Summer is definitely in full swing in our lovely flower studio. We're bursting with gorgeous peonies, scented stocks and our favourite delphiniums. I think the heady scent is getting to us as we're busy planning our next flower school course on Tuesday 10th June.
If your a budding flower designer, our Vase Arrangement course is for you! Not only do you get lots of gorgeous flowers to arrange with you also get to take home your vessel and a whole load of inspiration to boot.
Held in our working studio, we will talk you through the know-how of using oasis to create wonderful arrangements as well as touching upon hand-tied skills required for some containers.
We teach you the tricks of the trade, walking you through a step by step guide to perfect vase arrangements!
Date: Tuesday 10th June
Time: 19.00 - 21.00
Tickets: £55.00
Bookings: You can book your place online at www.greenparlour.com or by calling our studio on 0118 984 4000
This beauty almost fell into my handbag on the way home today. I think it may be my favourite urn arrangement to date. These miniature metal urns are completely perfect - the right size for plants, arrangements and not too huge that they would swap a table setting for a dinner party.
They are also super versatile to arrange in. Make a hand-tied bouquet, use some oasis, chicken wire (always my preference) or those funny little pin cushion flower frogs. I'm more of a chicken wire lady myself, scrunch a tiny piece up and simply just start threading your stems through, starting with your foliage and voila! A scaled down vase suitable for any stately home (or semi-detached terrace house)
The ingredience of my urn arrangement includes; jasmine, eucalyptus, forget-me-nots, sweet peas, spirea, astilbe, helleborus and the most gorgeous to die for ever roses (aka Caramel Antique) the perfect amount of blouse, don't you think?
For more spring/summer loveliness you should really take a little peek at our recent post about some of our favourite flowers of the season. Take a look here Early Summer Flower Inspiration
There may be more arrangements to come this week that may want to accidentally come home with me.
The vintage vibe is so big in wedding flowers, I don't think I'll ever tire of it! Amnesia and Ocean Song roses always steal my heart, and the berried eucalyptus is just heavenly. Combine these beautiful colours with lots of texture, as we did here. Waxflower is so versatile, with its soft ivory star shaped flowers providing a subtle lemon scent and with the silvery sage green dusty millar it ensures the roses are the stars of the show but with the relaxed vintage country garden vibe.
These vintage flowers can be re-created for your wedding day in different shades to suit your colour scheme. For me the key to creating a vintage bridal bouquet is keeping the flower selection simple, but using all sorts of foliage to soften the flowers. Some of my favourite foliages include berried eucalyptus, jasmine trails, clematis, passionflower trails, dusty millar and in the winter tons of skimmia.
I love the romance of roses, especially in your bridal flowers, go for lots of different tints and tones to stop your design feeling too formal. Different sized roses also help create that chic vintage vibe, if you've ever spoken to me about flowers you will know I am a complete spray rose addict. My all time favourites (yes I have 2 because they are both just so beautiful) are Bombastic and Majolika. Both are just the perfect shade of ivory and blush. Delicious!
We're busy arranging lots of vintage wedding bouquets over the coming months, we can't wait to share with you all how different they can be!
It may be tipping it down outside but we are busy planning our next flower school course on Wednesday 14th May.
The studio is full of late spring and early summer flowers and we are literally bursting with inspiration. If your a budding flower designer, our Vase Arrangement course is for you! Not only do you get lots of gorgeous flowers to arrange with you also get to take home your vessel and a whole load of inspiration to boot.
Held in our working studio, we will talk you through the know-how of using oasis to create wonderful arrangements as well as touching upon hand-tied skills required for some containers.
We teach you the tricks of the trade, walking you through a step by step guide to perfect vase arrangements!
Date: Wednesday 14th May
Time: 10.00 - 12.00
Tickets: £55.00
Bookings: You can book your place online at www.greenparlour.com or by calling our studio on 0118 984 4000
We often get asked for some inspirational ideas for spring and early summer flowers. I think it’s the time of the year when suddenly planting seems to take over our lives, and we suddenly feel all inspired to get our gardening and floral arranging groove on.
The bulbs are suddenly in decline and we start to see some of the flower worlds greatest blooms shine. Personally its my favourite time of the year, I think after a long winter the arrival of these early summer blooms reminds me that eventually … eventually we will get long evenings, hot days and a glut of garden goodies to play with.
Here are a few of my favourite early summer flowers and some top inspiration on how they can be arranged.
I’m completely in awe of these gorgeous little fellows. Beautiful piercing dancing blue flowers are a perfect compliment to any arrangement. If your after a woodland wedding bouquet, the forget-me-knot will be a wonderful addition to your bouquet, will it be your something blue?
Heady scent, delicate star shaped flowers and the most inspiring trailing foliage. If you like free flowing arrangements, jasmine is a must to include. Its flowing tendrils again look perfect combined with lots of dainty flowers for a relaxed arrangement or bouquet.
My namesake (a long story!) has to be top of my list. I cannot tell you how much I love these beautiful flowers. Gorgeous colours ranging from the softest blush through to yolk yellows, deep oranges, raspberry reds and pillar box reds. If your fond of poppies plant them in drifts in your garden for the most eye-catching country border.
Oh me oh my, these beauties steal our hearts each year. Gorgeous marshmallow blooms that carry on opening and opening. The colours available are just stunning, with blush, white, hot pinks, oranges, red … the list goes on! If you haven’t seen the frilly variety they are to die for.
My most recent garden purchase, these lovely plants house the most delicate blossom and I have been assured they are one of the easiest flowering shrubs to grow. These delicate plants produce beautiful cascades of blossom flowers throughout spring to early summer.
Do you have any spring or summer flower favourites you'd love us to feature? We're always on the look out for new floral inspiration!
Spring has well and truly sprung ... our gorgeous flower stand is filled with some beautiful seasonal blooms from scetned muscari through to poppy like anemones, what a perfect time of year to get married!
Harriet and Rory certainly chose a beautiful weekend to tie the knot in the Tithe Barn in Yattendon. With their rustic, country vibe perfectly reflecting their surroundings. You are in for a treat when you look at all their gorgeous DIY detailing!
We had a selection of flowers that screamed country garden. From sea holly, gypsophilia, spray roses, iris to anemones and muscari. Bring on country styling ...
Harriet's wedding bouquet contained clusters of gypsophilia, iris, scented anemones, groupings of sea holly, ivory Majolika spray roses and scented foliage. This completely summed up the country wedding brief to me.
Harriet's bridesmaids bouquets were filled with seasonal hyacinths, scented muscari, ivory Majolika spray roses, hints of eucalyptus and gypsophilia. Beautifully rustic and the perfect compliment to the bridal bouquet wouldn't you agree?
We got a little bit snap happy when we visited the Tithe Barn in Yattendon ... boy oh boy had this couple put in a lot of work. We literally walked in the door and our breath was taken away! Greeted by 3 trees filled with origami escort cards through to hay bale sofas draped in old quilts and cushions, through to old wire reels used as poser tables. We were in Pinterest wedding heaven!
I love banqueting style layouts, and a barn really lends itself to this informal table layout, especially when said tables are covered in old doilies, book stacks and amazing folded books acting as menu holders.
I want the bride to come and style my wedding now! Oh and yes that is a home made wedding cake ... gorgeousness
If your a regular reader of this blog, or a customer who frequents the shop you will know there is nothingI love more than a vase of sweet peas! They are just one of those flowers that I could stick my face in for hours and keep on breathing in their heavenly scent. For that reason alone they are one of my all time favourite wedding flowers.
If they are in season they will be in for a mention in a wedding consultation. I don't think I've met someone yet that doesn't like them!
When I met Kathleen and Jay to talk wedding flowers back in gloomy January, the sweet pea was mentioned as one of their must haves. I won't go into the ins and outs of seasonality, but the beginning of April is a touch early for my most favourite wedding flower. We somehow managed to get in these lilac beauties pictured above in Kathleen's wedding bouquet and I think you'll agree they are absolute stunners!
Teamed with scented seasonal muscari, deep purple lisianthus, Amnesia roses, Ocean Song roses, fresh lavender and scented eucalyptus, this wedding bouquet really smelt absolutely divine.
Watch this space for more of my adventures with sweet peas soon x
What do you get when you leave three florists with a bucket of leftover flowers.... dress up time of course! It was flower crown central on Monday afternoon in the shop much to the surprise of our visiting customers - i think secretly they all wanted to join in!
With a few wayward stems left over from Mother's Day we totally and unashamedly indulged our creative sides. It was such a pleasure to just go wild. Flower crowns are all over pinterest and instagram right now and it was the perfect excuse to do some in-house training with our lovely trainee Brittany, developing her own ideas and core floristry skills such as wiring and taping.
Perhaps daydreaming of warmer climes, I went for a somewhat tropical design. Vibrant apricot toned Tulips, a soft marshmallow pink blousey statement Rose and a helping of cerise Rose buds for good measure went into my asymmetric number, finished of course with neon green ribbon! All I needed to complete the look was a grass skirt and a pina colada!
Emma's design had much more of a refined and vintage air. With textures of Sweet Williams, threaded Hyacinth pips and cloudy Gypsophila, not forgetting the beautiful open Anemones. I think her headdress was very elegant and wouldn't have looked at all out of place on set in a 1920's film.
And last but definitely not least - what a stunning piece from Brittany! And a first attempt to boot! She was inspired by the electric blue Delphiniums running through her crown. The Anastacia bloom is used like a living pompom with romantic swirly Lisianthus and Rose buds clustered above - I think it looks great and she wears it so well!
Donning our floral masterpieces I think we were all pretty chuffed with the results and a mini photo shoot ensued. Well it would have been rude not to!
I wonder what next weeks leftover blooms will bring....
Spring definitely feels like it has sprung, finally! I'm not wishing the season away but I'm already starting to think about summer flowers, sifting through all my seed packets deciding on what to plant first.
I love the hope that a seed packet brings, the excitement when you tuck them into their soil nests, the daily check to see if anything has happened! I always get over excited about the promise of planting, often slipping another seed packet or two into my basket.
Some of my all time favourite flowers are out and about at the moment.
How can you not fall head over heels for delightful ranunculus flowers. Every time I see them I think about marshmallows and cloud of pillows (like in the movies when the pillow bursts in one of those epic pillow fights) They are a must for my garden plans next year, I've got the perfect spot for them in our soon to be built cutting patch.
The poppy like anemone, with its deep blue/black centres is another garden essential. I have filled my patch with wood anemones, a delicate variety, which would look completely gorgeous tumbling out of a bridesmaids posy.
Every season is filled with beautiful flowers, however after a long winter none are more enjoyed than spring flowers
ttfn x
We love love love setting up wedding flowers at Rivervale Barn. Such a gorgeous venue, with (amongst other things) the most beautiful bridal suite!
Our beautiful Bride and Groom, Lindsay and Craig, also fell in love with Rivervale Barn and kicking off our wedding season in style they chose our favourite colour palette of creams, whites and greens with a big dollop of seasonal zesty green. Spring has definitely sprung with these gorgeous arrangements - I hope your with me on how gorgeous Lindsay's bouquet was!
the wonderful setting and lovely staff at Rivervale Barn and
we were lucky enough to be involved with their wedding flowers.
Filled with tons of seasonal ranunculus, gorgeous succulents, Akito roses and (another!) one of our favourite's ... guelder rose! The bridal bouquet was bound in a lime green ribbon to tie in with the bridesmaids dresses. Such a perfect mix, blending rustic elements with an elegant wedding.
Succulents we're definitely the star of the show! These little posies sat along the top table between vases to hold the bridal and bridesmaids bouquets. Its one of my top tips if you've opted for a long top table, use the whole length and if you can re-use your bridal and bridesmaids bouquets here with a few smaller vases scattered between. Its a perfect way to create those full looking tablescapes that you see on so many wedding blogs at half the price.
Rivervale Barn has gorgeous almond shaped tables, making it really easy for your guests to converse across the tables. Lindsay and Craig chose a central table centre designed to tie in with the bridal party flowers using lots of the super zesty guelder rose, white hydrangeas, white Akito roses, clusters of (ahem!) carnations and ranunculus. I love the clean lines of the cylinder vases for weddings, and you can give the arrangements away as gifts to your guests afterwards!
We received this wonderful testimonial from Lindsay just a few days after her big day. We loved arranging their gorgeous wedding flowers and can't wait to see the team at Rivervale Barn soon!
