Life on the Farm

Life on the Farm

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Banksia Coccinea bud

Spring is a productive time on a flower farm.  There are signs of life everywhere.  I thought I'd share some of the things that have been going on here at Swallows Nest over the last week or so.  I'm pretty excited about this little bud - its the first of my Banksia Coccinea's to flower.  They were planted around 3 years ago and I've been eagerly awaiting the first flower.  I check the buds almost every day.  Cant wait!

Banksia Ericifolia

Some Banksia Ericifolia that I planted as a windbreak are all flowering too.  I am surprised by the intensity of colour in these blooms.  Such handsome flowers!

Bansia Ericifolia

I love the purple centre contrasting with the yellow and orange.  

Before!

We've been reclaiming territory here.  Blackberry weeds have been slowly invading some large Richea Dracophylla.  I've been panicking about loosing them so this week we attacked the blackberry and set them free.  After only a day we had them back under control, pruned and mulched, and wow!  I can tell they're happy!  

After!

The after shot!  

Richea Dracophylla are a plant endemic to Tasmania.  Their flowers are just coming on now and are really special.  I cant wait to see how well they perform next year, now that we've given them some love.

Richea Dracophylla

Lots of flower spikes almost ready to pick.

Richea Dracophylla

Such a special flower!  

Pruning always uncovers little treasures.  We found 4 abandoned nests in one day - adding to my already large collection.  This little one is lined with fur!

Leucospermum Scarlet Ribbons

One of the jobs I really enjoy at this time of the year is checking the buds on the Pincushions or Leucospermums.  These are a summer crop for us in Tasmania, generally starting in November and with different varieties the flowering continues through to February.  This little bud is going to be a Scarlet Ribbons Pincushion.  The buds need to be checked because sometimes the plant makes 2 or more flower heads at the end of the stem. 

Pincushion Buds

We pick the extra buds off, making sure that one single bloom has enough room to open properly.  The little buds can be "popped" off with your fingers.  I just find it a relaxing thing to do, and it gets you out among your plants, keeping tabs on how they're going.  

Waratah!

Of course the big event of the last couple of weeks is the beginning of the waratah season.  We are looking forward to having these beautiful flowers for sale over the next few of months as we have different varieties with different flowering times.  

Waratah and Richea flowers in a "Get Well" bouquet

Waratahs and Richea flowers will feature in arrangements to say "Get Well", "Farewell" and  "Thank You".  They'll also feature in wedding bouquets and in flowers for a funeral over the next week or so.  It's all part of life as it rolls on into spring and summer for 2014. 

Spring Native Bouquet - Swallows Nest Farm

A February Wedding

A February Wedding

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We were thrilled to be able to provide flowers for this beautiful February wedding.  The bride wore a gorgeous vintage dress and the colours for the bridesmaids were apricot, peach and orange.  

Pink Ice Protea and Fountain Pincushions were the main flowers.  The Fountain are a later flowering pincushion and are at their height in January and early February.  They have a soft purplish tinge when they first begin to flower so they really went well with the apricot and peach colours.  I added some bright pink Kangaroo Paw, Brunia Albiflora, some gorgeous purplish silver eucalyptus foliage and some blue green conifer foliage.  As a highlight, I added some gorgeous summer grass seed heads.  The bouquet was bound with jute ribbon and I added a bow which was removable.  The bride opted for removing the bow and I think it really worked.  The colours worked so well with her stunning ivory coloured vintage dress.

Photo by KS Photography

For the bridesmaids, I used Pink Ice Protea, Brunia Albiflora, Pink Kangaroo Paw, Geraldton Wax and  more of the native foliage.  Each of the bridesmaids dresses were different - all variations on the vintage theme so keeping their bouquets all the same was important.

Grevillea foliage, and the same blue green conifer foliage also tie the bouquets together, with the summer grass highlights also added.  Again, the bows were removable.  

In keeping with the idea of the different bridesmaids dresses, the bride decided that the boutonniere should all be different.  What fun!  Using different combinations of the flowers and foliage from the bouquets, I created the button holes to be all different, but "matching".  

The groom's boutonniere stood out by being slightly larger.  You can see a dried leucadendron cone, single Brunia Albiflora, Kangaroo Paw, Banksia, conifer foliage and summer grass.

And lastly, the corsage for the Mother of the Bride - a combination of Kangaraoo Paw, Grevillea, Wax flower, foliage and summer grass.  

Photo by KS Photographers

The photographers for the wedding took this beautiful photo of the brides bouquet.  KS Photographers have won the Tasmanian Wedding Photographer of the Year for 2014 and their website is well worth a look.  They are so creative and their catalogue is stunning.  

Photo by KS Photographers

It was such a treat to work on this wedding!  And so nice to see some photos of the day taken by such a great photographer!  

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

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Can you believe we are saying goodbye to 2013?  The year seems to have flown by so fast and the Christmas Season has been so busy that I have hardly come up for air!  In Tasmania the long summer days linger and the summer solstice occurs just before Christmas.  It's a lovely time of year.  

The main flower we're harvesting now is the Leucospermum, commonly known as a Pincushion.  Its beautiful summer colours provide inspiration for me when it comes to festive decorations.  I love fresh Christmas wreaths.  They make great table centrepieces, especially with a candle in the middle.  

I love the challenge of combining colours and textures to create these wreaths.  Foliage plays a big part in the overall feel of the wreath and its fun foraging around the farm for beautiful fresh foliage to use.

I love the wreath above using some late Tasmanian Waratah and button bush or Berzelia.  I've also used some Dryandra Formosa, an Australian flower from the protea family that I did a test plant of a few years ago.  The golden flowers are surrounded by lovely foliage that looks like strips of green zig zag.  Dryandra flowers dry well too and last for years in a dried arrangement.

During spring I noticed a wonderful eucalypt in my local area that was laden with gum nuts.  So heavily laden was it that the branches were weighed down to the ground.  I snipped a few branches and dried them, looking forward to when I could use them.  They were a perfect addition to this wreath, I thought!

Orange Leucospermums and yellow Leucadendron Pisa make this wreath really summery and fresh.  The Pisa can be used at various stages.  I picked some quite early to use it in its flowering stage.  Later the central cone enlarges.   It is silvery green and beautifully surround by yellow and lime green bracts.  

Geraldton Wax flowers and Leucadendron Jubilee Crown, also known as Christmas Cones fill out the bright citrusy wreath.  I couldn't resist adding some more gum nuts!

Foraging around the farm lead me to seek out a small holly bush that had been overgrown in the last two years.  After a bit of bush-bashing, accompanied by my trusty sidekick, I found the bush and was delighted to discover that it had grown significantly, even though it had been almost hidden by bushy growth.  Needless to say I've now cleared around it.  The holly was fun to play with in wreaths and Christmas bunches too, although it was a little prickly to deal with. 

I also found, during one of my foraging walks, some impressive cones on a big conifer our family imaginatively calls the Christmas Tree!  When I first started doing the local farmer's market I was excited to use some foliage I found which had pink immature cones on it.  These are the same cones a couple of months later.  I really don't remember this tree producing such impressive cones before! The photo doesn't do them justice - they are shiny and deep purple.  Wonderful for an addition to a Christmas wreath!!

I saved them for my own Christmas wreath.  I added Leucaspermum Scarlet Ribbons, some wild foraged Ozothamnus (white Rice Flower)  Tasmanian Myrtle foliage, Leucadendron Safari Sunset, Christmas Cones, and Goldstrike, and of course, some of the gum nuts.  Knowing it was my own wreath I probably tried to pack too many things onto the one wreath, but I'm glad I made the time to make a wreath for our own table.

It was a beautiful summer day in Tasmania on December 25th.  We had Christmas brunch on the deck in the open air.

It was a memorable day.  As I write this, the wreath is still relatively fresh and sitting on the table beside me.  I love to enjoy the flowers I grow in my own home!

I'm looking forward to 2014 - it promises to be a very exciting year.  In the meantime, we are still working to pick the rest of the summer crops as they bloom.  I'm looking forward to doing some wedding flowers this week, and then maybe getting a short break toward the end of January before the year really begins in earnest.  I hope 2014 is happy one for you - enjoy!!

Farewell until next year.

What's in the Basket

What's in the Basket

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Spring went by in a flash here.  And just as summer arrived, so did the pincushions or Leucospermums.  I love these beautiful flowers from the protea family for the range of cheery summer colours that they offer.  In the basket this week was the first real harvest of some newly planted pincushions called Leucospermum Scarlet Ribbons.  The plants are not quite 3 years old and are starting to flower really well now.  It looks like summer in a basket to me!

The Scarlet Ribbons start off with a slightly pink/purple tinge due to the hairs on the sheaf that contains the "pin".  As the pins emerge the overall colour impression changes.  The spines are a salmon pink and the sheaths curl to reveal a scarlet interior.  Then as the flower ages, it becomes more intensely red.

I love the summery colours of pincushions.  There are 3 varieties in this shot of my picking trailer.  Don't they remind you of gelato flavours?  Raspberry, mango and tangerine! 

The Christmas Rush

The Christmas Rush

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I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have Christmas in winter.  Summer is such a busy season here.  There is so much to do around the farm - the grass seems to grow while you watch it.  The leucaspermums all seems to flower at once, and everyone wants flowers for Christmas.  Add to all this the normal end of year activities and you end up with a great long list of things that need to be done!  But in amongst it all, there are some fun jobs.  I've been designing christmas arrangements and wreaths and I love the creative side of it. 

The potted arrangement above has three types of Leucosermum - Cordifolium (the orange one) Scarlet Ribbons (the red) and Mardi Gras (the yellow and orange).  I've also included some Berzelia or button bush - the creamy white little pom poms, and a selection of leucadendrons.  

This Christmas wreath includes our newest planting of leucaspermums - Scarlet Ribbons.  They've been in the ground just over 2 years and we've had a great crop of them this year.  They are a relatively early flowering variety for us, and they look so cheery on the hillside where they grow.  I love the way they change colour from pink and greyish purple and red when they are just opening, to rich red with orange and tinges of pink as they mature.  

The wreath also has our leucadendron Christmas Cones - the little purplish red cones that you can see peeping out of the foliage.  They are such a great Christmas time plant.  The beautiful swelling cones are so vibrant on the end of the stems, and even look good when they are aged and dry.  They end up looking like miniature pinecones on the end of the stems.  What a useful Christmas plant!!  

I have added some of our Tasmanian Myrtle foliage too, which is looking so spectacular after its growth season in spring.  It's botanical name is Nothofagus Cunninghamii.  It is a beautiful Tasmanian tree that is highly prized for its pinkish toned timber which makes wonderful furniture and wood products.  I love to pick it, because it has a wonderful resinous smell that lingers on your hands. 

You might also be able to see some Geraldton Wax flowers, and some Eucalyptus foliage.  I just love the way the colours and textures of the different plants blend together when I'm creating different bunches and arrangements. 

I think sometimes the busyness of the season can get the creative juices flowing!

Welcome to The Swallows Nest

Welcome to The Swallows Nest

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Welcome to our blog. We live on the Tasman Peninsula in South-Eastern Tasmania. We grow Proteas and Australian Native flowers. We are passionate about our flowers and we want to share them with you. This blog is a way of documenting the different flowers we grow, and the different blooms available as the seasons change throughout the year. We hope you enjoy them, as much as we do!

January is warm in Tasmania, but we are blessed with the ability to produce flowers that many on the mainland are unable to grow at this time of year. At the moment, we have some beautiful late flowering Leucospermums in bloom. They are commonly known as pincushions or tiaras. They are a protea native to South Africa. The variety that is at its peak in January is called Fountain and is a beautiful pinkish orange with purplish dots on the ends of the unfurled fronds. The centre of the flower head is a beautiful glowing greenish white. They are lovely in a mixed bunch or en masse! These little beauties have only been in the ground for two years and this year is our first harvest. We look forward to having these as a regular part of our summer stock.