October 2013 - WEDDING FLOWERS
News Update
Loading...

Telopea Truncata - the Tassie Waratah


Telopea Truncata is the botanical name for the Tasmanian Waratah, a wonderful wild flower that blooms in spring.  I've begun picking these beauties for the season with one of my bushes, a rather large and productive one, flowering weeks before the rest.  It's a joy to grow these special flowers!

Telopea Truncata is a many-branched shrub up to 3 m tall.
The plant can grow to 3 metres with long stems reaching for the sky.  It can take you by surprise, flowering all of a sudden.  The buds, often covered with fine brown hairs,  swell within a few days given the right conditions, and then emerge with red folded blooms.  

Flowers look smaller and less bright when they are just beginning to open.
 What we call the "flower" is actually a cluster of up to 20 individual flowers.  These "unfold" and assemble themselves roughly facing the centre of a circle.  Each individual little flower then begins to unfold freeing their styles with the effect that the flower gets larger and more sculptural.  It also gets more intensely pinky red.  

I pick the waratah early,  before the first "unfolding", which gives them maximum vase life.  They are smaller and less brightly coloured at this stage, but they will continue to unfold naturally and brighten in colour even after being picked.  


The "flowers" have arranged themselves and are beginning to open.

Some of the styles are beginning to emerge from these flowers.  Intense colour and bent styles are typical of Telopea Truncata

The brighter flowers are the more mature flowers.

More mature plants will produce hundreds of blooms each season.  All these are from one of my bushes which flowers 2 weeks earlier than all the rest every year.  It is only about 15% of the flowers this bush produces.  


Telopea Truncata makes a fabulous garden plant too.  


Honeyeaters love these beautiful blooms, which develop droplets of sugary syrup as the flowers reach their peak.  

I know I'm biased, but I have a soft spot for these lovely little waratahs!








Thinking About Weddings - The Bouquet


In Tasmania, its not often you get someone wanting to plan a wedding during the winter months.  The weather is a major factor in planning a big day here in the southern-most state of Australia.  Spring and summer are the busy times for weddings, and at Swallows Nest we are excited to be providing flowers for a some weddings over the next few months.  

Proteas and Natives are not the traditional wedding flower, but they are becoming much more popular, and with good reason.  I know I am biased, but really, they do have so much more to offer than many people realise.  Natives offer an incredible range of colour and texture that can lend themselves to both modern and traditional type weddings.   They can be rustic, and simple or sophisticated and sharp.  They can be feminine and soft, or bold and expressive.  Its all in the way you combine the colours, textures and forms.  And then of course, theres the fact that most Natives are hardy and long lasting and  remove the worry of a wilting bouquet!

I've been doing some research into the uses of Natives for weddings so I thought I'd share a few of the ideas I've found.  The internet is awash with ideas and I've recently discovered Pinterest - a serious risk for time-wasting, but full of wonderful ideas for just about everything.  There are some lovely images of weddings that have used natives in creative and beautiful ways, and I've been really inspired.  

The Bouquet, really the central floral point of any wedding, is the focus of these finds.


This beautiful bouquet uses Pink Ice proteas with a variety of Leucadendrons (two variegated forms called Jester and Corringle Gold) and a mix of other beautiful folidages.  There are also some Banksias - what look like Speciosa and Occidentalis.  It has an informal, softly coloured beauty. 


The use of proteas in this bouquet is a different take on a more traditional wedding bouquet shape.  I love the use of eucalyptus foliage too, for the colour and form it adds.  


This is another combination bouquet, using Banksia Baxterii as the main flower and combining it with more traditional flowers.  I love the vibrancy of this one!


More Banksia Baxterii in this one, but adding some Hakea nuts and paper daisies.  I love the leaves of the Banksia Baxterii and I think they've been used well in this cute posy-style bouquet.



There is a great range of whites in the protea family, perfect for weddings!  This is a combination of mini King Protea and white Protea Nerifolia, with the lovely soft black fringing. A few magnolia leaves complete this simple, informal bouquet.


For a spring wedding, Waratahs are a spectacular wedding flower.  I love this bouquet which in addition to the gorgeous red waratahs, also has flannel flower, gum nuts, everlasting daisies, leucadendron, serruria or blushing bride,  and a form of brunia.  


Waratah's are also available in white and, as this bouquet shows, are really well suited for a wedding too.  This bouquets combines them with leucadendron, wax flower, blushing bride or serruria, and some blue flowers that look like cornflowers.  Gorgeous!


I recently did a wedding with an orange and black theme.  The colours and textures of spring were perfect - yellow green Phyllica, Leucadendron Maui Sunset and Red Gem, the bright yellow pom poms of Leucadendron Tall Red, soft Silver Tree foliage and Berzelia or Button Bush all together to form this fresh bright bouquet.  


This fabulous native bouquet uses Banksia Coccinea and Protea as the main flowers, with Safari Sunset Leucadendrons, and what look like a yellow Salignum Leuco.  Very memorable!


Another Swallows Nest Farm bouquet, with simple spring flowers includes an early Waratah, and some Protea Pink Ice, surrounded by soft yellows and greens.  There are Leucadendron Gandogeri, Phyllica Pubescens, Leucadendron Silver Tree, and Berzelia or Button Bush,  a wedding favourite.  Adding white highlights is Thryptomene.  


I'm looking forward to the pincushions coming out here at Swallows Nest.  They are later here than on the mainland of Australia, and go right up until just after Christmas.  Faboulous for weddings in shades of yellow, orange and red, with some beautiful soft colours available too.
(koruwedding.blogspot.com.au)


More Pink Ice Protea with Leucadendrons, Flannel flower, Thryptomene and beautiful Eucalyptus pods.  Wow!


Last one - I promise!  Although there's so many beautiful native bouquets!!  I love this freestyle bouquet with my favourite Brunia Albiflora, Eucalyptus pods, foliage, and Leucadendrons.  Gorgeous!!

I hope you're inspired!  I hope you've seen the versatility, variety and beauty that natives can bring to a special occasion like a wedding.  I'm looking forward to the rest of the "wedding season" here is Tasmania, hoping to get lots more opportunities to explore what can be done with these fabulous flowers.


Farmers Market


This weekend, I did my first Farmer's Market with our flowers.  I have done quite a few markets over the years with my other work, and with some flowers as a "side" product.  But this was our first market just with flowers and we weren't quite sure what to expect.  

We've been wholesaling flowers for almost 5 years now.  It's a lovely thing to grow, harvest and sell something that you love.  When you pack the flowers into boxes and send them off to their destination, you are never sure where they will end up.  I sometimes wonder where they go, who buys them, and why.  In Tasmania, we don't have a centralised wholesale market for fresh produce so most growers either sell direct to retailers, or to a wholesale vendor who then sells the produce on.  For a while now, I've been keen to do a farmer's market because I wanted to meet the buyers, and get some feedback about what I grow.  

The Bream Creek Farmer's Market has been running for just under 12 months at the beautiful Bream Creek Showgrounds in Copping, southern Tasmania.  It's surrounded by picturesque rolling green hills and is a fabulous spot for a true farmer's market.  We were impressed with the strict guidelines about growers/makers selling their own produce, and the emphasis on organic, top-quality produce.  So we were excited to be able to join the market for the first time.

We took a mix of wholesale flowers and mixed bouquets.  I was inspired by some beautiful spring foliage we have around the farm to also make some smaller posies.  They were a lot of fun to make, mixing colours and textures on a smaller scale. 

Spring foliage for small Posies

 Usually, we have everything in separate buckets so the flowers look like they are sorted according to colour, but this was the cool room filled with a riot of colour!  

wholesale Leuco's
Mixed Bouquet's
The wholesale flowers were a definite favourite and all the bunches of Waratah were gone first.  I was a little surprised that people wanted to buy wholesale flowers rather than arranged bunches. People seem to want to buy selections to take home and arrange for themselves.  It means people are out there getting creative and enjoying flowers.  A flower grower has to be happy with that!

Mind you, once all the wholesale ones were gone, the bouquets went too!  I really enjoyed getting a direct reaction to our product.  The Tasmanian public seem to like variety and new and unusual flowers.  That made me happy, because that's what I love!

I was also really impressed with the variety and standard of amazing locally grown, made, brewed, fermented and gathered produce. Wow!  The stalls either side had beautiful locally grown and produced olives and olive oil,  and the best salad greens I've ever tasted - seriously!!  Even my 14 year old son, who usually isn't a big salad fan, had second helpings of the beautiful salad mix we brought home.  If you are a local, Bream Creek Farmer's Market is definitely worth a visit.  It's the first Sunday of every month from 9 - 1.  Maybe I'll see you there!









ode to the family.

ode to the family.

Hello people.

It amazing how you learn so much from people. Today I had met one amazing family, the circumstances leading to the meeting is not the greatest yet it triggers so much respect in myself towards parents. How a mother who hasn't heard any news from her child, scattered around the town to find him, to find that he is behind bars.

how amazing is a mother, a father, a brother and a sister, the stigma of such accusation is enough to make some people cringe. They stood forward as a family try to back each other up. The mother didn't say much, but her eyes and loving tone describing how she hasn't seen him in a long time enough to touch me. She misses him, she loves him.

my sincere respect to all mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers.

I miss you so much, just so you know.

Soalan utama, siapakah Mat Yo? dan siapakah isterinya? setanding Beckham dan Victoria ke?

Assalamualaikum,

The last time I posted on this blog was probably before the firaun time. Seriously life has been pretty busy yet great. I have been doing things that I didn't even think I have the talent for like, i.e acrobatic gymnastic, kidding .. amazing things in general.

Talking about life, I had quite an encounter yesterday, you know there are times when you just need to socialize with people you have total difference in view and interest? contohnya macam bila dia tanya kita fasal European cup, kita hanya ingat hmm .. sandal minimalis Lanvin atau Nutella Crepe. Atau bila dia cerita fasal Gangster KL dan mutu kualiti lakonan Aaron Aziz dan kita hanya sibuk meneliti aura Ryan Gosling dalam filem Crazy, Sexy, Love.

It is certainly hard to adapt into the environment when you have the opposite interest, especially when you are working in the business where you are expected to liaison with client. Although my skill mesra alam with makcik-makcik and pakcik-pakcik really comes in handy at times, most of the time, while I'm having a good conversation with this people, in my head I'm actually rehearsing what to say, and to tell the truth I feel guilty to be doing that when this people are genuinely mencurahkan perasaan, I'm actually choosing the safest option konon-kononnya interested when I'm actually sumpah seranah at myself try to mind-google what the heck this people are talking about.

So when I came back as I lay down on my bed, I had a short analysis of my usual reaction to such incident, dan tindakbalas normal adalah seperti berikut:
  1. I would pull my tired look, and start staring at random things like keychain, cellphone, the mamak waiter who runs around waiting table, the road, any randon inanimate object that falls onto the road;
  2. pretend to answer a phone call and start talking in some weird language, or maybe bahasa F and saying things like, "Safayafa bofosanfan rafasafa nakfak lemfempengfeng cificahfah nufitefellafa";
  3. Act like im having a seizure and pretend to be unconscious, at least in my head.
OK, and now I feel bad, dammit I need a class, I need a class on how to react to weird conversation, especially on sports, banking matters, shares, and even politics. blurgh.

On lighter note, blue, turkish tiles, minimalist and pocket square are yummy.


wedding

[australian native wedding][recentbylabel2]

Featured

[Featured][recentbylabel2]
Notification
Wondering what style of flower bouquets you'll choose for your big day?
Done