Bright spring flowers at a historic tipi venue

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Spring flowers are my favourite and these peonies show you why. Just wow | Limewood Flowers | eco florist | wedding florist | Image copyright https://www.vickiclaysonphotography.com/

Spring is my favourite season; when the landscape goes from brown to green and it feels like the start of something beautiful. So, when the Tipi Tribe said they were running a spring photoshoot and open day at the stunning Hackthorn Walled Garden I was in!

Read on for my top three memories of the day and all about the spring flowers.  

Collaboration

The other great thing about this photoshoot was the collaboration. A group of wedding suppliers coming together to create a coherent vision for the photoshoot – much like how they would for an actual wedding. It was even more impressive as most of us had never met before!

Ruby from My Lovebirds Wedding pulled together the team and the colour palette and I was delighted that it was brights. Not in your face, multicoloured or festival brights but a gorgeous palette of spring flowers in white, pink and peach with accents of the most delicate baby blue.  With Vicki Clayson Photography on board I knew we were going to get the most incredible photos as bright and beautiful is what she does.

A coherent vision

I used the most incredible hand dyed silk ribbon from Bertie and Fred as the blue accent on the bouquet. Nicky from Polka Dot Creations used the same ribbon in a pink shade on her gorgeous stationery that included more blue to bring all the colours together. We also talked beforehand about which spring flowers I was using so she could illustrate them on the invites and table numbers. This kind of detail and collaboration is how you create a coherent look across your whole wedding. When wedding suppliers know and trust each other the overall impact on your day is so much greater than the sum of the parts.

Venue

There is so much I could say about Hackthorn Estate. It is a gorgeous old walled garden, complete with the original greenhouses at the back and a small apple orchard (imagine the blossom if you were married in spring!). The enclosed space is great for families to relax during the day and if the weather isn’t as you would like there is a large three hat tipi from the Tipi Tribe for all your guests. If this wasn’t enough there is also the lakeside. Just a short walk from garden you can be married in front of the lake and historic home in the background. Or of course there is the historic church, which is just so beautiful. So many different looks blending seamlessly together and with such style that everything becomes a photography backdrop – even the chickens!

All about the flowers

I am going to be honest with you. If you know me then you know I specialise in locally grown eco-friendly flowers. Yet almost all the flowers I used on this photoshoot were imported. Why?

To explain, I need to give you some background on the flower industry. Over 80% of the flowers sold in England are imported. This could be from just across the channel but it is also from all around the world – south America and Africa in particular. Flowers are generally grown under cover, to stop them getting marked by the weather and sprayed with a lot of chemicals to ensure nothing nibbles them and they look perfect. Then, add in the carbon footprint of flying them here as well.

This is the industry that has grown up so that we can have whatever flowers we want at any time of the year. Much like the fruit and veg industry. This means it is actually much easier to buy imported flowers than it is to source locally grown.

Coming back to Lincolnshire, we are much more at the mercy of the weather. Spring 2021 had almost no rain and was incredibly cold. This meant that all the flower crops here were three weeks behind where they should be.

All the flowers I used (except the roses) should have been available locally grown at that time. As they were not, I bought imported and they were all gorgeous high quality blooms. This is the difficulty of working with the seasons and the same could happen on an actual wedding. There are very few couples who are so laid back as to be happy with a complete change in their flowers a couple of weeks before their date. For this reason, I always have imported flowers as a back up.

Many of my weddings include a mix of local and imported flowers because of the season and often because of supply. Many local growers are small specialist growers. They grow a wide variety of flowers and foliage I cannot access from the imported wholesalers. While this means I can source the most beautiful things that many florists cannot, it also means they don’t have enough of any one flower if it is a large wedding.

These are the things I do behind the scenes as a wedding florist. You probably don’t want to know the detail of my network of flower growers and how to balance that against the minimum orders and delivery charges of the different wholesalers. You want gorgeous flowers that fit your vision on your day and that it what I deliver for you without you having to worry about the detail.

Flowers and foliage used

Birch | Craspedia | Hawthorn | Honeysuckle | Jasmine | Larkspur | Oak | Peonies | Philadelphus | Ranunculus | Roses | Sweet peas

The photoshoot team

Elegant | Eco friendly | Extraordinary

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