Grow your own Wedding Flowers

by Georgie Newbery

  These posies have a good, structural understorey of sedum in tight bud. Here at Common Farm, we cut sedum from the day the stems are long enough to be of any use until the end of the season, when we dry what remains for use in Christmas decorations. As with hydrangeas, very large heads can be split into more versatile smaller pieces.

  As in any season, look around the gardens that are available to you. Depending on how the weather has been, there may be all sorts of unexpected offerings that I don’t mention here. There are very few plants that won’t condition well for cut-flower arrangements, so do play with unusual combinations. Your wild strawberry patch may be flowering, and wild strawberry flowers make beautiful buttons of daisy shapes in bouquets Even strawberries themselves are wonderful in floristry, though beware squashed strawberry juice on wedding dresses! (Better to use them before they’re quite ripe.) If you are able to plan a whole year before your wedding date, look in the perennial beds for the highlights in your wedding flowers, and build your scheme around them.

  Wildflowers

  Wildflowers good for cutting are perhaps less prolific in the hedgerow at this time of year, but wild scabious varieties, like the ones we grow – devil’s bit scabious and field scabious – and also the wonderful wild carrot, in flower throughout high summer, are easy to grow from seed. Both can be sown the previous summer, pricked out and planted out in early autumn, and will flower from the middle of summer the following year. Wild carrot is a beautiful lace-headed umbellifer flower, tighter than cow parsley and ammi, with a tiny dot of very dark red at its centre. When the flowers are over, the developing seedheads are apple-green and strikingly architectural; we grow it in abundance, and it’s one of my favourite flowers to cut through the summer.

  The nectar of a devil’s bit scabious in the field, being drunk by a meadow brown butterfly.

  What to grow

  Well, the roses are more or less over until their second flush in early autumn, so don’t rely on them for the wow factor in your wedding flowers at this time of year. There will be some roses, so you could still use them perhaps in your bridal bouquet and for the bridesmaids – but think, when planning, about other flowers that might be more reliable for you.

  Bright annuals mixed in with roses make really beautiful high-summer wedding posies. The white, floppy daisy-shaped flower is Cosmos ‘Purity’.

  A bright bouquet with a few opportunistically cut roses framed by dahlias, ammi visnaga, wild carrot, zinnias and other goodies.

  Remember that it’s useful to have certain shapes to bring your bouquets and posies to life. The list I give on the following pages is by no means prescriptive, but it’s designed to help you think about what you will grow. You might like the whole of your wedding to be just one shape, massed, in which case you must plant accordingly – though that way you’re not giving yourself much space for creativity with whatever does best for you in your season.

  Think spikes, daisy shapes, accent flowers, lace caps and buttons. For a high-summer wedding these could be (in the same order) larkspur or bells of Ireland, cosmos or zinnias, dahlias or sunflowers, ammi majus or ammi visnaga, and cornflowers, scabious or craspedia.

  Bells of Ireland

  These spikes of tall green flowers are brilliant as a green foil for whatever your colour scheme. At this time of year greenery can be difficult to come by, so grow some in the form of this sturdy, tall annual flower, and it’ll do all sorts of jobs for you in your floristry. They flower on and on from side shoots, but will need feeding and watering to keep mildew and rust at bay if you’re planning to use them late into autumn. They can have little, surprising sharp spikes tucked underneath the flowers – which don’t hurt particularly, but they do feel a bit savage when you first come across them.

  Cosmos

  This is the daisy shape for the high-summer or late-summer wedding. It’s tender, so don’t sow seed until mid spring, and then you can sow it direct in the ground. Cover it if there’s a threatened frost, and you should have a good crop for your high-summer wedding. (By mid spring I’d really recommend you try to sow everything straight in the ground, just to save yourself time!) Remember how large these plants will get when fully grown – over 1m (about 4’) each way, bigger than you might think when holding a little spike of cosmos seed in your hand! – so give them space. Crowded annuals won’t just fight for space above ground, their roots will also fight for water resources underground, and for a high-summer wedding you’re asking flowers to perform in sometimes difficult conditions (hot and dry).

  Cosmos is stronger-stemmed than it looks, which makes it very useful in giving life and movement to larger arrangements like this one.

  Keep an eye on the weather, and, while I don’t generally advocate watering too much, if there’s been no noticeable rain for a week or more then give your cosmos a really good water: you want the flowers to be large and generous and not spotted with botrytis, and the leaves not grey with mildew. A fortnightly feed with a weak seaweed solution will help too.

  Dahlias

  Dahlias start flowering soon after midsummer, and they flower on and on until the first frosts. They are not necessarily the first flower you may think of for a wedding – but for those of you who haven’t yet been bitten by the dahlia bug, this may be your moment. No longer the private domain of obsessive allotmenteer gentlemen who grow them in frightening sizes and colours for the show bench, dahlias have danced out of competition halls and into the jam jars on wedding reception tables, welcomed with open arms by wedding flower designers.

  They come in so many shapes and sizes and every single colour of the rainbow: from tiny pompoms, just right for a buttonhole, to huge dinner-plate dahlias big enough to wear as a hat, like ‘Café au Lait’ – much beloved of brides for its soft, creamy tones.

  Then there are the gorgeous waterlily types like ‘Apricot Desire’, one of my favourites. I love the pinks and purples, the dark reds and the apricot dahlias. For me, dahlias are the cancan dancers of the cut-flower summer, and they should be dressed accordingly in jewel colours for their show.

  Dahlia ‘Apricot Desire’ is a favourite of mine: not too pink, with just enough ballet-shoe in it to make the colour interesting.

  Dahlia ‘Karma Fuchsiana’ flowering in the field. This is a really gorgeous blinding pink, perfect for a flower scheme in very bright sunshine.

  Order dahlia tubers in the autumn from good suppliers (see Resources section). The more time you have to plan this, the more likely you are to get the dahlias you really want, so sit down and trawl through those websites. You’ll need maybe six to ten dahlia plants if they are to be a central theme in your wedding flowers. You could choose ten different varieties to grow, but I’d be a little more circumspect and go for perhaps three plants of three different varieties. This will give your bouquets and posies a consistency that will help you achieve your wedding flower ‘look’.

  Growing your dahlias

  The tubers will arrive as rooted cuttings in spring, and you should pot them up straight away in compost cut with plenty of sharp sand or horticultural grit: dahlias hate damp, and you don’t want your newly arrived cuttings to damp off before they’ve even settled in a pot! Keep the pots somewhere frost-free (a greenhouse or polytunnel) until all risk of frost is past, and water sparingly. You might find that they grow so fast they need potting on once before you plant them out (look for roots curling out of the bottom of the pot to tell whether this is necessary). Dahlias are top of the list where greedy slugs are concerned, so keep the rims of your potted-up dahlias smeared all around with Vaseline – a barrier the slug will not cross. Shake salt to stick to the Vaseline, and you’ve got a double slug barrier.

  Do not on any account give in to temptation and plant your dahlias out before all threat of frost is past. They’ll probably survive a late frost, but the biting they get from it will leave them, and you, feeling despondent, and they may take a while to recover.

  Plant dahlias out into good, free-draining soil (
again, we add a great deal of grit to our soil to stop our dahlia tubers suffering from damp) and feed them regularly: first with nettle tea to encourage stem growth, then, after midsummer, with comfrey tea to encourage flowering (see Chapter 2, for more on feeding). If you don’t fancy getting into making home-made teas, then feed your dahlias every fortnight or so, from when you’ve planted them out, with very dilute seaweed solution, which will ensure you have large, healthy, many-flowered plants.

  Massed dahlias in a bouquet are outrageous. You may not have enough to be so flagrant in all your posies, but for a bride’s bouquet . . . I dare you!

  As the dahlia grows, do pinch out the first flowering tips: this will encourage side shoots and so a greater number of flowers for you to have for your wedding. Then, once it begins to flower, cut, cut and cut the flowers, to encourage further flowering. Never leave flowers on a plant and expect the plant to keep flowering – it won’t, until the existing flower has been taken. So remove the flowers, practise making posies with them, and enjoy them – and you will have lots of flowers for your wedding. Dahlias will also need staking to support their brittle stems during summer storms (see Chapter 2).

  Cutting and conditioning dahlias

  In high summer the weather can be hot! So cut dahlias early in the morning, when the water is high in their necks after a long, cool night. Cut them when they’re not fully out, and cut straight into water. Give them a good 12 hours to condition before using them in floristry, and they’ll stand well for you. If using dahlias in glass vases, be prepared to change the water the day of the wedding.

  You will probably have arranged the flowers the day before and the water they’re in will very likely have gone an unsightly yellow (dahlias do this to water). Change the water in the vases on the morning of the wedding, and you’ll refresh the dahlias as well as have clean water sparkling in glass in your ‘tablescapes’.

  Sunflowers

  Sunflowers make wonderful cut flowers, and there are so many different-coloured varieties, from the lovely dark mix of chocolates and rich red colours in ‘Earth Walker’ to the delicate, lemon-yellow ‘Key Lime Pie’. We grow sunflowers especially because they are such good food for bees and other insects: in a garden you may not notice that the surface of the flower is covered in pollen, because the bees mow the flowers efficiently. Bring them indoors, however, and it’s a different story.

  Sunflowers tend to face outwards rather than upwards – their name in French is tournesol, which means they turn to face the sun – and this can make it difficult to use them in floristry. The skill is to avoid fighting with them, and let them be the side of bouquets, rather than at the top.

  So if you’re planning to carry them in your bouquet, you may want to either decide that you won’t worry about pollen on your dress, or you could grow ‘allergy friendly’ varieties. These will be F1 hybrids, which won’t reproduce (or make pollen). Personally, I’d rather feed the bees and not worry about my dress . . . After all, one of the many good things about growing your own wedding flowers is that you’re not just cancelling the carbon footprint of the flowers you have at your wedding, but you’re actively feeding your environment by growing them in the first place.

  Growing your sunflowers

  I find sunflowers much easier to grow when they’re direct-sown into warm ground in late spring. Then they germinate and grow on quickly. Sunflowers grown in pots, which then need potting on and planting out, will be fine, but may sulk a little when planted out, which can be unnerving for a novice grower. Of course, sunflower seed, direct-sown into the ground, can be a strong draw for the local hungry mouse – and, as the seed begins to sprout leaves, you do risk losing them to slugs. So, as usual, I recommend that you hedge your bets. Sow a couple of short rows of sunflowers in the ground, and put another ten seeds into pots. If your ground-sown seed takes, survives early mouse and slug attack, and starts shooting up quickly, then you can give away the seedlings you’ve got coming on in pots.

  In the same way that a touch of yellow in a pink-and-white scheme can prevent that scheme from being too blue, a touch of pink in a yellow-and-white scheme gives the whole a gentleness. People don’t like yellow because they think it’s harsh – but not here.

  When planting out sunflower seedlings, I recommend you do it early in the morning, when the sun isn’t hot on the sunflower’s head. Make sure you water them in very well, and maybe rig up a little shade in which they can recover from the trauma of transplanting. They will very likely look a bit wilty, but hold your nerve, water them every day until they stop sulking (a few days), and all will be well.

  Pinch out the growing tips of sunflower plants as the first flowers show in bud, and you’ll find you get lots of wonderful flowering side shoots, at a height you can reach, and that the flowers on those shoots are less heavy. These will be more useful in floristry than huge, prize-winning 20-foot-high flowers.

  Sunflowers can sulk when they’re cut as well as when they’re planted out. Cut them early in the morning, straight into water, give them 12 hours in a cool, dark, airy place, and they’ll recover beautifully. If you’ve practised cutting and creating your posies in advance, you won’t be fazed by their moody behaviour when you cut them for the big day.

  One of the many good things about growing your own wedding flowers is that you’re not just cancelling the carbon footprint of the flowers you have at your wedding, but you’re actively feeding your environment by growing them in the first place.

  Zinnias

  I first saw zinnias massed in northern India, at the very beginnings of the foothills of the Himalayas, in an area where the fields were full of apple trees. The nights there were cool; the days sunny. When I moved to Somerset, where the fields are full of apple trees and the nights are cool, and the days are (relatively) sunny, I determined that I would grow masses and masses of zinnias. I will admit, though, that they’ve been trickier to master as a crop than I anticipated. They like it really hot and dry. And they don’t like their roots being disturbed once they’ve germinated. In short, they’re a little bit fussy. But for their happy, sunny faces in all those gorgeous colours, I will put myself to some trouble.

  This creamy-greeny-white zinnia is useful in all kinds of colour schemes. If you need stem length, look for the Benary’s Giant series, which will give you more height than the bedding-style varieties, though these are still tall enough for posies, and easier to find in catalogues.

  It is the perfectly matt, almost dusty surface of their velvet petals that I like so much. Their texture is a great foil for the dahlias and bouncy jolly cosmos also flowering at the same time. Direct-sow zinnias, after all threat of frost is past, and they’ll do much better for you than grown in a tray then pricked and potted out, which disturbs their roots and upsets them.

  Catch crops

  Remember that you can pop in catch crops (quick-growing space fillers) of other annuals too, to dress the tables at your wedding. If you love cornflowers, gypsophila, California poppies or nigella, sow them late and they’ll flower late for you. A tray of sweet peas sown in spring will flower from high summer onwards.

  The skill with getting and keeping annuals in top condition for a high-summer or late-summer wedding is in feeding, watering and cutting. Don’t let them dry out, or they’ll go to seed. Keep them fed to keep the flowering stems strong, and cut them: don’t expect flower heads to stay fresh on the plant for long in high summer. Annuals are cut-and-come-again flowers – so remember to cut them, and they’ll flower for you again.

  A moody late-summer mix of late-sown (mid-spring) sweet peas, Japanese anemones, and black elder leaves.

  Top tips for high-summer wedding flowers

  Successional sowing is the key to having lots of flowery material to cut at this time of year. Sow one batch of flowers in early spring, another in mid spring, and another in late spring.

  Feed with weak seaweed solution and water often, to keep flowers producing and prevent them going to seed.


  Be ready for hot weather putting your cut flowers under pressure. Cut them early in the morning or in the cool of the evening, and put them somewhere cool and airy overnight. Replace water in jam jars and any other glass containers on the day of the wedding, if it has yellowed overnight.

  If flowers are starting to go over, don’t ignore attractive seedheads: cut them and use them in your floristry.

  If cutting hydrangeas for a high-summer wedding, you’ll find that as the flower heads mature they are easier to condition. Freshly opened hydrangea heads will do better in water than in flower-foam arrangements.

  A COUNTRY WEDDING AT THE HEIGHT OF SUMMER

  These pictures are from an orchard wedding reception in the bride’s family’s garden. The bride and groom skipped off to the registrar in the morning and were married with only their parents and brothers and sisters as witnesses. In the afternoon they had a small group of friends to a gorgeous party in the orchard at the bottom of their garden. The bride was brave (and clever) with her colour scheme, and the pale pink wine in the glasses provided a very successful contrast with the flowers. This was one of my favourite events of the year.