Green and Gorgeous

DIY Brides - Have fun!

Most brides we see at Green and Gorgeous want to create a natural feel to their wedding. They don't want to fall into line and ride the wedding conveyor belt, they want to 'keep it real'. Creating your own wedding flowers can be a great way of expressing yourself and ensuring your wedding day is unique to you. Many arrangements can be done the day before and is an opportunity for friends and family to come together and feel involved.

At Green and Gorgeous  we offer a combination service, alongside our supply only and full floristry service. This is for those who would like to do some of the arranging themselves but not all. We could arrange just the bouquets and buttonholes or larger elements such as garlands and pedestals too. We also hire vintage china and host flower arranging courses and hen parties, so brides can pick up a few good tips before the big day.

Creating your own wedding flowers should be fun and as long as you follow a few guidelines there is no reason for it not to be a really positive experience. Our garden flowers don't need to be fussed or over arranged, they lend themselves well to being popped into a jug or jam jar.

My Top Tips are:

• Be realistic about what you can achieve in the time you have available.
• Make sure your helpers can commit and know what is expected of them.
• Be mindful of the height of your containers for the tables, make sure the flowers won't mask your guests view.
• Be prepared and have a plan. Know what you want doing. Have a work space prepared. Have a cool storage place for the arranged flowers to go over night (not the marquee!)  and allow time to tidy up.
• Ask advice on conditioning and how the flowers will perform.
• Have fun and most importantly enjoy the process!

 

Thank you so much for all of our wedding flowers. We so enjoyed arranging the table centres (I put all my arranging skills from the hen do into practise – all your hard work paid off, thank you Jo!) And the bouquets and button holes were just wonderful. The soft natural look worked beautifully with the feel of our day. We can’t thank you enough. -  Anna & Bradley

Jo Wise

 

This Seasons Round Up

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

 

Wild weather and wildlife

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

 

Fun with Flowers

 

I've really enjoyed teaching the floristry workshops this spring. It's amazing how different all the arrangements turn out, even when we're all working with the same ingredients. Everybody has their own style and something to add. There is usually a broad spectrum of experience within the group, but that really doesn't seem to matter. Every one is there to have fun with flowers, pick up some handy tips and hopefully feel inspired to create some arrangements with their own garden ingredients.

The day starts with a few demonstrations of how to create a hand tie. I show 2 different techniques and talk about how to create texture and keep the bouquet looking soft and natural. After that, each person is offered their own bucket of garden flowers to create a hand tie bouquet to go home with.

  

After a coffee break and a slice of Rachel's home baked cake, I talk through different containers. I explain what makes the perfect jug and give a few 'cheats' on how to make the 'not so perfect' jug work. I give a couple of demonstrations of larger arrangements, before arranging flowers into a tea cup. Everybody gets their second bucket of flowers and a tea cup to work with.

   

By this time we're all ready for our hard earned (ha ha!) lunch, usually prepared by both Rachel and Ash with garden ingredients and served from our flower studio. So far, the weather has been kind enough to allow to lunch outside, which has been lovely. Rachel is usually around to give everyone a garden tour and a few planting tips. Our final creation in the floristry workshop is a ribbon wrapped corsage, which really does show off everybody's individual style. Mine usually ends up a bit on the large side, when working to my own brief, I can't seem to hold back. When it's time to end, it's quite a sight to see all the ladies proudly wearing their corsages, carrying off armfuls of flowers. I do hope they wear their corsage all the way home, even if they stop for petrol and coffee!

 Jo Wise

 

Growing cut flowers course - the spring season

 

Last month saw the final growing cut flower day for the spring season. So I thought it was a good time for a sum up. The dates ran through March and April, on either a Wednesday or a Sunday and we were very lucky to have gorgeous weather for all five of them. I have had about seventy people, sixty eight women and two men. Come on guys where are you all? People came from all over the country to attend, which was both flattering and slightly pressurising. But I have had some really flattering feedback so I am now taking bookings for September dates (posted on the courses page).

 

It has been really interesting to hear about everyone's burgeoning cutting gardens from a raised bed in the city to a few acres in a walled garden on a country estate. Experience has ranged from complete beginners to people with allotments already growing their own veg to professional gardeners sent by the boss. There have also been a surprising number of people (mainly florists) wanting to set up something similar to us, no one too nearby thankfully.

 

Everyone seemed genuinely in awe at the area we tend with two full time people (myself and my partner Ashley) plus our wonderful part-time volunteers Irene and Sally. It is partly down to hard graft and no social life but I do try to demonstrate techniques to make the growing and harvesting of flowers less labour intensive. Another aim of the course is to show people how to plan for a continual supply of flowers throughout the season without any wasteful gluts or flowerless gaps...always a challenge, especially with the extreme weather we've been having. My shiny new projector and screen has done a great job in showing the highlights of the year, favourite flowers selected for their productivity, low maintenance, colour, scent and what I call nostalgic value. Lastly I try to demonstrate the cultural difference between flowers picked from a border and those destined to be a cut flower to rival anything bought in the shops.

 

Of course the main objective is to have fun and go away feeling inspired with a few seedlings to make a start and a hand tied bouquet to spur you on.  One of the highlights of the day was our home cooked lunch made with produce from the garden. A few people have asked for the Spinach Pie recipe which comes from my neighbour Vicky's book 'The Kitchen Manual'. If any of you are planning to come to our open day Vicky will be serving up her marvellous cakes, scones and ice cream. I will ask her to have a few copies of her book available too.

 

 Spinach Pie

I use Nigel Slater's recipe for the pastry (180g plain flour to 100g butter and a splash of cold water), this is baked for about 15 mins and cooled.

 The filling ingredients are combined in a blender:

 1 onion peeled and quartered

500g spinach chopped

½ tsp salt

freshly ground pepper to taste

1 cup cottage cheese

100g feta cheese

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

4 – 5 eggs

a small amount freshly grated nutmeg

 Pour the mixture into the pastry case and bake for 40 – 45mins at 180 C. It is good eaten hot or cold.

 

Here are a few pics of from one of the days

 

 

Pricking out half hardy annuals to take home.

 

 

Putting together a hand tied bouquet in the flower studio.

 

A beautiful combination of ranunculus and honesty.

 

 
Getting the aquapac (cellophane bubble with water reservoir) for the long journey home.

Three weddings and a course

 What a busy week, with three weddings to start the season off, all with different colour schemes thank goodness. It has been an anxious time with the heat pushing everything on so quickly, but everyone seemed more than happy with their various combinations of ranunculus, tulips, anemones, honesty, apple blossom, muscari, narcissi, sorbus and euphorbia.

 

 

 

 

The narcissi we planted in the field have been so useful this week, I used a different variety for each wedding; Avalanche for the yellow theme, Thalia for the white and Silver Chimes for the pinks/creams. It is amazing what you can do with a tractor and a potato planter; I think the tulips will get the same treatment this autumn. The ranunculus are peaking with some heads the size of peonies, they are one of the only flowers I find hard to pick! But pick I did, a couple of hundred for our first arranging course today, there will be more info about that from Jo in the next blog.

Now I am just praying for a grey, rainy day to slow things down and water in all those perennials I divided back in March , plus the annuals we are planting out now.... I do sound like a grumpy farmer.

Other exciting news:  the mail order boxes have arrived, finishing touches are being made to the shopping page and I hope to be taking orders for gorgeous ranunculus bouquets like this very shortly.

 

 

 

A Happy Hen

Finally, after months of winter waiting, I managed to get my hands on some flowers and do some arranging. The season has kicked off for me with a Hen party workshop in a Tudor Manor house near Peppard in South Oxfordshire. The bride, Anna Baldwin has ordered buckets of flowers to arrange herself for her wedding in April, so her chief bridesmaid invited me along to host a morning floristry workshop. As we began Anna announced she'd be keeping her eye out for those who would make the floristry dream team on The Big Day....no Pressure then Ladies!! Joking aside, it was really relaxed and everyone enjoyed themselves. There was some pretty hot arranging going on too.

      
 

During the workshop we created a spring posy, flowers in a tea cup and a corsage. I took along some anemones, tulips, muscari and scented narcissi. As for foliage, we had Viburnum tinus and variegated Pittosporum. I would say the anemones were the main attraction. It's been a hard winter and there have been a few losses in the garden, so the rows of anemones that have popped up in the polytunnel bring extra cheer with them.

 It was a great way to start the season, so thank you ladies, especially Flo who supplied me with coffee and cake.

Jo Wise

 

      

 

 

Amateur Gardening Weekly January 15th 2011

We have a great write up in this weeks Amateur Gardening, featuring one of our summer courses.  There is quite a spread of tips, demonstrations and one of our arrangements on the cover.