Purple roses

When Gemma came to see me in February this year, she had a really clear concept for her October wedding. She wanted it to feel autumnal, not frothy and summery, and she had a precise colour scheme - dark purple, light purple and white. Lovely, but a bit of a challenge as she was hoping for purple roses. I had never seen any purple roses at the flower market, and when I asked I was told that only light purple roses existed and a rose called 'Purple Haze' would be easy to get hold of. Gemma's husband to be, Ian, liked the idea of Purple Haze because it's the title of a Jimi Hendrix song. Here is a picture of it - looks like it would do the job.

Well, I tried ordering this a few times over the year to see if it was true and could be obtained easily. The first time a bright cerise rose arrived! The second time an OK-ish rose called 'New Orleans' arrived, but it was a bit pink and not best quality. Then I spied a beautiful rose called 'Ocean Song' in someone else's order. This is just exquisite and it even has a bit of a rose fragrance. I got it - 100 stems.

Then, the dark purple came from lisyanthus and the white from glorious avalanche roses and gypsophila.

Gemma bought gorgeous metallic glass vases for the welcome vase and the table centres. Here they are in my workshop.

I made small vase arrangements for moving around the venue - from the registrar's table and window sills to the top table. The ladies' buttonholes had a little gypsophila and lisyanthus added to the rose and the foliage. They were finished off with lace and purple ribbon. The men's buttonholes were simpler and finished off with silver wire.

Everybody tells me how important it is to take photos of wedding flowers - but mostly there isn`t enough time. On the day of the wedding everything needs to be packed up safely and off we go. I ran out of time to take photos of Gemma's bouquet and the bridesmaids' posies - just managed to snap them in the back of the car before we set off to the venue.

Ian's interest in Jimi Hendrix became clear as we got to the venue. The clue starts with the sheet music you can see on the right of the welcome table.

Every table had a record placed in the middle. The centres of the records were purple and there were purple petals scattered on the wood slices where I placed the flowers. It looked wonderful.

Whilst I was setting up, the lady with the cake arrived. I couldn`t believe it - she had made icing sugar flowers in exactly the same colours as the real flowers.

What a gorgeous October wedding. Finally, on the subject of purple roses. During one of my workshops when I was talking about purple roses, and the difficulty in getting hold of them, one of the participants, Christine, told me she had seen a bush of purple roses for sale at a local garden centre. The rose is called 'Rhapsody in Blue' and it is a fantastic deep purple - so dark purple roses do exist!

Summer in the City

It's been a scorching hot summer, but our garden has held up well with a lot of effort put into watering. Here is a picking of flowers one morning in early July. Stand out flowers were sea holly, red alstroemeria and sweetpeas.

Another favourite of mine has been perennial scabious. It is lovely when it is just starting to open up, when it is in full bloom and also as a seedhead.

Other brilliant flowers, still in bloom, are cosmos, echinacea, garlic chives and lavender.

In the height of the summer I was really pleased to arrange the flowers for Holly's wedding. She got married in Sheffield Town Hall and then had her reception at Tampers. I made her bouquet with just white and blue flowers (including the gorgeous scabious with asters, sea holly, lavender, roses, phlox and agapanthus).

Her bridesmaids' posies included a few yellow roses to match up with the gold ties worn by the men.

Now we`ve got to late summer, the dahlias are the star of the show.

Also the produce for eating!

Mike is really keen on geraniums. They aren`t my favourite, but I have to agree that they have really livened up this bit of wall.

There are a lot of flowers to harvest at this time of year and I find myself arranging them straight into jugs and vases. I will be running a workshop on Saturday 6th October about arranging into vintage jugs. These are the kind of things I like to put together.

Why not come along to the workshop and release some creativity!

Moving from spring to summer

This weekend I`ve lifted the last of the tulip bulbs and the specialist narcissi bulbs to store until the autumn. We`ve had brilliant weather here in South Yorkshire for the last few weeks. In May I did the wedding flowers for a fabulous wedding at Cressbrook Hall which is the depths of Derbyshire near Monsal Head. The weather was spectacular:

Here are the flowers as I brought them into the hall:

Then here they are in their proper place on the tables. The colours looked great against the views outside and in the setting of the hall:

I am hoping I will get to see some photos of the wedding party with their flowers soon. But, for now, here is one of the bridesmaid's posies (mainly pink and white) and the bride's bouquet (with more blue flowers) in my workshop before they were packed up to go:

I also made a couple of presentation bouquets for the mothers of the bride and groom:

This time of year is usually a bit disappointing in our garden. The spring flowers have gone and the annuals are not yet in flower. This year has been different - the perennials have burst into life. The astrantia and alchemilla have blossomed with particular vigour:

Then the roses and clematis are also fully out in all their spendour:

We have a rather dank area at the side of the house which is full of beautiful spires of foxgloves.

At the front of the house we have some wonderful bright red poppies with splashes of black, the last of the iris and an intriguing flower that we grew from seed - it was a present from a friend and we don`t know what it is. Any suggestions?

And to finish, here is a simple posy of June flowers picked from our garden this morning: