July's flower tutorial

I have finally got round to putting up July's tutorial on how to make a rose candle holder with oasis.

The containers I used are small zinc holders - I only sell these at Christmas for people to make their own arrangements but in the meantime they can be got from Caroline Zoob's online store after July 30th (she is closed till then). They are very useful things. As well as being lovely taper holders in their own right you can float flowers round them, fill them with small shells, sweets, beans or make them more elaborate with oasis and a flower arrangement round a bigger candle as here.

A cup and saucer also works well.

I use them all the time for weddings where they also make great place card holders with a bit of looped wire jammed with blutack into the candle hole.

Reception rant

The wedding where I was arranging the flowers had the reception at one of the hotels on the banks of Loch Lomond. The hotel attracts wedding couples with its spectacular views over the Loch but on days like yesterday - where you couldn't actually see the water from the function room - it presumably has to offer something else.

I am not mentioning the name of the hotel as this is going to be a wee bit of a rant.

The bride wanted very simple understated flowers so at the reception there was just to be small table centres - so far, so easy - I was just to drop them off after I had arranged the church flowers.

At least that was the idea - I arrived and this was the entrance for the wedding party. Actually that is not quite true as I took this photo after I had already done a lot of litter picking. 2 rather ill looking bay trees in chipped plastic pots and weedy soil - covered in old dirty plastic ribbons, most of which had come undone.

I spoke to the hotel about it and they said "Oh the brides usually bring their own ribbon" - not "Oh goodness you are right that looks terrible I shall get someone onto it" - not even "Do you have any suggestions?" just a "that's not my problem" attitude. I still can't believe that they were happy for the bridal party to arrive in their lovely clothes, step from their fancy cars into an area of soiled decorations, seedy looking trees and cigarette ends.

There wasn't really that much I could really - I weeded the trees, picked up the litter, removed the dirty curly ribbon and cut off the yellow dead leaves. I had some wired grosgrain ribbon left over from the church flowers so I tied that round the trunks and cut some oxe-eye daisies from the carpark verge, threading them into the trees as a bit of decoration. There was nothing I could do about the chipped pots or the general air of sodden neglect.

It all seems so unnecessary.



These are the table decorations for the inside! A mix of mint, rosa "William Lobb", sweetpea "Matucana"; eryngium "Miss Willmotts Ghost" and nepeta "Souvenir d'Andre Chaumont".

Ethical weddings

Suddenly I have begun to get masses of wedding enquiries - so much so that I am almost full up this year.
Partly it is the wedding planning season, partly that I have had a couple of small newspaper mentions but mainly I think it is that couples are increasingly interested in ensuring their big day doesn't have a big carbon footprint.

There are now a few websites catering for people looking for ethical suppliers - I think the best is Katie's site Ethical Weddings which has the advantage of an active forum.
As we have always sold ourselves as a completely seasonal, homegrown florist we have always attracted couples looking for eco type flowers - I think that I have done more flowers for youth hostels than fancy hotels (and co-incidentally they were the nicest buildings to decorate as well). It is lovely that it is moving more into the mainstream.
I am wanting to build up a good wedding links section on the website - not the kind of thing that duplicates what Katie is doing - just perhaps other small environmentally friendly businesses, not necessarily wedding businesses, that do things to do with weddings. e.g. the youth hostels,. Also sites that discuss the whole Green Wedding phenomenon.

Any suggestions welcome.

The fantastic paeony was from last year - we're not that balmy up north.

Weddings and weeds

This week I have been thinking a lot about weddings - my brother Stephen and his fiancee Helen will marry in August and I have also met with two other couples this week to go over flower suggestions.

All three couples are lovely and want more from their weddings than the conspicuous consumption pedalled by the wedding magazines.

One couple in particular threw me back in time to my own wedding - like Euan and I they will marry as soon as they finish University and, like us, they want their wedding to be a proper community occasion.

Euan and I were very lucky, my Mum and I made the dresses, my Aunt iced the cake with intricate bouquets of roses, lots of people in the village provided flowers for the bouquets and decorations, a family friend did the catering, we were close enough to the church to walk there and back and Euan's saxophone teacher put together a fabulous swing band for the night. It was a wonderful, wonderful day and one that couldn't have been put together by simply flinging cash at it.

I think that there is a trend away from all the excess of the 1990s wedding - I have noticed a few websites emerging and catering for the couple who don't want everything - a trend to watch I hope.

The hawthorn trees are the best thing in the garden at the moment, the weather has been so mild that the birds haven't needed to strip the berries yet - I am looking at the sky as the ground is full of weeds.