Wedding flowers with a real difference
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Okay, so you don’t know everything, but you can point your brides in the direction of an real expert when they ask your advice about flowers
Ashley Munro Scott is a thoroughly modern mum who left her London city career to start a new life that would make a difference. Whilst the idea to supply locally-grown, eco-friendly, freshly-cut flowers sounds quintessentially quaint and somewhat serene – the reality has called for true grit, sheer determination and unwavering gut instinct; affectionately known as ‘The Plump Gardener’, she is the creator of Sweet Peas and Bumble Bees, where beautiful blooms, clever colour combinations and breath-taking floral displays are fundamental.
The magic began after Ashley discovered the perfect garden set in an undisclosed area of Eastern England: “On a misty autumn day last year, I finally found what I’d been looking for, a secret walled garden. It hadn’t been a real garden since 1930. Built in Napoleonic times, the walled garden was a tangle of weeds sitting in a valley, partly surrounded by a wood of ancient russet trees - it was begging to be returned to its former glory.” Since then, Ashley and her team have toiled, tilled and nurtured, bringing the garden back to life and growing seasonal cottage garden flowers for everyone to enjoy. Private viewings of the heavenly gardens are available, by appointment, to customers organising a special occasion with Sweet Peas and Bumble Bees.
The company provides brides with services so personal that a girl can almost see her flowers from seed through to virtually handpicking the bouquet weeks before the wedding, but the eco-friendly element is equally important and the team insists on using peat free compost, garlic spray on old English roses, manure from the local farm, and leaf mould from the ancient wood around the walled garden. These traditional methods work in harmony with the English countryside to produce beautiful, gloriously fragrant flowers grown for their natural scent and beauty. As Ashley says: “They will not be sad, scentless and wrapped in cellophane. They will not have flown from the four corners of the world or hauled in lorries with great refrigeration units.”
Ashley Munro Scott’s Wedding Flower Trends 2010
- Spring weddings: For bold and scented appeal, try large parrot tulips, in an array of colours from candy pastels, lime greens and bright pinks, reds and oranges, some with stripes. Eye catching and unusual, when fully open, they are a blaze of colour. Not for shy and retiring types!
- Helping to keep within budget but with classic simplicity: Use bunting around the tables (everyone has a gran or auntie who can sew); have all the family save jam jars, ready to create the era of 1940 (fill them with cornflowers, grasses, sweetpeas, cerinthe and lavender, dotted with old English roses); hunt the charity shop for a selection of old jugs and vases. Have simple hand-tied bouquets to match, with patterned ribbon.
- Blues of cornflower, nigella, anenomes and salvia combine with scented whites of phlox, sweet peas, and snapdragons to give a striking contrast in any room. Weave, cornflowers and nigella with ivy to make beautiful garlands for church doorways, window sills and tables surrounds.
- Our favourite bouquet of this year – one for the hippy brid – pennisetum grasses (the heads looks like fox tails with a hint of pink coming through the pale green and corn colour of tail) cut long, with long deep lilac catanache star-like flowers sitting on top, tied with a simple ribbon and held across the arm to create the harvest maiden look.
- For a striking, funky bouquet take three tall, deep-wine-coloured spiky Dahlias and surround with scented dill - fantastic against white/cream dresses.
Pass the word on to your customers that eco-friendly, seasonal and scented flowers are available through www. sweetpeasandbumblebees.co.uk and from farmers markets and specialist shops. Bespoke displays and arrangements are available, from £30; the service covers Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Bedfordshire and Norfolk.
Just so you know: Over two-thirds of flowers on sale in Britain come from abroad. Recent government figures show that the average bunch of Valentines’ flowers will have flown 33,00 air miles to get here. Not good, and certainly not romantic.
