Wild and Whimsical Wedding at Cowdray House

I LOVE it when I’m challenged to create something unique for a wedding: something that has not been done before at a venue. This is what we creative florists dream of.

We’ve created many, many unique floral events at Cowdray House in Midhurst and last August we added another one to our portfolio.

Our bride, Danica, wore a unique and beautiful embroidered, colourful floral dress and she sent me an image which inspired the colour palette and the flowers.

Here are the wonderful photos by the hugely talented Lily Bungay and Co @lilybungayandco on Instagram

The aisle for the outdoor wedding ceremony

British Flowers in August

Garden roses, dahlias, rudbeckia, cosmos, scabious, blackberries, grasses, seed heads…

You probably know by now that we grow our own flowers where possible but we also use other growers, farms and suppliers and this week we had a delivery from West End Flower Farm in Hampshire where they grow the kind of flowers I love; a little wayward and wild!

There’s such a huge choice of flowers available in August with garden roses are enjoying their second flush, dahlias coming thick and fast, there’s rudbeckia, cosmos, scabious blackberries, grasses, seed heads and the strongest beech, jasmine and rambling rise foliage.

I’ve used all of the above in the arrangement below in some of my favourite jewel colours of August.

Jewel coloured British flowers of August

Downton Abbey Inspired Dinner at Cowdray House

What a pleasure it was working with Caper and Berry at Cowdray House, Cowdray Estate to create this fabulous Downton Abbey inspired gala dinner for a really lovely clients’ 50th Birthday Party last week.

We used garden roses, sweet peas, peonies, jasmine and garden clematis along with an abundance of candles with our golden candelabra and lead crystal candelabra, lead crystal tea light holders and glass candlesticks.

Buck Hall is such a brilliant place for a gala white tie dinner!

Downton Abbey Inspired Dinner

English garden flowers

Yellow Flowers

Okay, so I’m well aware that many people have an intense dislike of yellow flowers. I do understand this dislike but I think it stems from an historical poor use of yellow in flower arrangements and the fact that yellow was off trend for many years.

Not any more though as yellow is currently enjoying its moment in the sun and for the last few seasons has been on trend in both fashion and home furnishings. With the proliferation of dark walls in interiors and dark backgrounds in print design a pop of yellow can look fabulous.

Here are a few of my favourite seasonal yellow flowers for February.

Witch hazel

Mimosa wreath

Gorse

Witch Hazel, mimosa and lilac

Autumnal florals, ferns and grasses

I thought I'd share this little arrangement that I gathered for the house last weekend. It's a gorgeous palette and contains everything I love about autumn; grasses, bronze and pink tinged foliage, horse chestnuts, poppy seed heads, sanguisorbia, browning ferns to name just a few. Mixed with a few pale pink chrysanthemums (yes there are some really beautiful ones) and a few appropriately coloured roses in mustard yellow and apricot; I think it's a really lovely combination.

I made the little footed teracotta vase on a pottery wheel and the colours co-ordinate beautifully with the embroidery I made back in 1991. Hand thrown, hand sewn,...!

April Flowers and the Tasty Woodland Treats

What an amazingly sunny April we've had so far, the garden is in full bloom and the sun has been shining, although I hear that there may be some frost next week which I don't think we're prepared for!

I'm writing this whilst looking through the window into the garden and it's filled with lilac, clematis montana, apple blossom, viburnum opulus, bluebells, whitebells and unfurling ferns.

I live next door to the woods so the wild garlic which lines the path into the woods has also found its way into the garden and spread under a tree. It's in full flower and I've been looking at recipes for pickling the flower heads and making pesto from the leaves.

While I'm on the subject of food (for free) I've just passed a patch of wild stawberries in flower and the wild bilberries are now a gorgeous pink colour so it won't be long before the crop is ready. Living next to the woods and walking through them each day with the dogs is such a bonus!

It's so exciting to see the English bluebells all over the garden and the white bells are incredibly pretty with the unfurling bright green ferns catching the light.

The peonies are on the way soon......happy days indeed!

Whitebells and ferns

Apple blossom

Bluebells, whitebells and ferns

Unfurling ferns and bluebells

Wild garlic

Whitebells and bluebells

Wild strawberries

Hellebore Heaven

Whether as a garden plant or a cut flower the hellebore is simply incredible.

From Dec to April these little plants brighten up our gardens with the most exquisite flowers often when few other plants are in flower.

Plant some today so that you'll have beautiful flowers next winter, you won't be dissapointed!

Magnolia Heaven

Who doesn't love be a magnolia tree in full bloom?

The Magnolia in our garden is spectacular and makes my heart sing every day when I drive through the gate.

Magnolia branches are sensational in a vase and I've been selling pink and white branches at Cowdray Farm Shop this week . They're not from my garden though as I couldn't bear to pick them!

Extraordinary Tulips

I'm spoilt for choice with tulips!

I'm so lucky to have lots of customers who appreciate the fringed, striped, parrot and French long stemmed varieties and appreciated that they cost more than the run of the mill varieties but are worth every penny.

These tulips were historically the highly prized varieties that sold for a lot more than their weight in gold during the tulipamania era and I understand that the stripes on these very special tulips were caused by a virus, hence their historical rarity.

Tulips, in my opinion, are at their very best when they are fully open and curving every which way. The inside of the tulip flower is often stunning and well worth studying!

Frittilaria Meleagris

It's an exciting week when the fabulous fritillaries make an appearance.

They are one of my all time favourite flowers; sculptural, curving, nodding heads.

Wild, seasonal and sublime. I'll be tying them with dark red ranunculus and deep burgundy tulips for Valentines bunches. They tick all the boxes!

Sensational Seedheads

My neighbour was tidying up her garden for Autumn and popped in with a bunch of these magnificent allium seedheads.

It's definitely worth planting some of the large headed allium just for the seedheads in September. They look superb in a vase and so beautiful when the Autumn light hits them.

The Abundance of Summer; Flowers and Fruit

It's been a really beautiful summer and I've been lucky enough to spend so much of it outside, arranging flowers, tending plants and watering (a lot for the potted plants that I sell at Cowdray Farm Shop) in the cool of the evening just before sunset; a magical time of day.

The summer season has been non stop this year and the event work, like the flowers, has been abundant.

For this event at Cowdray House I wanted to showcase the abundance of summer flowers and seasonal fruits and also to showcase a small selection of the huge variety of plants that I've been selling at Cowdray Farm Shop this summer; verbenas, abelias, pelargoniums, senecio, clematis, honeysuckle, crocosmia, dahlias.

A sprinkling of garden roses and a few unripe blackberries from my own woodland garden complete the look; the abundance of summer 2016.

Glorious Peonies

It's Peony season!

They're incredibly beautiful, long lasting, full of surprises and everyone adores them.

I absolutely love them and have been working my way through all of the wonderful varieties recently.

I've got an excellent range of peonies in Cowdray Farm Shop at the moment so , if you live in Midhurst, it's definitely worth a peek.

Aquilegia and Other Spring Flowers

It's Aquilegia week at the flower studio.

I'm selling lots of different varieties at the Cowdray Farm Shop both as plants and as cut flowers. I find them endlessly fascinating and love photographing their unique form.

They are fabulous garden plants as they self seed and pop up year after year. They've been present in every garden I've ever owned and yet I've never planted any until this year. It's been fun selecting new varieties for the cutting garden.

I've been making up posies with aquilegia, salmon parrot tulips, forsythia, fritillaries, ranunculus and hellebore. I love this palette of washed out lemons, peach and off white; fresh and uplifting!