R A I N ☔
It's been a difficult week weather-wise and I have such sympathy for my couples this week, I don't imagine that 3 days of endless downpour was in their perfect plans. However, as I heard recently 'a wet knot is harder to undo' which rather a sweet thought about rain on one's wedding day.
The garden is bashed, the flowers are soggy, I have been soaked to the knickers at least 3 times in as many days. September can be a month of such contrasts - searing heat (this weekend last year) or torrential rain like now.
Nevertheless I'm pretty sure the weather won't get in the way of the party spirit that is underway across Dorset right now.
This is Faith's bouquet outside the beautiful church of Folke that we flowered up 🌿🌸...
Congratulations to C and B who are marrying this afternoon at @threetunsevents with a palette of delicate flowers in soft femine colours. It all looks absolutely glorious on this sunny August day and I am so happy for them all.
In C's bouquet - garden roses, dahlias, cosmos, snapdragons, didiscus, scabious, delphinium, sweetpeas and more!
Big shout to Rebekah and her marvellous team who have been working so hard to get it all perfect for them.
S U M M E R P A S T E L S
Ah these colours 😍
Beautiful summer pastels for S and S at the amazing @warmwell.house today. Celebrating in this glorious weather ☀️
Including the first cut of the dahlias. This is a triumph as anyone who looked around the farm in May will know what a great time the slugs and snails were having in the dahlia beds...it was looking baaaad and I wondered if I would have any dahlias at all this year. Fortunately they have bounced back and looking great now which is a huge relief 💚
Also ginormous delphiniums which are having a moment right now, and insanely gorgeous roses from @rosacheney, as well as all sorts of other garden treasure.
Congratulations, you lovely couple. I hope you're having the best day today 🤍
So lovely to welcome the brilliant team at @4couturestudio to the farm for a summer centrepiece workshop. I have run a Christmas wreath making workshop for the team a few times, but yesterday was the first time they have been to the farm and cut fresh flowers to use!
And what amazing arrangements they made 💕💥. It's always so interesting to see what people pick when they are let loose with scissors and bucket in hand... We had everything from controlled pure white centrepieces (not even any foliage) to huge meadow explosions with a bit of pretty much everything.
It was a brilliant morning full of laughter, cake, much adoration of Juno the #goldenretriever and lots of flowers!
Thanks 4 Couture team! 🤍💚🧡💙💜💛🩵🩶🩷
I don't feel like there's time to breathe at this time of year, let alone post on social media. So here's a quick summary of what we've been up over the last week or so.... Mainly a lot of flowers, trees, cutting, making, setting up, running workshops....💚🌸🌿💐and not much sleeping (or desk work...sorry to everyone who is waiting for something from me...it will come, I promise).
C O M B I N E D W O R K S H O P S 🌸🎨
What a great day!! ☀️☀️ I teamed up with the brilliant @charlieclapp_artist and the lovely ladies who came today picked their own flowers this morning for a June centerpiece and this afternoon got to work doing watercolour studies of their flowers. What amazing talent they showed and what a great group of people to spend time with. 🌿
It was the first time I have run a combined workshop but it worked brilliantly so there will be more!
I N P R O G R E S S ...
It's the first incredibly busy weekend of the wedding season here. We spent yesterday cutting thousands of stems (much of the day in the rain 😫) and today sorting stems/making bouquet orders/handing over party flowers /putting recipe buckets together and setting up some of our beautiful big birch trees for a marquee at @warmwell.house
We have a variety of events this weekend but the garden has provided thousands and thousands of stems so far, and the rest to be picked tomorrow at dawn before we make up the rest of all the pieces. ✂️💚🌸💕🌿
W O R K S H O P S 🌿
A wonderful group of ladies cutting treasure from the garden and creating these beautiful hand tied bouquets today! Filled with lupins, anemone, ranunculus, honesty, hesperis, corncockle, sweet peas etc. All slightly different and totally beautiful! Well done ladies! 💕
O P E N D A Y ☀️🌿
Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow for our open day! Possibly a few places left on the tours at 11 and 3, but anyone is welcome anytime to come and buy flowers, wander around and enjoy some coffee and Monica's amazing cakes. 💛
A little bridal posy for the wonderful Jayne last week... Bright spring flowers and these kind words:
"I cannot recommend Katie enough! Patient, kind and highly professional. Her flowers and bouquets are outstanding and she cannot do enough for you! A very happy bride! Thank you!"
Wow Jayne!! Thank you for your kind and thoughtful words. It was my absolute pleasure and I hope you both had a wonderful day 💫
Oh my goodness....what a wash out!!!! ☔☔☔
It's much too wet and miserable to photograph the mud disaster outside today, so these are flowers from this day last year... Quite the difference !!
Thank you SO MUCH to those customers-who-have-become-friends who came today to support my open day and bought bunches of flowers and plants despite me cancelling due to the weather!! I'm so grateful for your support and for cheering me up on this awful stormy day.
I'm signing off for Easter now. Have a good break everyone 💚
C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S 🤍🤍🤍
...to Jack and Clare who have kicked off the 2024 wedding season and by now are have married at @upwey_house 💚
They chose soft pastel colours for the bridal bouquets and then a bit more spring colour for the tables.
They have timed it perfectly with the flowers just getting into their stride in the tunnels.... Those 'flaming margarita' tulips 🤩 and the first butterfly ranunculus 🌸.... as well as anemone, flowering shrubs, narcissus and more...
5 Things to think about when buying flowers for Mother's Day....🌷💚
1. SEASONALITY: Please buy flowers like tulips, ranunculus, anemone and narcissus that have been grown in season, don't buy roses or lilies that have been grown overseas and brought in by plane. It looks all wrong at this time of year and if you look at the environmental footprint of flying flowers around the world, it's madness.
2. SCENT: Generally scented flowers don't survive the complex supply chains of imported flowers. But they DO work brilliantly for smaller scale logistics! Spring is the perfect time for scented flowers - from narcissi to viburnum, every single bouquet will be scented this weekend.
3. KEEP IT WILD: Have you noticed how amazing the catkins look at the moment, especially in the sun. Or what about the pussy willow? Or the ivy berries? As usual we will be mixing in this kind of hedgerow treasure to all our bouquets.
4. PROVENANCE: 50% of the flowers and foliages we will use this weekend will be from our farm in Dorset. The remainder from Cornwall and Lincolnshire. You can ask me where each individual stem will have been grown, and I will be able to tell you.
5. SHOP SMALL: Don't buy from a huge faceless conglomerate, or from the supermarket....all they care about is profit. Buy from an independent florist or flower farm, who is employing local people, investing in their community and land, and where any profit goes to pay for something that matters, like their kids' ballet lessons.
Thank you so much for all your orders this week. ❤️🌸❤️
Thank you so much for all your orders this week. ❤️🌸❤️
It might be a pretty grotty day but we are having the most lovely time in the studio making up all your orders for Valentine's Day! We have a limited number of flowers left so we are turning these into £10 and £20 pick-up-and-go sweetheart posies.
They are on the website - link in bio - and we can either deliver tomorrow or you can collect from us this afternoon/tomorrow.
🌸🤍🌸🤍🌸🤍🌸🤍🌸
Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas!
Please admire my latest work accessory...the bagel bag on my hand. Required to keep my splint and dressings clean/dry after having had surgery on a broken finger.... This December has definitely been a bit of a challenge, but (as I keep saying to myself) if the choice was December or June, I would have to have said December! It would have been impossible to have made bridal bouquets with my hand and arm in plaster!
We are closed now until 8th January x
N O F R O S T S Y E T //
We have been spared the frosts that some of the country have seen this week so fortunately still flowers on the farm to show on Friday for our Autumn Open Day.
Really looking forward to seeing everyone who has booked for the garden tours. We are pretty much fully booked, but if you haven't managed to book on, so pop along and see us as we will have :
🌱 plants and seedlings
🌱 dried flower kits
🌱 fresh flowers
🌱 tea, coffee and cakes raising money for @britishredcross
🌱 pumpkins and pumpkin decorating kits
Plus the team and I will be on hand to answer questions about our event floristry / flower growing and whatever else you would like to know!!
See you on Friday 💐
T H E S E C O L O U R S // 🤎🧡🩷
There's something about this time of year 🍂 I love the colours coming out of the garden... the sunlight in the afternoons... tucking up by the fire... the feeling of everything slowing down a little....
My Fridays are easing up now the weddings are slowing. I've delivered all the flowers for this week and have time now to focus on a few home things that have been put aside through the summer. It's a good feeling. I have a weekend off work, the first for a long time. We are planning a family trip to Brownsea Island and hoping to spot some red squirrels 🤞
Have a great weekend everyone and hope you'll enjoy the autumn weather 🍁
B R I G H T S 🌈
The rain could not hold this couple back on Saturday...what a party 💚 🥳
Beautiful bright colours for S and N on Saturday at @highcliffecastleweddings and then @sopleymill. The bridal bouquet was filled with roses, dahlias, astrantia, scabious, eryngium, achillea, feverfew and more...glorious colours 🌈 that stuck two fingers up at the unseasonal weather.
The couple collected some buckets of DIY flowers which went into bud vases and bottles on the tables and we delivered an urn and long ceremony table arrangement with the bridal flowers.
Congratulations to you both!! 💚
