Holland Park Orangery

Formerly used as a ‘garden ballroom’, the tall windows and white walls of the Orangery provide a brilliant backdrop for flower dressing. We decorated the space with tall, wiry branches and trailing vines to bring the outside in.

At the base of the bronze ‘Wrestlers of Herculaneum’ we constructed two billowing installations of perennial plants and grasses, framing the couple as their vows were made.

For the aisle flowers, small groupings of delicate stems at the base of the chairs - above a combination of lilac-blue field scabious, pale delphiniums and poppy heads.

After the ceremony long tables were brought into the room and laid for lunch - we decorated them with a stream of glass vases filled with fragrant honeysuckle, roses, nepeta and camomile.

Spring at Somerset House

For this wedding at Spring restaurant in Somerset House we decorated the tables with a mix of our own design ceramics and small glass bottles.

On the central bar we placed a dramatic tumbling arrangement of roses and clarkia blossoms, with towering spires of Veronicastrum and giant scabiosa.

All the ingredients were grown by us in Hampshire - scented garden roses, honeysuckle tendrils, wood sage, chocolate mint, sweetpeas and tiny alpine strawberries.

On the tables, footed bowls were filled with blowsy summer flowers in all shades of pink from pale blush to deep cerise.

The Savile Club

For the ceremony we filled a pair of bronze ‘acanthus leaf’ urns with frothy arrangements of mixed perennials - daisies, valerian, delphiniums and golden giant oat grasses.

On the mantelpiece a large bowl spilled over with June’s finest - intricately speckled martagon lilies in cream, apricot and ruby red, roses in shades of honeyed peach and coffee, foxgloves and pale pink carnations.

The bride’s bouquet was made with roses ‘Queen of Sweden’ and ‘Iceberg’, with honeysuckle and dainty whispers of larkspur, heuchera and flowering wood sage around the edges.

The tables at the Club were dressed with brass vases in varying shapes and heights holding little arrangements of lilac campanula, cornflowers, sweet peas and dancing spires of Veronicastrum.

Tulips galore

For this spring wedding at the Savile Club in Mayfair we cut lots of double tulips - pale pink ‘Angelique’, creamy yellow ‘Avant Garde’ and honey-hued ‘Copper Image’.

Our footed centrepieces are designed to be seen from all angles and take centre stage on wide, round tables. Each centrepiece is unique with shapes and colours varying depending on the individual materials.

The pale blue staircase at the Club is always a dream to dress - this foam free design included trailing ivy, full blown silken tulips in shades from ivory to plum, scented narcissus and frothy cow parsley.

The bride’s bouquet included copper Physocarpus and metallic Silverberry foliage, white and burgundy anemones and peach peony-shaped tulip ‘Charming Lady’.

Gold, rust, peach

We were able to make the most of the changing autumnal colours at the farm for this October wedding.

The bride’s bouquet was made up of the finest seasonal finds including peachy elder foliage, mottled hydrangea and glowing chrysanthemums the colour of rich egg yolks.

The tables were decorated with little antique glass bottles and individual stems of dahlias, chrysanthemums, Japanese anemones and yellowing Macleaya leaves.

For the flower girls, ranging in age from 11 to a tiny 2.5 - sweet little posies of flowering abelia, daisy-faced chrysanthemums and wispy grasses.

Seasonal wedding flowers

We’ve been lucky to experience some beautiful misty June mornings at the garden this year.

On arriving early one morning we were greeted by a sea of Dutch iris and their statuesque bearded neighbours rising from the bed in the centre of the garden. The air was swirling with moisture, dripping spiders’ webs trailing between each pale blue, mustard and mauve petalled head.

As fortune would have it that very week the studio had been asked to create the flower decorations for Vanessa and Reuben’s wedding. Vanessa’s initial reference image was of a poppy-strewn wildflower meadow with pops of scarlet red and cornflower blue. As we gathered buckets of cheery red geums, pale blue sweet peas, flax flowers and wild grasses, the timing of the moment wasn’t lost on the pickers and several days later an ecstatic bride messaged her thanks.

Seasonal synchronicity at its best!

St John Bread + Wine

In June there was a wedding at St John Bread & Wine in Spitalfields. St John is a dining room, wine shop and bakery on Commercial Street and pretty much my dream space to decorate - stylish yet unpretentious, sophisticated yet informal, it is all about the food, and the wine (and the bread). 

Don't you miss June? Hot and stormy, mosquito-bitten, foxglove-filled June. The first flush of garden roses, the first suntan lines, punnets of English gooseberries; June days are full of natural abundance, when the washing on the line dries in less than an hour, and it is too hot to walk on the gravel barefoot. Every year June comes around and goes so fast, and every year when it has gone I miss it.

July has been gloomy, as it usually is. I love gloominess too, though. Real weather, thunder and scudding clouds, wind in the trees, leaves scuttling across the park. My new puppy has been enjoying those.

Anita and James had the best of everything for their June wedding; sunlight pouring into a white room, crisp linen, taper candles, just-gathered flowers. The cutting garden came up trumps with scented garden roses and Californian poppies and bearded iris; we filled a whole slew of antique vases, goblets and tankards in tarnished pewter and brass. There is a distinct alchemy to the gleam of old metal by candlelight. I like imagining the history of those vessels, I believe some of them are quite old. Who received that prize after an exhausting summer regatta many moons ago, the thirsts those dented flagons might have quenched in London ale-houses long demolished. 

For me, this wedding was an excellent example of how effective combined simplicity and seasonality can be. All English-grown, the majority from our own garden, flowers simply gathered in complimentary colours, diversely collected vessels, tall elegant candles, a smattering of ripe, seasonal fruit, sparkling glassware. And that's it. Nothing showy or themed or too contrived. Just an effortless celebratory feast, with delicious food and a lot of very good wine.

My heart was really in it, right from the get-go.

Everything was prepared at our studio in advance. Jess and Camille placed and tweaked the flowers and wove in a few clematis tendrils and I hung some wild dog-rose briars on the back wall from the shaker pegs. Install took three of us an hour. It was the swiftest set-up we have ever done.

Later, as our clients and their family & friends danced the night away down the street, a mile south three terrorists mounted what is now known as the London Bridge attack, killing eight and injuring forty-eight innocent civilians. We drove back the following morning to de-rig through shocked, deserted streets and wailing sirens. That afternoon, with the same familiar exhaustion that every wedding ends with, and from the sadness of that strange day, I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep. 

But when I look back through the photographs, all I see is joy. Flowers are joyful, they make people happy, they are a reminder of happinesses past, they are fleeting, transient, and yet there will always be new growth, whatever you do you cannot stop that. New growth will come. When times are hard I sometimes wonder what we are doing this for, Jess and I, the shlepping backwards and forwards on the motorway with our hard-won flowers (which have survived winter's frost and drought and foraging predators and plenty more besides, each one just to be admired for those few hours), the gargantuan effort we go to to convert people to seasonality and English-grown flowers over imported ones during the seven to eight months of the year when this is possible, to encourage people to think outside the box of conventional wedding floristry (more on this some other time), the early mornings and late nights and constant hustling. And really this is the wedding that sticks in my mind when I ask myself why we do it. We do it for this, these flowers, these people. 

For me, the photographs here are testament to the endurance of love and friendship. I love that our work is a part of that.