The colour of dusk

Plum and burgundy notes for a sophisticated wedding. Pared back, intimate dinner, dark eclectic flowers.  Thank you Clare for giving me a colour - deepest maroon - and then just letting me run with the flowers, complete trust.




Am still thinking about these black hellebores, their dusky magic. I totally live for the special flowers like these, the interesting stuff, the unexpected arrivals. I was reading an interview recently with florist/artist hero Thierry Boutemy and one piece of floral advice he gave was to humble the superstar flowers - "if a flower is important, make it less important"; if a bloom like a peony is crying for attention, tuck it in lower in the arrangement, treat it mean.  It follows then that the smaller, quieter flowers can have their place in the spotlight; all the little interesting blooms, the delicate, the dark, can move up and intrigue us with their subtle charms.
I like the flowers that don't clamour for attention, those that when you carefully hold them and turn them upwards toward your face, their beauty is revealed, and is breathtaking.  (I like people like that too).



Thank you The Props Dept for letting me put flowers on your cool stuff.

Tuesday thoughts...

Ranuncula, sweet peas and hellebores for a winter wedding.  I love making bouquets. I love the connection to the bride, the symbolic meaning, the careful planning of colour, texture and form.  I love the relationship between the bouquet and the dress, the old-world tradition, the sheer romance of it all.

So, Tenth Meadow shop update: It's coming along! Still heading for September 12 (that's a Thursday).  Currently alternating stressing-out sessions and trips to the hardware store with drinking reds at Cantina and pretending that it's all pretty much done. That's in between all the flower arranging, deliveries, client meetings, bridal consults, etc etc.  If I'm looking quite relaxed in the above photo, it's probably because I'm power napping.

The teller at the bank said to me last week, "renovations huh?".  I thought she must have tuned in to my thoughts through some kind of sympathetic women's intuition.  Turns out I just had a whole heap of paint in my hair.

See you all soon...

Hellebores & Happiness

Today I woke up, wandered out to the kitchen, made a cup of coffee.  Looked out the window and there were ducks swimming on the lawn.  So much rain, so much mud, but at least the ducks are happy.  If one more filthy, sodden terrier runs through our house I swear I'm going to staplegun those blue Bunnings tarps to the floorboards, embrace the mud, and just rip up the plastic sometime in November.  Yep, living the country dream.  I watched Stealing Beauty twice over so that I could feel good again about crumbling houses and rural living.



Last week I got asked to do an artist talk at the Flinders Art Museum.  I have a painting in their current exhibition, "Crystal Palace".  I generally get really freaked out about talking about my paintings; I love talking about just about any other topic, just give me an audience, but the art world can be a funny judgmental place at times and speaking about my paintings can sometimes feel like baring my soul.  So there I was, nervously trying to articulate myself in front of a serious little crowd, and suddenly I found myself talking about flowers.  And I felt truly happy. 



The Tenth Meadow flower shop is due to open September 12th. Beyond excited!!!!  Setting an actual opening date seems like the best way to just get it together and get it done.   It's at 10 Compton street Adelaide, next to the beautiful Push Pin Boutique, if you're walking by and want to peer through the window.  Warning: renos still in progress so don't be alarmed if all you see is plaster dust and dropsheets.  No flowers in the house as yet. But soon.......!!

Hi there stranger.

Hi, remember me? Yes, it's been a little while between posts, I've been busy renovating the new shop space, painting walls, ripping up shagpile carpet, sweeping and scraping.   The latest update: Early September.  Yep.  Renovations have a way of taking way longer than we hope, but I'm choosing not to stress, after all, the September opening will be in perfect time for all the Spring flowers to burst forth and do their thing: sweet peas, blossoms, rhododendrons, hellebores, jasmine...then a little bit later the first flush of roses...and then peonies...I hope I never lose the excitement that Spring brings.  I'm gonna fill that little shop to bursting!




All this musing on Spring and THE END OF WINTER has got me thinking about peonies.  Difficult to grow in Adelaide, but not impossible. I believe they have an easier time with them in Victoria and Tasmania and last November/December we did a few events with peonies galore; one bride in particular timed her entire wedding around their short blooming season (hi Mary x).  Hundreds of peonies arrived for us on a Virgin flight from Victoria, precious cargo carefully picked from the fields the evening before.  The warmth of the studio meant that the tightly rounded buds popped open before our eyes, magic.




Thank you so much to Alia from Whitewall Photography who dropped by and shot these beautiful evocative images while we worked.  I love this photo essay for its moment captured in time. We are no longer working from this Oakbank barn, having outgrown the space, but some floral workshops here are in the planning for the Summer...
And thankyou to Nicole and Anni, my beautiful, patient and devoted floral assistants on this day xx. 

Bird in Hand

Hanging pillar gardens for a recent dinner at Bird in Hand Winery in the Adelaide Hills, to celebrate the winery's luxury accessories range.  The barrell hall there is amazing, and vast, calling for extravagant florals on a large scale.  We used a cascading selection of Autumn foliage and ferns studded with flowers in earthy tones of copper, rust and apricot.

Heart.

This wedding last weekend in the old Gnadenberg church in the Barossa Valley was a perfect example of what can be achieved with a minimum of fuss, a romantic heart, nostalgic leanings, and a perfect blue sky. 70 guests for a ceremony in the tiny church, followed by food and drink in the church hall. Simple. And it was so gorgeous, beyond description, steeped in a heartfelt authenticity that can sometimes be absent from huge extravaganzas, with all their bells and whistles.
Just a beautiful frock, an heirloom veil, an abundance of flowers, the best catering, and loving kin. What more could you ask for?

At risk of sounding like a devotee of HELLO! magazine, I often reflect in a similar way about the wedding of Jamie Oliver to the lovely Jools; about how steeped it was in old-fashioned village traditions despite the celebrity palaver, from the wildflower bouquet to the wedding procession through the old village.  I LOVE that they did this (google it now).  Can someone from around here please book in at an old country church and then arrange to have the street closed so that all their guests can parade through the village throwing flowers and twirling streamers on sticks?  Can you do it in the Adelaide Hills, or in a little town like Auburn, and make it springtime? Thankyou, oh, and then let me know so that I can festoon the church doorway in an archway of scented flowers.

New studio. And New Shop.

Our new flower studio is officially launched this Wednesday.  The launch date is more symbolic than actual, given I've been working there for a while now.  Wednesday also marks the official launch of my partner Justin's furniture studio and showroom.  His beautiful wooden furniture will be displayed in the front section of our warehouse, and we are out the back, along with hire & styling wonder The Props Dept.  You can follow what Justin is up to on his new journal, or pop in and have a look Thursdays - Saturdays.



The Tenth Meadow floral studio is open by appointment only; it's a working space where I prepare flowers and arrangements for events, take deliveries, clean buckets, sometimes make a leafy/petally mess, and often meet with clients. 

But....due to popular demand, The Tenth Meadow is opening a little flower shop nearby!, so that you will be able to pop in and choose flowers for yourself or as gifts.  Opening Late July, we'll keep you posted.  It's going to be a small boutique flower shop nestled in an historic little precinct in the Adelaide CBD...exact location to be revealed soon.  Truly and honestly a dream come true.

Winter charms

There is a quiet delicacy to the flowers that are in season at this time of year.  All the flashy performers of late spring and summer - peonies, roses, dahlias - have made way for the pale charms of iceland poppies, jonquils and hellebores.  There are tiny mauve and white violets braving the cold here at the farm.  It's curious to me why some of these most fragile of flowers choose to arrive just when the rain starts sheeting down and the wind is whipping through  Every year we watch as the first blossoms are shaken from the branches by late winter storms.  To be honest, I quite like the drama of it all, it's appealing in a romantic kind of way, like a Victorian gothic novel.  Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Wuthering Heights - delicate feminine beauty rallying against the elements.



By the way, I pinched this white gypsy table from the Props Dept studio, so I should mention that it is available from them for hire...

Whispers...

Our city floral Studio officially launches on June 12.  We've been working out of the space for a couple of months now, but the beautiful front windows are going in this week, so you won't have to crawl under a roller door if you want to talk to me about flowers.  I'm only available by appointment at this stage,  but there are whispers of a little Tenth Meadow shop opening in the CBD very soon.........!!!!
Bookings are filling for the 2013/2014 wedding season, so do drop me a line and come and have a cup of tea and talk about your wedding.  Or a champagne, if you are more that sort of girl, lord knows I am.

Home Farm Wedding

A Canberra couple came home to the family farm for a wedding ceremony beneath a giant tree.  Her dad is a keen gardener, and she wanted her bouquets to feature snippets from his perfectly tended garden. I tiptoed through the beds, choosing plum-tinged hydrangea and viburnum leaf with a hint of Autumn blush. 

Jessica

More and more of you are coming to me with an understanding and enthusiasm for seasonal flowers.  If it's April and you wanted peonies, well, that's ok, we'll just use David Austen roses and dahlias instead.  It's August and all the old-fashioned roses have gone to sleep for the season? Ok, hellebores are amazing, let's use those, with some early narcissus. It's like buying fruit and veg: those tomatoes that tasted so good in January will be hard and horrible if shipped from America in the dead of winter.  Seasonal flowers are picked at their best, from soil close to home.

These pics were from a winery wedding in the Adelaide hills.  Soft and bridal, but carrying with them the earthy tones of the season.  She wanted an interesting garden-picked style, with lots of textured twigs, seeds and berries.  He wasn't sure about having a buttonhole at all. But a rustic spray of masculine textures has romance without the froth.



After this wedding, I'm in love with wrist corsages again.  I've always found them fiddly and a bit outdated, but I've changed my mind since making this Mother's corsage.  On grandmothers especially, they seem fitting, and nostalgic; carrying memories of dances and country halls, homemade dresses,  and sweethearts walking home on summer evenings.