We grow flowers for intimate weddings in our local community. We believe that flowers should be sourced locally when possible as they offer such a sense of place and time let alone come with lower transport miles and are generally fresher as they more than likely were picked the day or so before the event. We grow a little bit of a lot of flowers and aim for diversity in our gardens and our designs.
We design bouquets, boutonnieres, ceremony and reception pieces for intimidate, local to the Manning Valley, weddings. We provide a service that is somewhat different from a florist and as such cater for very different types of people.
We grow the flowers and foliage we use in our work. This means that our customers/clients have very little control over the flowers we will have available to use on their wedding day. We never know what will be ready to pick until at least the week of a wedding if not a few days before. There are certain flower seasons where we have a rough guide as to what may be in flower from previous years' experience but guarantees of specific varieties can not be made. We surrender to and trust the workings of nature whilst working hard every day to tend to and care for our gardens and plants.
Florists have an amazing ability to source product from a range of growers and they have a whole warehouse of flowers at their disposal giving their customers much greater say in what they want and can have. For this reason, our service may not satisfy all.
Those most suited to our workings will come to us happy to release the reigns somewhat. They will be satisfied with the idea that what is ready for us to harvest that day, that week, is what was needed – a gift to them by the natural world – sometimes it gets lost in translation that flowers are nature and grow in soil with their faces to the sun. Flowers are ephemeral so whilst there are tips and tricks for getting them to last longer once cut – they are not supposed to last forever. This is part of their beauty and we embrace them wholeheartedly. We harvest our flowers very close to the time when we most need them. For a wedding we are cutting at most 2-3 days before THE day.
In terms of what this service is supposed to cost is something we are working at getting right for ourselves and the floral industry as a whole. For us right from the beginning, putting a price tag on our flowers was hard. Who decides these things? I am starting to value the process and the service we are offering as something very worthwhile and important. Our service begins with a seed sown and many a months’ careful tender. We harvest, design and deliver all elements of the wedding day that have been requested and we clean up after ourselves at the end.
We are Farmer Florists. We are bound by what we grow whilst at the same time are open and free to the limitless potential of what is offered to us in nature where we are. We grow specific varieties and spend a lot of time working away in our gardens with careful plans and forethought but it can often be the grasses growing up through the mulch seen through a backdrop of a setting sun that can steal the show.
We look up to our local florists and take great inspiration from them but we celebrate the fact that we are different. We offer a different service that will serve some but not all and that is ok and will always be beautiful!
Key points:
*Florist vs farmer florist - different service /different clients
*Trusting in nature
*Embracing sense of place and time
*Appreciating the time it takes and the behind the scenes steps involved
*How much does it all cost? How much should it all cost?
*End goal - happy couples and thriving ecosystem.
The steps involved in growing flowers for weddings: (not including the consultations with clients)
*Sow seed
*Bed preparations
*Transplant seedlings
*Irrigation
*Observing
*Pinching out
*Observing
*Weather watching
*Harvest
*Post harvest care
*Design of all elements
*Transport
*Set up
*Take down
*Rest but not too long because we need to....
*Sow....
*Bed prep....
CONT......
Keep Growing!!! x