the Ecuadorian and Kenyan growers with Ethiopia being the new kid on the block. I presume these countries are favoured because the climate allows flowers to be grown year round and natural resources and labour are cheap. A conversation with an Israeli plant breeder was eye-opening, he was genuinely shocked when I asked him about the flowering period for Solidago (Golden Rod) - "don't you want to grow it year round under lights?". When I told him that my selling point was seasonal he looked bemused, obviously something he had never heard a grower say before!
There was not a great deal of variety at the fair, with roses being the main flower of the show. These were the kind of rose that has sacrificed all trace of scent for stem length, head size, vase life and productivity. Inevitably it is profit that comes first, which has taken flower breeding away from fundamental characteristics that we value like scent and seasonality. I suppose I knew all of this but the show just helped to reinforce my belief in what we are doing.
I have returned with a very long wish list and to 1000 new perennial plants which arrived whilst I was away. We are expanding into a new 3 acre field which is already planted up with a few thousand scented narcissi, tulips and dutch iris bulbs. Once all the planting is done (which is slow going in this dank, gloomy weather) I will get on with lifting the dahlias from the spanish tunnel (like a polytunnel but with a just a top cover in the summer months). I have learnt that they do much better outside with good air circulation and plenty of moisture to keep the dreaded red spider mite at bay. They will be replaced by another bed of roses, this time lots of soft pinks, apricots and blush/nude tones for weddings.
Rachel Siegfried
We’ve been so busy that we are only just catching our breath after an incredible season. The garden has provided flowers for over 60 weddings, a string of workshops, two busy open days, mail order bouquets, plus Farmers markets and our Saturday shop. All of that has certainly kept us on our toes. There has been a riot of colour passing through the flower studio. I’m still amazed by the flowers the garden produces, it’s any florists dream. Three years on from when we set up Green and Gorgeous and I’m still 'the kid in the candy store' when it comes to choosing a palette to work with. The garden is the ultimate paint box.
Here are a few images from this year's weddings. Hopefully the website will have it's annual makeover soon, so we'll showcase them all a bit better then in our online gallery.
We have worked in some fabulous new venues and met some talented people. Tom Weller (www.tomwellerphotography.com ) has taken some amazing shots. He is a very friendly and talented photographer that has the ability to capture the ‘realness’ of the moment. His relaxed style has blended well with our 'garden look'. We loved this shot.
Our Top Five venues have been:
Friars Court, Clanfield - www.silverpearweddings.co.uk
Caswell House, Brize Norton - www.caswellhouse.co.uk
The Olde Bell, Hurley - www.theoldebell.co.uk
Notley Abbey, Nr Thame - www.notleyabbey.co.uk
I’m excited about the year ahead. Rachel and Ash are currently at a huge flower trade fair in Amsterdam, so it will be interesting to hear what people think the trends will be for next year. As we grow our flowers, we have to think even further ahead to ensure we’re growing the right flowers to suit all of our brides for 2012. There will be lots of hard work taking place over the next few months, much of which we won’t see the benefits of until spring. I’m now busy planning my Christmas workshops, so maybe I’ll see some of you then!
Jo Wise
Well, Autumn has come in way ahead of schedule, resulting in much dead-heading. We really have been suffering with a wet and windy week, and is before the hurricane.
And I found this nest in my tractor, which obviously means I am not getting into my cab often enough.
Other wildlife hilights this year include this amazing chrysalis that turned into a painted lady butterfly. We maintain a healthy population of ladybirds and hoverflies in our polytunnel, whose larvae eat lots of aphids.
I have not been able to identify this clever butterfly however....
Our course season has also started in earnest, with attendees enjoying the end of summer dahlia show and some great home cooking. This Verbena always seems to sing, especially with all this dull weather we have been having.
Ashley
We have been featured in a short piece on the local news, broadcast on Friday 2nd September.
Here is a link to the iPlayer and we start at 11.40, roughly halfway through.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b014074x/BBC_Oxford_News_02_09_2011/
Many thanks to everyone who came along to our NGS Open Day, it was a great success and together we made nearly £1500 for charity! We even had special guests along this time, with some representatives of the Sonning Common Ukelele Orchestra to entertain us.
Jo was working her usual magic in the flower studio...
Many thanks also to our willing band of helpers, Graham (Dad) on the door, Marian (Mum on staff catering), Irene (plant sales), Sally (plant sales), Liz (Mum on washing up) and our neighbourhood catering team (Vicki, Peter, Clare and friend).
