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. 

St Laurence

Large urn arrangements for a traditional wedding ceremony at St Laurence in North Adelaide.  This church has the most beautiful marble carvings, stained glass and wooden vaulted ceiling. I took photos like a tourist before rushing off across town to set up flowers for the reception dinner.



Churches make me nostalgic. They remind me of school, where we had to go to chapel most mornings before classes began.  We all had a prayerbook of our own, given to us by the school, and in about year seven I emblazoned mine, front and back, with pictures of Jonathon Brandis, torn out of Smash Hits magazine and carefully preserved under a layer of contact.  I think my best friend Georgie had Jonathan on her book as well. Devout fans.

Early morning.

The Adelaide Magazine

A few people have told me they have tried to find these shots, but I think they are right down in the bowels of old facebook.  So, here they are.  This series of my sculptural headpieces appeared in The Adelaide Magazine last Spring.  Styling: Belinda Humphris. Photography: Diana Melfi. Florals: Me.



This model (Shanna) was amazing, the headpieces truly weighed a ton, and I'm sure at various stages she had bits of leaf in her mouth and sticks digging into her hair.  Kind of like how I do most days.



The shots below appeared in The Adelaide Magazine a few months later.  This was shot on location in the refurbished wing at The Art Gallery of South Australia.  The brief: flowers inspired by 17th Century still life paintings.    Styling: Kate Bowden.  Photography: Jody Pachniuk.  Flowers: yes, you guessed it.

A rose is not a rose is not a rose

Quite often one of the first questions that I ask when brides come to me for a consultation is "What is your favourite flower, or what flowers do you like?". "Oh, peonies, sweet peas, lily of the valley", they say..."but I'm not that keen on roses, no gerberas, no orange lilies".  I mean, I would NEVER use a gerbera in a bouquet, let's be serious. Or probably never at all anywhere in my life.  Unless it was one of those smaller, species-looking ones in that cream tan colour that doesn't look like a gerbera at all...Anyway!, to get to my point, how is it that roses so often end up on people's Ugly List?...



The reason is simple. There are two kinds of roses in this world:  The first lot are bred and reared for the cut flower trade, commonly in countries such as Kenya or Colombia, and sprayed with all kinds of things, wrapped in plastic, whisked onto a plane, shipped across the globe and deposited safely at our customs where they may be sprayed again to make sure they are safe before being sent onto you, the customer.  Here they reach you, perfect solid cones of petals, big stiff stems, not a blemish in sight.  Complete with no scent, no movement, no soul, but conveniently available every week of the year in their plastic perfection.

Group two are the real thing.  Heady with scent, with silky petals that open right out in a warm room until the petals fall, plop, onto the table.  Sexy and romantic. This kind of rose is available from Spring to Autumn, and has a rest over the Winter.  The ones I use for all my arrangements come from Rustons Roses in South Australia, grown out in the open in the sunshine, and picked by the lady who answers the phone when you ring to make an order.  The other day, Di at Rustons popped an extra bunch in the box as a present for me.  Their bunches are always wrapped in damp recycled newspaper (always with the crossword puzzle completed), and Di had drawn a big smiley face in texta on my present.  Let me tell you that florists NEVER get given flowers; I nearly cried.  Or, ok, yes, I actually did.

 Look at these roses! Perfection.  Their scent can honestly fill a room.



Oh, and if you were wondering, this was a wedding at the SA Wine centre, with a subtle rose theme right down to the table cards.  (xx Thankyou Helen).

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.