Remember Summer?

Remember when it's like 40 degrees in the shade and we're all whining because it's soooo hot?  The day we set up for this wedding was a bit like that.  Why did I wear tights, why? The reason: when you wake up at 4am in the Hills because you have to go to the studio to wire up 12 buttonholes and it's freezing and dark and you're half asleep rummaging through your drawers for something that doesn't need ironing, you can sometimes make bad wardrobe decisions.  Like 100 denier at the beach.
Looking down the barrel of a week of rain, the hot weather seems like a pleasant misty memory. Ahh, blue sky, glassy sea, palm trees swaying in the breeze.
We travelled a little down the coast for this one, an extravaganza of a wedding for a magazine editor from Sydney.  The bride is a lover of zesty colour, so we went all out with drifts of tropicana coloured blooms, a huge floral arch, and a cascading platform of flowers over the bridal table.  Pina colada anyone?



It's kind of funny looking back at these shots because the colours and the flowers and the beachside setting dragged me way out of my comfort zone. It's good to do that occasionally.  I'm a lover of navy blue and maroon and grey skies and wintertime and melancholy music and red wine and eating too much.  I don't own a pair of bathers, or a beach towel, I'm scared of swimming in the sea.  In a creative sense,  designing for this event was like going on a holiday to Zanzibar, and I mean that in a good way.

NB: Lucy, we look like the floral Blues Brothers.

Autumn, Adelaide Hills.

Above: portrait images courtesy of the bride and groom.

Autumn is just the best season in the Adelaide Hills. The trees turn flame red and the scent of woodsmoke carries on the air as people stoke up their stoves against the cooler nights.  Go for a walk and that damp, leafy, mulchy smell rises up from underfoot.

An Autumn wedding at the Bridgewater Mill called for the russet tones of the season to intermingle with the softness of roses.  I really love this couple, they are so romantic, he specifically requested brown oak leaves and bunny-tail grass for his buttonhole. So beautiful.

Life. And Flowers.

I sit here at the farm, on the verandah facing West, and the world tumbles into perspective.  Nature is so simple. It turns through the seasons, over and over, doing what it needs to do to.  People, on the other hand, can be complicated; there's a smile on the face while muddied waters flow beneath.
Flowers never succumb to bad moods or hidden agendas. They simply don't have the time, or the inclination.  A poppy, picked for the table, has just a few days up it's sleeve before its petals begin to fall, one by one.  Perhaps if our own timelines were a little shorter we'd spend more time on the good stuff and less on the bad.  No more sweating the small stuff.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the fleetingness of what I do, and whether that is ok, or enough.  Shouldn't I be doing something lasting and beneficial to the world and humankind - stem cell research, foreign aid, wilderness conservation...?  But then this week I took flowers to two brides and both of them nudged tears of happiness.  A wedding is a hugely meaningful day in the lives of the people who are committing to one another, and I love the symbolic part that flowers play.  People are always happy to give and receive flowers and it occurred to me that delivering them is like being a little spreader of happiness.  If something is beautiful enough that it brings tears to the eye, then maybe that is enough.  I like to think that the provision of beauty, and the appreciation of nature,  is a worthwhile endeavour after all.  It's goodness on a small scale.

Kingsbrook

Walking through the gates of Kingsbrook at Currency Creek is like walking through a portal into another world of Mediterranean luxe and tennis parties, pimms, perfect espalier and giant placid hounds snoozing on the grass.  I love this place.  It reminds me of what our farm will look like when we win the MegaLotto and hire Arne Maynard to come over and "do" the garden. 





This couple had the kind of effortless laid-back style that transcends those little stresses in life like organizing a sit-down wedding banquet for 120 guests on an open-air terrace.  While they got ready, I worked in the shade of an ancient pear tree; diligently poking tulips into urns while resisting the temptation to nick off into the restaurant for a G'n'T to sip in the sunshine.

An Easter Wedding

I wish I was the daughter of an apple farmer, or, more specifically, I wish I was the last in a long line of apple farmers reaching back through the centuries, with an apple named after me (Morgan's Dusky Pippin).  Today's bride is from a family of apple farmers and when I heard this all I wanted to do with her wedding flowers was include lichen-laden apple branches and fruit.  If only it was spring... oh blossom ...sigh.

I am sure I am romanticizing an occupation that is in fact extremely hard work - a bit like floristry, ha.  Hard yakka, stressful weather conditions, vermin, insects; there is a flip side to every coin I am sure.  I really do love driving past the local apple orchards near the farm though, and visiting the apple shed on the main road where you can pick up bags of apples fresh from the grower.  I am glad the local growers are here, it's been testing times:

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/rotten-ruling-a-threat-to-apple-industry/story-e6frea83-1225853376729

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/australian-growers-fears-realised-with-import-of-nz-apples/story-e6frea83-1226116776090
 




Huge bouquets are my own personal bias and my heart always sinks just a tiny little bit when I'm doing a consult and she says "oh, nothing too over the top, just something really simple and small".
When I get married, the bouquet's going to be so big it'll be dragging along the floor.

Anyway, today's bride was so lovely and tall that I made her a big blousy bouquet to carry, a heady mix of roses, tulip and tuberose, in apple blossom colours.  Cosmos from our own farm, hurrah!

And a trailing garland of roses and apple leaves for the bridal table...

Dahlia Garden

A new florist friend of mine recently told me about her special connection to the Dahlia garden at the Botanic Gardens of Adelaide, and it inspired me to go and have another look while the dahlias are still in full bloom. 
Encircled by a high holly hedge, dahlias of all imaginable shapes, sizes and colours compete for attention.  Seen like this, they are reminiscent of English flower shows in country halls; an impressive display of the plant breeders' prowess. Anyway, go and have a look while the last dahlias are still hanging on, and experience the childlike wonder of the giant paper-like flowers towering overhead.






More than anything, the visit to the gardens got me thinking about the notion of Botanical Gardens as a whole, and the wider meaning, and importance, of green places that exist purely to foster a connection between us and the plant kingdom.  I am glad to live in a world, and a city, that still thinks it worthwhile to spend some of the taxpayer dollar on gardening, and creating a space where rare plants can be cared for and seen and sat under. 




I went to the gardens between meetings, feeling exhausted and strung out, and I left a much happier person.  It really works, and the idealist in me just wants everybody to be able to sneak into the gardens for 10 minutes to make their shitty day just a little brighter or calmer; a chance to get perspective on things.  It's no secret that green spaces are beneficial to our mental health (I've always found the best cure for the blues is a country walk, or an hour of weeding), but recent budget cuts leave many worried about the Gardens long-term.  Perhaps if funds were found for more public gardens across the city (real gardens, not just grassed parks) there would be a longer lasting beneficial effect for the community.  More than, say, sporting events that congest traffic and gobble up money for short-term thrills.  I know I'd rather sit under a dahlia bush than watch some wheels fly by.

Just a thought...

Mermaid Bouquet

Often, the starting point for a bridal bouquet, or any arrangement really, is an amazing flower stem, or interesting piece of foliage. It could be something about the shape, the bend of a stem, an incredible colour, or the patterning on the underside of a leaf.  Nature as muse.  The transience of nature means that no two stems will ever be alike; the changing seasons introduce colour changes in leaves, transform petals into pods, bend stems under wind and sun.  In flowers, as in faces, true beauty lies in the imperfections.  Perfect hothouse flowers can somehow miss the whole point, but that’s a rant for another day…

In this case, the muse was a delicately winding tendril of a passionfruit vine.  And a waterlily flower.  The two combined conjured these Julia Margaret Cameron portraits, Victorian beauties wandering in overgrown gardens, vines trailing down.  The fact that the beautiful bride that clutched this bouquet to her dress  actually looked like these girls made it all complete. 

        

Recent Bouquets

Two New Year’s Eve brides.  Two beautiful, gentle, creative, romantic couples.

Roses and Australian natives together? Yep, absolutely.  So many gardens here in Adelaide are a melding of Australian gumtrees and roses spreading beneath.  It just makes sense for that to jump the garden fence into vases and bouquets.  It’s a soft Australian style without being too Skippy the Bush Kangaroo Waltzing Matilda. 

Clare Valley Dream

The most elegant country wedding in the Clare Valley.  Thankyou so much M & J. 

500 peonies flown in from Victoria, sweet peas from Ashton (this was early December), South Australian roses, armfuls of beautiful vintage crystal ware.  

Early summer storms definitely added drama to the morning, but by golly there’s something satisfying about creating order and beauty against the elements.  Think very large truck full of precarious vases and buckets of flowers, 2.5 hours on the highway, torrential rain, VERY close bolts of lightning (ie 5 meters away), 4 hysterical girls following lightning bolt nearly hitting us - ok girls, I know I was the most hysterical but lightning nearly hitting the flowers!

Then the clouds parted, the sun came out and all was calm and pretty and petalled, a perfect wedding.  Deep sigh of relief.  Anyone who thinks floristry is a bunch of girls playing about with flowers is deeply misguided. It’s an extreme sport requiring nerves of steel, and we LOVE it.

All photos of this wedding by Todd Perry Photography.  Dress by Paolo Sebastian.

Peaches N Cream

Lucy and Jo languishing prettily in my loungeroom.  A living, breathing Waterhouse painting.