Bude Botanical

09/09/2024

Who cares about the weather when there is this much love in the room. Such a very special wedding for Bronte & Ted, who married near Bude back in July. The colours were bold and bloody beautiful, the flowers were 100% locally grown, and the happiness levels, despite the torrential rain, were off the scale.

Everything was beautifully styled and it was so lovely to work with Nikki at who loves bright colours as much as I do.

Thank you Bronte for asking me to flower your amazing day and thank you for your kind, kind words.

"Rachel is a phenomenal florist. Her work is nothing short of breathtaking. I'm so happy I chose her for our wedding. The entire process was fun and exciting and I really enjoyed getting to know her throughout the process. Rachel is a sustainable florist which meant that her work is all eco friendly and environmentally conscious. She uses only seasonal, locally grown flowers but don't let that put you off. I was amazed by the selection of flowers she sourced for us. Our wedding called for colourful dramatic flowers used for big installations on a triangle arch for the alter, single stems in nice booze bottles down the centre of our trestle tables, a large bouquet and a flower crown for myself, foliage bouquets and flower crowns for my bridesmaids and button holes for groomsmen. The price we were quoted for this amount of work was extremely reasonable and definitely stands up against other florist quotes I have seen. She was amazing to work with and her work is just incredible."

The day was so beautifully captured by

08/09/2024

Seasonal beauties grown by for Kitty & Joe who married at yesterday

We used as many orange and white locally grown flowers as we could get our hands on.

Massive thanks to Georgina, who pulls out all the stops for my weddings, understanding my love of colour and the way I like to combine colours together. Massive thanks to Phoebe, who grows such beauty and drives my flowers up to an easier collection point for me. Huge thanks to Nicola at for her sublime tagetes (amongst other beauties) and for adding her beautiful flowers to the much needed number of stems this week. Also a big thank you to Mariana at who grew showstopping dinner plate size dahlias in the perfect shade of orange.

It's a massive team effort, but one that I always think is worth it.

We also used a small amount of imported flowers, combined with the locally grown, to help us complete some of the larger installation pieces for this wedding. We use the most sustainable imports we can find, grown with consideration for both people and the planet.

Here are some pics of yesterday's bouquets for Kitty & her gang 🧡🧡🧡

05/09/2024

When a couple goes all in for orange - my favourite colour - in my favourite month of the year and the dahlias are blooming their socks off too - well, then, I'm a very happy wedding florist.

Today has been a very, very busy day, but all the flowers are picked and prepped and are having a long and slow cool drink before we get to pull together all of our beautiful arrangements tomorrow.

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03/09/2024

A whole year since this very special wedding weekend. Katie & Nick married at the amazing Place Estate on the breathtaking Roseland Peninsula. We went with the van packed with a gaggle of florists, and a hoard of locally grown blooms. We had our very own make shift studio, which we could have quite happily moved into permanently. We worked our socks off, swam each day on our way home and were so warmly welcomed by this couple and their family and friends that we were all on a high for days afterwards. What a magical celebration to be part of. Happy Anniversary to Katie & Nick 🌿

29/08/2024

Catching my breath this week with a weekend approaching without a wedding. Sometimes we need a little breather to reset and get our desk and messy studio back under control and get everything ready for next week's wedding! I've been getting back on top of the 2025 wedding proposals too....thank you for your patience...they will be in your inboxes by Friday. I've also been thinking about Christmas (really!) and have 5 wreath making workshops now in the diary for December. Details of those coming soon 🌿🌿

As well as work I've been finding time to get in the sea pool with friends (bliss) and we've had a lovely birthday week, with our youngest turning 17. All good things.

The pics are from a dreamy wedding last month, held at , where we got to make this floral wonderland for Rosie & Chase 🌸🌿🌸

26/08/2024

For Debs & her gang.

Gorgeous garden roses in pinky tones were the stars of these bouquets, delivered to the beautiful bridal suite at Launcells Barton on Saturday morning.

It's always such a special part of my job; chatting to the bride as she gets ready for her wedding day, seeing all her plans and ideas come together, seeing her surrounded by all the love and laughter that goes hand in hand with wedding day mornings. Despite all the hard work, it really is a lovely, lovely job.

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24/08/2024

The weather can't decide whether it's summer or autumn today, but who cares when you get to have your wedding reception under twinkling fairy lights and gorgeous greenery here in beautiful barn 🌿
Such a lovely morning setting up everything ready for Debbie & Dom's special day.

22/08/2024

My love of a confetti shot never wains. Captured by the super talented
What luck I have to work with such wonderful couples - Lucy & Sam were so very lovely and so up for going with 100% locally grown blooms, which meant the carbon footprint of their wedding day flowers was 90% less than if we had imported flowers from overseas (the wedding norm in the UK). We worked with to pull of this beautifully soft colour palette of ivories, lemons and pale blues, which we all loved so much.

Thank you Lucy & Sam for having us along for your magical day at and for your really kind words received this morning xx

"We are so happy that we chose Rachel as our florist for our wedding! Not only is she lovely and easy to work with but she's very passionate about sustainability - all of our beautiful flowers were seasonal and locally grown with minimal environmental impact. We didn't have much knowledge of flowers beforehand but Rachel was great at explaining all the different options to us and helping us find a selection that worked well for us and our day. We had so many comments about how lovely and natural our summery flowers looked!"

21/08/2024

After a little break I'm back in the studio arranging beautiful flowers. This was a gorgeous farewell arrangement from earlier in the week, made in the favourite colours of the recipient and all from flowers grown just down the road at

Flowers provide such beauty on the most difficult of days.

Grateful to work with the wonderful who loves flowers as much as I do, and who champions sustainable floristry always 🌸

16/08/2024

Flower crown gals. Love a phone capture of happy, happy wedding moments. What a day for Brontë and Ted who pulled off the disco wedding of dreams, filled to the brim with the most amazing colours. 100% British grown flowers and foliage 💕💕💕

02/08/2024

The moment wedding florists live for...when you get to see your gorgeous bride, on the morning of her wedding, and you show her the bouquets 🌸🌿🌸🌿

Captured at my beautiful local wedding venue by

Cerian & Tom married in June and went for all locally grown flowers in beautiful whites, greens and lilacs.

01/08/2024

Gorgeous pics of Cerian & Tom's beautiful day by Leo Sharp Photography. Loved working with this couple for their June wedding at Launcells Barton near Bude. What a lovely, lovely bunch of wedding day suppliers I get to work with each week.

28/07/2024

Loved dressing the amazing window ledge at yesterday. This beautiful wedding venue is just down the road from us, here in Bude and we always have so much fun setting up here.

The meadow boxes that we made for Rosie and Chase's wedding ceremony aisle were to be moved from the walled garden after the ceremony and set up in front of the top table to complete the lush, green, meadow style look. Looking forward to seeing the professional photos of the completed set up.

We'll be heading there shortly to pack everything away for the weekend...never the best bit of wedding floristry, but always nice to see the newly married couple and their families, to hear all about their special day 💕

Thank you to my flowery freelancers who helped me pull all of this together .studio

And it's always lovely to work with other lovely wedding people
and

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27/07/2024

For Rosie, the loveliest of brides, who married Chase today, at the beautiful near Bude. What a wonderful couple who have been so easy to work with. We have loved flowering their special day, surrounded by the lovely team at Launcells and a gang of really fabulous wedding suppliers that Rosie and Chase have chosen.

Thank you to my flower gang, .studio and who have worked their socks off, making gorgeous arrangements and generally being flowery superstars.

And as always, to the ladies who grow such beauty Using flowers that have been grown locally makes an incredibly positive environmental contribution, lowering the carbon footprint of your wedding day flowers by an amazing 90%.

21/07/2024

For Brontë, who married Ted yesterday, in beautiful North Cornwall.

The dahlias are back in season, the colour palette joyful, and Brontë wanted a BIG bouquet - all my florist check boxes were well and truly ticked

Thank you and for growing such beauty.

18/07/2024

I can't tell you how much I am loving the colour palette for this weekend's wedding. I've been feeling pretty grim this week...sadness about losing my dad, and then a full blown fluey cold, which has really knocked me sideways. Let's just say that there have been quite a few tears.

I'm really grateful for all the gorgeous messages you've sent me way this week. It really does always help when you reach out to someone who is going though the mill. Grateful to have such love and kindness in my life.

That being said, I've been terribly grumpy this evening, and my lovely Mike popped a glass of wine and a bowl of curry in front of me, which really was needed. I'll try to be better tomorrow...

Onwards people, onwards.

This lovely lot of flowers have all grown locally by and for Brontë & Ted, who marry near Bude on Saturday. Their wedding really does sound like it's going to be the party of the century 💕

01/07/2024

Love, love love the buttonhole shots. I love making these little miniature bundles of joy for the favourites chaps in your life. Let's give the boys flowers!

Magical moments captured by brilliant photographers and

07/06/2024

What should we have on our tables? It's one of the most often asked questions when I first meet up with my couples to talk about their wedding day plans and we have various options that can suit all floral dreams and budgets.

Bud vases, footed bowls, large displays that sit on the registrars table which are then moved to your top table, brown beer bottles, vintage green glass bottles, we're even filling beautiful gin bottles for one wedding this summer..and we love plants too...beautiful greenery in terracotta pots which can be gifted to your guests at the end of your wedding day.

We have loads of ideas, and loads of vases, bottles and containers to hire. Needless to say, we fill them with the best of locally grown blooms, with all their scented loveliness and distinct lack of air miles and pesticides, creating beautiful talking points for your guests at your wedding reception 🌸🌿🌸🌿

03/06/2024

It's British Flowers Week this week and we're championing, as always, the use of locally grown flowers in floristry.

I could write essays on the subject, but I won't today, I'll just say that locally grown flowers are a significantly better choice for the future of our planet. The global floriculture industry is something that we need to step away from as much as we can. We need to pedal back from this form of mass consumerism and we need to make better and more considered choices when marking the significant days in our lives.

I love providing a service that helps my clients do this 🌿🌎🌿🌎

I've spent the morning standing in a beautiful flower field near Taunton, collecting flowers grown by three wonderful women...Nicola, Georgina and Phoebe. We'll use them for an event later in the week. It's been a lovely morning, chatting with both growers and other florists, chewing the cud, swapping ideas, supporting one another, and surrounding ourselves with beauty. It was just what was needed after a really, really busy few days 🌸🌸🌸🌸

01/06/2024

For Cerian, marrying Tom, today, at 🌸🌿🌸🌿

Flowers grown locally and chosen because they're utterly beautiful, but also because it's a much more planet friendly way of doing wedding flowers 🌎 Always grateful to my couples supporting my planet positive business.

The sun is shining for this lovely couple, and I'm wishing them lots and lots of happiness today and always 💕

29/05/2024

Farewell flowers that leave no trace. Made for a passionate gardener recently. Foliages and flowers picked from their beautiful garden. Other flowers were grown locally by expert seasonal growers* and we arranged everything into cardboard and moss, so that eventually the whole arrangement will simply return to the earth. For centuries, in fact millennia, we have laid flowers for the people we love at the end of their lives. Doing this with kindness, with meaning, with consideration feels like a good thing to me. I get a lot from working with families at these tough times, talking about their friend or relation, hearing about their lives and their loves. It can be a really lovely process. Flowers, nature, gardens, wedding bouquets; we end up talking a lot about these things and through that we get to talk about the person they are paying tribute too, which is, in the end, what it's all about I reckon
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*We like to be completely transparent about how we source flowers, and sometimes, for our farewell arrangements, if there is a flower which has been requested because it holds significant meaning, and we are unable to source it locally, then we will use wholesalers who import flowers from overseas. Through our training we are able to look for good certifications on these flowers so that we know they come from growers who consider the planet and their workers as much as they consider their profit margins.

27/05/2024

A year of learning, planning, thinking, sharing, collaborating...and the result...I have now received my accreditation from the

In an era of greenwashing I wanted to be able to demonstrate Bude Botanical's sustainable credentials to my clients by going through a rigorous assessment process carried out by an industry leading organisation who are intent on making the world of weddings a much more planet friendly industry.

I am really chuffed to be part of this gang...surrounding myself with others that want to be part of movement for change 🌎🌿🌎🌿

"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it".
Robert Swan, Author

You can read more about our sustainability policy and plans via the link in our bio.

Thank you to Michelle and team at
and to the inspiring wedding professionals I have met through this organisation. I'm also grateful to my wonderful couples who totally get what I'm trying to do, and have allowed me to make their wedding a more planet friendly event using locally grown flowers and sustainable floristry techniques and skills. A big thank you goes to the amazing flower farmers, particularly and who are my best collaborators and supporters - I literally wouldn't have a wedding business without you.
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23/05/2024

I love a flower filled vintage milk churn. They're one of our most popular arrangements. They're an affordable and beautiful way of welcoming your guests, looking great at the entrance to your church or wedding venue. They're often used for framing you as you exchange your vows and can be easily moved either inside or out, depending on what the weather is up to. They're also multi-purpose, ready to decorate your reception once you've tied the knot. I absolutely love them, and it seems many of my couples do too...can't wait to make them look different every time we use them - I think I'll make a little 'milk churns through the seasons' reel at the end of the season 📷🌸📷🌸📷

These two were arranged for Hannah & Adrian, who married earlier this month at the beautiful They looked super lovely in the ceremony barn, and then were moved to decorate the reception barn afterwards.

16/05/2024

The joy of working with couples who totally embrace locally grown blooms...and colour too. We do colourful blooms really bloody well in the UK and I particularly love May when you can clash pastels and brights together to your hearts content. These stunners were grown by and Phoebe for Hannah and Adrian, who were married at earlier this month, with an amazing cake from , wonderful, wonderful photos from and gorgeous dresses from

Wishing this fabulous couple all our love and best wishes. Thank you for being so brilliantly chilled about your flowers and embracing what we do at

14/05/2024

An early summer wreath made recently to help a family say goodbye. Made without floral foam (see last picture to see what lies beneath). It's important to me that my floral arrangements create no waste and do no harm to our lovely planet. Foliage is from my garden and the flowers mainly grown down the road at Thank you, as always, to for championing planet positive floristry.

12/05/2024

12/05/2024

What a day, captured so beautifully by Liberty Pearl Photo & Film Collective

12/05/2024

The sun is shining today for Lauren and Steve on their first wedding anniversary. I loved creating this bouquet for Lauren and working with her to get things just right for her wedding day florals.

"Just wanted to say a huge thank you for my beautiful flowers! I didn't really even know what I wanted when we first met but somehow you managed to create the perfect bouquets, taking what was in my head and turning it into something so beautiful."

📷 The day was captured so beautifully by

07/05/2024

Bude florist, Bude Botanical joins The Farewell Flowers Directory
to eliminate plastic floral foam from funeral floristry

Rachel Ellis of Bude Botanical in Bude, North Cornwall has become one of the pioneering members of The Farewell Flowers Directory, a new initiative from the florist industry, which launched on 6th May at the start of Dying Matters Awareness Week, organised by Hospice UK. The Farewell Flowers Directory is a ground-breaking online listing service that aims to get the single-use plastic foam out of funeral floristry by connecting people to florists across the UK offering natural, beautiful and compostable floral funeral arrangements.

Rachel Ellis said: “I work with families to create floral tributes for their loved ones that are beautiful and personal but that are also kind to the environment. Over the years I have found that so many families want a more personalised and planet friendly service when it comes to choosing flowers for their loved one's funeral. That might mean choosing flowers that perhaps hold special memories, or that come from their loved ones' garden but it also means creating something that does no environmental harm - our arrangements are made primarily with locally grown flowers, are designed to be completely compostable and we use no single use plastics or floral foam in our work.”

A positive, practical response to the huge issue of plastic waste in funeral floristry, The Farewell Flowers Directory is on a mission to change the world of funeral flowers one compostable arrangement at a time. By demonstrating just how beautiful naturally designed funeral flowers can be without the use of floral foam or single use plastic, The Farewell Flowers Directory aims to change perceptions of funeral floristry and get the plastic out of funeral flowers for good.

Every florist listed in The Farewell Flowers Directory and wanting to be part of the change commits to offering the option of fully compostable funeral flowers, incorporating an element of British-grown material into their designs, being transparent about the provenance of their cut material and showcasing their compostable designs on a dedicated funeral flowers page on their website.

Floral foam has become a significant environmental issue. It is estimated that every year over 14,670m3 of plastic floral foam is sent to landfill from crematoriums across the UK, the equivalent of more than 6 Olympic swimming pools. Plastic floral foam is a single-use plastic and cannot be recycled. It will never biodegrade but breaks down into microplastics which can contaminate the soil and watercourses.

The good news is that compostable alternatives to floral foam are available; ranging from creating moss and twig bases to arrangements of flowers or plants designed to be shared after the funeral with family and friends and to be taken home.

Rachel understands both the power that well-designed flowers can have and the need for a more sustainable approach. She explains:

“We often make floral arrangements for keen gardeners, sometimes collecting foliage, flowers and herbs from the most wonderful gardens and often combining them with locally grown blooms. We can make several separate bouquets or posies and then join them together to make one large arrangement to be placed on the coffin. After the funeral service these kinds of arrangements can be split apart and the individual bouquets and posies shared between family members to take home instead of just being left at the crematorium.

The Institute of Crematorium and Cemetery Management backs The Farewell Flowers Directory initiative, as Julie Dunk, Chief Executive of the ICCM explained:

“We recognise that floral tributes can be an important part of a funeral and beautiful displays can bring great comfort to bereaved families. However, as with everything in life, we need to consider our environmental impact and make choices where possible to minimise this impact. Once the flowers have wilted, cemeteries and crematoria are left with the plastics which can become litter, and which our members have no option but to skip and send to landfill. Reducing the amount of plastic in the form of floral foam and bases for displays, as well as wrappings such as cellophane, will have a positive impact on not only the environment but also on the costs of dealing with these non-biodegradable materials. It is great that there is now a real choice through The Farewell Flowers Directory and people can choose floral displays that reflect their wishes whilst protecting the environment. The ICCM welcomes this excellent initiative and would encourage anyone looking for local florists to help them create a meaningful floral tribute to use The Directory.”

www.farewellflowers.co.uk and www.budebotanical.com

For further information, comment and images from Bude Botanical, please contact:
Rachel Ellis on 01288 358519 or email [email protected]

For interviews and comment on The Farewell Flowers Directory, please contact:
Liz Anderson on 07976 061092 or email [email protected]

06/05/2024

It was so lovely to work with Hayley on this stunning creation. Makes me want to get married again, so I can have one of her amazing cakes 💗