Waratah Wedding Bouquets

Waratah Wedding Bouquets

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Waratah season is short and sweet.  They are very much a spring flower.

Swallows Nest Farm Waratah Bouquet

  This year has been unusually warm and the waratah season seemed to fly by more quickly than usual.  Here at Swallows Nest Farm, you can see the first pickable blooms in mid to late September, with October being the high season. Some late flowering varieties keep going until mid December, but due to the warmth, it been a shorter season.  It's made me a bit sad, and so to console myself, I've compiled a little collection of waratah wedding bouquets. 

Flowergirl's bouquet Swallows Nest Farm

Some are my own, and some are ones I've found on my internet travels.  All of them feature the wonderful waratah in different ways and different styles. 

These first two bouquets are from an early October wedding.  The waratah's are just coming into their peak season and are vibrant and fresh.  The colour in these "Shady Lady" variety is really rich.  Teamed with the lipstick boronia it makes for a really colourful statement.

This one is an early spring bouquet from mid September.  The waratah in this bouquet is not fully open and the colour is not as vibrant, but the pink makes for a more subtle look and I love the petals still arching up around the flower.  Pretty and fresh.  

Good Grace and Humour

What a great image!  I love the red and white!  In this wedding the white waratah makes an appearance.  I think it really works!

Good Grace and Humour

Red waratah for the bride and white for the bridesmaids.  Fabulous!

October Waratah Wedding Swallows Nest Farm

From mid October, this bouquet celebrates the waratah in its peak season here in Tasmania.  The first early Tasmanian waratah makes an appearance towards the back left.  The Tasmanian waratah starts in October and peaks in November, usually, with some lingering into December. 

October Waratah Wedding Swallows Nest Farm

 I love this combination of fresh colours celebrating spring.  Simple style to highlight the flowers at their best. 

Spring Native Wedding Swallows Nest Farm

This trio of bouquets is from early October.  Lots of cream and white, with touches of gold from the Dryandra/Banksia Formosa make a great background for the waratahs.

November Native Wedding Swallows Nest Farm

Novermber and the first of the Pincushion proteas have emerged but the waratahs are still going.  I have found that our white waratahs flower a little later than the red, and this means that they can be available for weddings as the weather warms up.  The texture the waratah gives is an important ingredient of the success of this bouquet.  I love playing with colour blends using the white waratahs too.   

White Waratah Spring bouquet, Swallows Nest Farm

This bride's bouquet features a white waratah too, but with a different style and colour scheme.  The theme was "rustic vintage style" in classic pink and soft tones.

White Waratah Spring Wedding Swallows Nest Farm

I love the texture in the bouquet.  A more subtle colour scheme lets you really play with texture.

Tasmanian Waratah bouquet Swallows Nest Farm

November is Tasmanian Waratah month here at Swallows Nest Farm, and a gorgeous bride who loves her Tassie Waratahs chose November for her wedding so she could have one of her favourite flowers as the centrepiece of her bouquet.  Simple, beautiful fresh flowers.

Swallows Nest Farm 

A wedding featuring the Tasmanian waratah couldn't have been held in a more perfect setting.  This classic Tasmanian beach scene with the gorgeous blue of the sea and the characteristic orange lichen on the rocks.  Beautiful!

Waratah and Kangaroo Paw by Good Grace and Humour

I love this dramatic combination of Kargaroo Paw and Waratah.  What a great bouquet!  A truly Australian native wedding bouquet with the waratah as the star.

Field and Coppice Floral Design

I love this joyful bouquet by Field and Coppice Floral Design in the Canberra area.  The rich red waratahs in the centre of the bouquet are just beautiful.  

Field and Coppice Floral Design

This bouquet of waratahs is also by Field and Coppice, but it has a completely different feel.  Its simple, understated and old-world, and just gorgeous!

Waratahs are a stunning spring favourite for weddings. Keep an eye out for them!

Early Spring Wedding

Early Spring Wedding

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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.

"Rustic Vintage" Native Wedding

"Rustic Vintage" Native Wedding

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Natives are a great choice for a spring wedding because there are so many gorgeous colours and textures available to use.  I was excited to be able to provide flowers for a lovely bride for her November wedding.  Her idea was for a "rustic vintage" look.

A beautiful vintage lace dress with red lipstick and green shoes was the starting point for these bouquets - not too big, and in a simple hand-tied style.  

That gave me the perfect opportunity to use some lovely vintage lace that I've been keeping in my stash.  

All the bouquets and boutonnieres were bound with the lace.  Its so nice when you find the perfect use for that special something you've been keeping!

For the brides bouquet, I used a white waratah surrounded by some Satin Mink Proteas.  You can also see some Safari Sunset leucadendrons providing the darker tones.  Some pink kangaroo paw called Bush Pearl also adds to the pinky red tones.  The creamy leucadendrons are Lemon Spice, a female Discolour leucadendron that is green most of the year but in late spring changes to a this gorgeous cream with pink tips. 

 For the greens, there are eucalyptus buds, peppermint gum, and some thryptomene foliage.  The silver balls are a Leucadendron called Purple Haze.  The foliage has a purple tinge, but these cones produced after flowering are a pretty silvery addition to a bouquet.

Wax flower was also sprinkled throughout the design, seen here in the boutonnieres.  I was also able to use Berzelia.  It is a spring flowering plant that is often used at its green stage, but in late spring the little green balls "flower" and become a gorgeous fluffy white.  They are just perfect for weddings.  

So the "rustic vintage" look came together with a pink, green and cream colour scheme.  

Waratah!

Waratah!

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Spring means Waratahs, the irrepressible native flower that's bold and impossible to ignore!  Waratahs are native to Australia and are part of the proteaceae family of plants.  The name Waratah is an aboriginal word meaning 'red flowering tree'.  The botanical name is Telopea which means 'seen from afar'.  There are a small number of Telopea species, only 5, with the biggest and most showy being Telopea Speciosissima from New South Wales.  It is that states floral emblem.  At Swallows Nest Farm we grow a number of types of waratahs including the Tasmanian Waratah, Telopea Truncata.  First to flower are the Shady Lady - they are a rich cool red.  "Shady Lady" is a hybrid form of Waratah, a cross between the T. Speciosissima and T. Oreades.

Waratah buds form at the end of long stems which grow mainly over the spring and early summer months.  The buds swell over winter and in early spring, start to become a brighter red. 

Usually sometime in September, the buds start to unfold to reveal the many small flowers inside that will become the centre of the waratah. 

The unfolding process can take some time, and I think the flowers are really beautiful during this stage.

Once the outer bracts have unfolded, the central mass of individual flowers begin to bend and spread out, giving the waratah its well known shape.  

We still don't pick at this stage.  The flowers are prone to develop a blue tinge if picked too early.  They don't maintain their intense colour and won't open properly.

It's best to pick as the first few styles emerge from the individual flowers.  You can see in the picture above that the styles have begun to emerge on the back of this flower - facing north.  At the front edge you can just see the styles beginning to poke their way through.  The petal will fold as they emerge. 

  In the picture, almost all the styles have emerged. You can see the difference in the overall texture of the flower with the curled petals and the upright styles.

My Telopea Speciosissima are next to flower and they continue to flower up until December, depending on where they are planted.  I have some beautiful ones including this special one that is rosy pink, with white styles.  Its currently my favourite!

Such a gorgeous flower!  I love the colour, the white styles, and the rounded shape of this flower.  I hope to do some propagating, to see if I can reproduce more of them.

A close-up of the freshly emerged styles of this flower reveal the way waratahs present their pollen.  On the inside tip of the white styles you can see the rich red pollen.   It can be messy if the flower is handled a lot.  The bees love it!

I have really enjoyed using waratahs in some weddings recently.  Such a gorgeous colour!

And creating cheery arrangements is fun.  Spring means there's so much to choose from to team up with that stunning rich red.

Waratahs are deservedly one of the most prized Australian native cut flowers.  I love growing them!

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