Soft Pinks and Greens for a January Wedding

Soft Pinks and Greens for a January Wedding

Comment   

January Wedding Bouquet

Soft pinks and mint greens were the colours for this January wedding.  The bride loved eucalyptus and gum nuts and wanted something soft to compliment the bridesmaid's dresses in mint.  January was challenging this year with warmer than average temperatures and much lower rainfall than usual.  It meant that there was some unusual timing with some of the blooms, but we managed to come up with some pretty colours and textures to suit the theme.

White Ice Proteas flowering earlier than expected were happily snapped up to suit the theme.  Some rare January Pink Ice were also used.  Beautiful Brunia Albiflora was looking fabulous and is always a great addition to a bouquet no matter what the colour scheme.  

You can also see some Red Protea Compacta.  Smaller filler flowers used were Ozothamnus, a native that grows in the bush here.  If picked at just the right time it can be a beautiful filler flower, a relative of the Rice Flower.  I also used Elderberries for a rich purply-pink contrast.  

Used in the bouquets and more prominently in the boutonnieres are these silvery white cones with a purplish tinge.  They are the cones from the Leucadendron Pisa plant which are in season in the summer months.  I removed the outer bracts from these cones, which are lime green at this time of year.  The result was a pearly cone perfect for the focal point of the boutonnieres.

Vintage barely-pink lace was used as the binding for the bouquets and boutonnieres.  The brides dress had a tiny touch of pink to its colouring and this lace was perfect for the job.

Foliage used included the beautiful Leucadendron Silver Tree, ready earlier than usual thanks to the weather conditions.  Some Agonis Flexuosa with its whispy foliage and delicate white flowers made a great addition for the draping, cascading effect.  A mix of other eucalyptus foliages was also used.

In the boutonniere gum leaves also featured.  Some local native tea-tree and Leucadendron Jubilee Crown cones were used too.  I love the pink blush of the Jubilee Crown in summer.  A great little addition to bouquets and boutonnieres.

A close up revealed some very early Banksia Occidentalis.  These flower in late summer and early autumn and these were the first pick of the season.  Banksia Occidentalis is a bright red flower but needs to develop its colouring on the bush.  If picked early the flower is fully formed but the colour is not as intense and provided a dusky pink addition to the bouquets.  This picture also shows the purplish tinge that the L. Pisa cones get - such a pretty Leucadendron.

These arrangements were used on wine barrels for decorating the ceremony.  I used all the same ingredients as for the bouquets.

Chelsea Parsons Photography

The happy couple! 

Peachy February Wedding at Port Arthur

Peachy February Wedding at Port Arthur

Comment   

Photography by Love Jennifer Photography

February is a busy month for weddings here in Tasmania.  I started February 2016 with a gorgeous local wedding, held in the old church at Port Arthur Historic Site.  Its the perfect mix of indoor and outdoor, being a ruin with no roof or windows and a carpet of green grass on the floor.  It has great atmosphere for a wedding ceremony.   

Photo by Alistair Bett c/- Tasman Region

The couple were local to the area and wanted to use local produce and providers for their big day.  Local, seasonal flowers is what we do here with all our flowers grown on the farm or foraged from the local area, so I was thrilled to be involved.

  The colour scheme was peachy, blush, nude colours in the dresses.   The lovely bride was keen on berries and texture, and wanted soft peachy tones while avoiding lots of "green".  

Eucalyptus Crenulata is a gorgeous foliage we grow here.  It has a purplish tinge to the new growth as well as providing that much-loved eucalyptus "blue".  It's new growth had hardened off enough for it not to wilt, so it became my main foliage I used throughout.  I used some beautiful Leucadendron Silver Tree too, that shimmers and creates great highlights in a bouquet.  

Five bridesmaids meant 6 bouquets all up.  They looked great all lined up … 

Photography by Love Jennifer Photography

And the continuity of the bouquets really tied the bridal party together with the different styles and colours in their dresses.  

Photography by Love Jennifer Photography

Gorgeous!

Photography by Love Jennifer Photography

The main flower used in the bouquets is a Leucospermum or Pincushion called Fountain.  They are a summer flowering Pincushion here at Swallows Nest Farm.  They begin flowering in late December and continue through January, February and even March.  

When they first begin to flower, they have a lovely peachy apricot colouring.  As the flowers open more and age, the colour deepens.  I made sure I used the lighter, just opening blooms to give the peachy colouring.  I teamed them up with some Protea Pink Ice.  

You can see some ruby red blackberries peeping out from the foliage.  Blackberries are everywhere in late summer in Tasmania.  They grow along fence lines and beside the road.  I really enjoyed adding them to the design of these bouquets - they added texture, colour, and a definite sense of time and place.  You can also see some creamy peach Buddleia flowers and the beautiful flower spikes of a Clethra that has beautifully fragrant white flowers on apricot tinged stems.

Photograph by Love Jennifer Photography

The bride's bouquet leaning up against the convict-hewn sandstone of the old church at Port Arthur.

For the corsages I used more Eucalyptus Crenulata, blackberries and Clethra flower spikes.  These also had some beautifully textured wattle buds and a silvery white Leucadendron Pisa cone.

The men's corsages had E. Crenulata,  Leucadendron Silver Tree, wattle flowers buds, blackberries and gum nuts.  

One of my favourite things about this wedding was doing the floral crowns for the flower girls.  They were a satisfying combination of silvery blue tea tree, Clethra, wattle flower buds and blackberries.  I loved the combination of colours and the overall texture of the crowns.  I bet they looked cute on the girls too!

The bride wore a half-crown with the same combination of flowers, but with some Eucalyptus Crenulata added.  Blackberries topped it off.

Photography by Love Jennifer Photography

Such summery crown, perfect for a summer wedding.

Photography by Love Jennifer Photography

They look so happy!  

The reception venue was just down the road from the Port Arthur Historic Site at Port Arthur Lavender.  Its a great venue surrounded by rows of lavender with a great view out across the water.  

Port Arthur Lavender Farm is a great wedding venue!

The tables were decorated with long leafy swags dotted with blackberries, elderberries and other lovely textures, and a splash of colour with a Pincushion.

Photography by Love Jennifer Photography

A celebration of summer goodness. 

The cake topper combined E. Crenulata, wattle buds, Clethra, blackberries and a peachy Leucospermum Fountain.

Photography by Love Jennifer Photography

What a stunning cake!  

Photography by Love Jennifer Photography

I really enjoyed the challenge of working within a limited colour palette for this summer wedding.

Early Spring Wedding

Early Spring Wedding

Comment   

Spring is a fabulous time for native flowers, and a fabulous time for weddings.  I get to put the two together when I'm doing spring wedding flowers!   Early this spring,  I did flowers for a lovely Hobart bride who wanted bouquets with highlights and pops of colour. 

The bride's bouquet combined the creamy white of Maui Sunset Leucadendrons, a late-winter or early-spring flowering leuco, with one of the first of flowers from a newly planted Protea called White Ice.  White highlights were added with Bushman's Bootlace, a local native Pimelea.  

Providing pops of colour were early flowering Waratahs in rich deep pinky red, Protea Satin Mink in pink with black fringing, and the startling pink of Boronia which also smells fantastic, which made working with the bouquet all the more enjoyable.  

Dryandra Formosa, with its glowing golden flowers and beautiful leaves provides texture, as does the fabulous Berzelia.  It's green in early spring and is such a great texture plant right through the season until it bursts into fluffy white flowers just before summer.  I also used some native Tasmanian Richea Dracophylla flowers which you can just see poking out on the left at the rear of the bouquet.  

The grooms boutonniere combined all the colours and textures of the bouquets in a tiny package.  I love the colour combination of the dryandra and boronia.  That pink really packs a punch!

Groomsmen's boutonnieres were a simple combination of the golden dryandra, some berzelia and pimelea.  

I really enjoyed the opportunity to play with these early spring flowers.  I hope the bride and groom had a brilliant day.

Hip Hip Hooray! Celebrating 100 Posts with a Giveaway

Hip Hip Hooray! Celebrating 100 Posts with a Giveaway

Comment   

Back in January 2012, I wrote my first Swallows Nest Farm blog post.  I began blogging after having to seriously re-think the way I ran my flower farm business.  In 2011 I spent 5 months away from home with my little girl in hospital on the mainland of Australia.  With a sick baby to care for, changes needed to be made.  When I began, blogging gave me a way of focussing on strategies for the future of the farm while not being able to actually get much outdoor work done.  As time has passed, it has become an important part of my flower farm business both for the exposure that it provides, and also for the way it helps me to see where I need to go next.

So here we are, more than 3 years and 100 blog posts later and I'm surprised that I still feel I have so much to explore by way of blogging.  I'm even more surprised at the attention this humble blog receives, with well over 50,000 visits.  I would never have expected it!

So I feel that a celebration is in order!

I am giving away a little pack of celebratory goodness including a
Linocut Hand Painted Waratah Bookmark from trees4thewood
4 Packs of Swallows Nest Farm Seeds
(including Telopea Truncata,
Leucadendron Argenteum,
Conrymbia Ficifolia and
Dryandra Formosa)
A Blue Gum Linocut Notebook with a Myrtle Beech Twig Pencil from trees4thewood
and some Swallows Nest Farm postcards.

You can enter the giveaway by sharing your favourite Swallows Nest Farm blog post, or by visiting our Facebook page (while you're there, if you like what you see, you could follow our page too).
The giveaway will run for a week and a winner will be chosen at random at midnight on Monday 14th September.

Enter using the rafflecopter counter below.
Entry is open to everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks so much for visiting Swallows Nest Farm blog!

Hello Snow!

Hello Snow!

Comment   

After a cooler, wetter summer than usual, we are now experiencing a colder winter than usual.  Last Monday most of Tasmania woke to a blanket of snow.  It snowed in the capital city Hobart for the first time since 1986. With snow down to sea level in some areas, this was a newsworthy weather event.  

It's always a magical experience to wake up to a white winter wonderland and it doesn't happen very often here in, at least in the more inhabited parts of our state.  Even school was cancelled, and the kids went out to play in the snow.

Last time we had snow at Swallows Nest Farm was mid-September 2013.  The snow was beautiful but it did damage some of the early spring flowers that were just starting to bloom.  I lost a lot of my waratah crop that year as the early ones had all begun to unfold.  The snow left burn marks on their bracts and petals.  I was keen to check this years plants to make sure they were ok.  The Berzelia crop is coming along and I'm hoping theres no damage. 

Leucadendrons catch the snow in their bracts.  Most Leucadendrons, once established, are quite frost hardy.

The Leucadendron Tall Red is about to flower, but hasn't begun to open yet.  I hope they'll be ok! 

Safari Goldstrike captured the snow all along their stems.  In our last snow event, many of our larger Leucadendron plants lost limbs because the weight of the snow weighed them down and they snapped. This time, it seems to have been a gentler fall.  You can see in this picture just how extensive the snow fall was.  We are quite elevated but the hills across the valley in the picture are just over 100m above sea level.  

Leucadendron Safari Sunset look so "Christmassy" covered in snow!

The open flowers acted like cups for the snow.  These Leucadendrons are quite tough, and seem to have coped well with the unusual weather.

I was surprised at how much snow cover the Leucadendron Jubilee Crown had.  It completely transformed the look of the plant.  

The familiar intense winter colour of the Leucadendrons was softened with the white of the snow.  Such a pretty sight.

Richea Dracophylla are used to snowy conditions, being endemic to the higher, wet slopes of Tasmania's mountains.  You can see them growing on the slopes of Mt Wellington which are no strangers to snowfall, even in the warmer months at times.   

The other plants on the farm that are no strangers to snowy conditions are the Myrtle Beech trees.  They looked so pretty covered in snow.  This tree is one of the dominant species in the temperate rain forests of western Tasmania.  

Some of the Leucadendron Red Gem had already started to flower.  Their bracts were wide open and caught lots of snow.  I think the majority have yet to open, so I hope they'll be ok too. They're such pretty winter flower.

Of all the plants that worried me, these were the ones I was most keen to check.  They are some new Leucadendron Laureolum that had only been planted a week before the snow.  This is  the reason that we choose to use planting guards to give the baby plants a little bit of extra protection in case of extreme weather.  I'm hopeful these little babies will survive and thrive.  

A day or so after the big freeze, I had to fly to the mainland and saw the snow coverage across the state.  Tasmania looked white from above.  Amazing!  I wonder what spring has in store.