Bright January Wedding at Bruny Island

Colourful February Wedding at Bangor Vineyard Shed

I really enjoyed playing with colour for this fabulous wedding at Bangor Vineyard Shed last February.  The challenge was the bride's colourful dress, which was actually her mother's wedding dress,  embroidered all over with colourful flowers.  Not only did I love the idea, but the result was truly beautiful and unique.  

Photgraph by Nina Hamilton Photography

One of my favourite Tasmanian photographers captured the day.  I love Nina Hamilton's documentary style which expresses the natural beauty and joy of each event.  Her website is worth a look. 

The bride's and bridesmaid's bouquet were full of colour.    The colours on the wedding dress were bright but soft so I keep the colour palette to similar tones.   Lots of pinks, red, orange, blue, green, and yellow.  

The bridesmaid's dress was a mustard yellow with spots, so Billy Buttons were an obvious choice.Protea Compacta and Pink, along with Scarlet Ribbons Pincushions were the main flowers.  

There were blue echinops or globe thistles, light pink and deeper pink flowering gum and beautiful blue green Peppermint foliage.   

The soft pink grass heads were a foraged find - such a great colour and beautifully summery.  

I also used a summer flowering wattle that I love to use in bouquets.  It holds its blossoms well but looks great even in bud, with the little yellow balls sitting at great angles on the stem.  

For the groom and the groomsman, there were Billy Buttons, foraged grass heads, peppermint and flowering gum.  

For the dads, more flowering gum, grass, peppermint and some wattle.  

The mums wore wrist corsages with the same combination of pink, yellow and blue, with blue-green foliage.  

The ceremony was held at the bottom of the vineyard, overlooking the bay.  

The was a simple wine barrel overflowing with colour.  It was a beautiful day!

I really loved creating the wine-barrel arrangement with lots of different coloured flowering gum, wattle, plenty of peppermint. proteas and pincushions and plenty of other colourful blooms. 

Chairs were decorated with little posies of colour.  

For the reception, the long tables at Bangor were decorated with more colour in dark glass vases.  Protea Pink Ice, Pincushion, Flowering Gum, Wattle, Echinops, Silver Tree Leucadendron, Peppermint foliage, foraged grass and Billy Buttons. 

These were a pleasure to make.  I really do love colour!

One really large arrangement decorated the venue inside.  Profuse flowering gum, wattle and peppermint gum with some jaunty Billy Buttons.  So much Australian native love here.

That look pretty much says it all!  

For more information about booking Bangor as your wedding venue, and to see more pictures (by the talented Nina Hamilton Photography) of this gorgeous wedding, check out the Bangor online wedding brochure.

A February Wedding

We were thrilled to be able to provide flowers for this beautiful February wedding.  The bride wore a gorgeous vintage dress and the colours for the bridesmaids were apricot, peach and orange.  

Pink Ice Protea and Fountain Pincushions were the main flowers.  The Fountain are a later flowering pincushion and are at their height in January and early February.  They have a soft purplish tinge when they first begin to flower so they really went well with the apricot and peach colours.  I added some bright pink Kangaroo Paw, Brunia Albiflora, some gorgeous purplish silver eucalyptus foliage and some blue green conifer foliage.  As a highlight, I added some gorgeous summer grass seed heads.  The bouquet was bound with jute ribbon and I added a bow which was removable.  The bride opted for removing the bow and I think it really worked.  The colours worked so well with her stunning ivory coloured vintage dress.

Photo by KS Photography

For the bridesmaids, I used Pink Ice Protea, Brunia Albiflora, Pink Kangaroo Paw, Geraldton Wax and  more of the native foliage.  Each of the bridesmaids dresses were different - all variations on the vintage theme so keeping their bouquets all the same was important.

Grevillea foliage, and the same blue green conifer foliage also tie the bouquets together, with the summer grass highlights also added.  Again, the bows were removable.  

In keeping with the idea of the different bridesmaids dresses, the bride decided that the boutonniere should all be different.  What fun!  Using different combinations of the flowers and foliage from the bouquets, I created the button holes to be all different, but "matching".  

The groom's boutonniere stood out by being slightly larger.  You can see a dried leucadendron cone, single Brunia Albiflora, Kangaroo Paw, Banksia, conifer foliage and summer grass.

And lastly, the corsage for the Mother of the Bride - a combination of Kangaraoo Paw, Grevillea, Wax flower, foliage and summer grass.  

Photo by KS Photographers

The photographers for the wedding took this beautiful photo of the brides bouquet.  KS Photographers have won the Tasmanian Wedding Photographer of the Year for 2014 and their website is well worth a look.  They are so creative and their catalogue is stunning.  

Photo by KS Photographers

It was such a treat to work on this wedding!  And so nice to see some photos of the day taken by such a great photographer!  

Hints of Spring

August in my part of the world is characterised by the colours yellow and blue.  It seems that wherever I look those two colours catch my eye.  The sea, the mountains, and often the sky are a rich blue,  and provide a lovely backdrop for the cheerful yellow that is glowing everywhere.  Wattle season is definitely in full swing and the large black and silver wattle trees are becoming golden with their masses of little flowers, all like miniature sunbursts.  I love wattle!  

At Swallows Nest, the signs of spring are everywhere, with many of the Leucadendrons in flower.  Safari Sunset, usually rich red for most of the year, are yellow and pink at the moment with a delicate rose-like fragrance that makes picking them a joy.  

Safari Gold Strike are beginning to flower and are a beautiful fresh yellow at the moment.  I have started to pick them in earnest now and I'm so happy with their long sturdy stems and beautiful big blowsy flower heads.  Yellow is such a great colour to lift the spirits at the end of winter.  

Inca Gold are another stand-out for this time of year - yellow pointed blooms stretching toward the sky.  

Yellow is such a happy colour!

These flowers are the Tall Red Leucadendron.  It is a very vigorously growing plant that we pruned with a chainsaw (they really were unruly!) in our first year at Swallows Nest.  They have grown back to be bigger than they were at first.  They will need to be heavily pruned this year, and this gives them great stems for next year.  I love their lime green pompoms!  

I love the combination of colours available at this time of the year - and the textures too.  It's all just a hint that spring is not far away.  

Maui Sunset

The next spring flowering Leucadendron I'm featuring this year is this gorgeous blushing beauty called Maui Sunset.  It's creamy white bracts are tinged with delicate pink and the shape is almost rose-like.  For most of the year, Maui Sunset is a fairly unremarkable green.  

There is a tinge of brownish pink, but its not what you'd call a "stand-out" colour.  Over winter, the pinkish tinge begins to increase, and the green slowly starts to lighten. 

By late winter, these lovely leuco's have thrown off their cloak of invisibility and are definitely beginning to shout "look at me"!  But they continue to lighten until they are almost white, glowing, and rimmed with pink.  The ridge along the top of the hill where they grow is transformed.

Maui Sunset are not widely found in florists.  They don't have the same long stems that other leuco's have.  I think the colour and beauty of them make up for the shorter stems!  We often leave some of our bushes uncut and allow them to grow two seasons, giving them a multi headed stem with longer length.    Then, they are really useful in larger bunches.  

The Maui Sunset on top of the basket above show how this second years growth give the effect of many flowers on one stem.  I picked 6 or 7 stems here, and each stem had 3 or 4 flowers on it.  

The spectacular colour transformation of these Maui Sunset are a very obvious sign of the change of season around the farm, and their effect is so cheery and bright - they are definitely a spectacular spring flowering Leucadendron.  

Thryptomene

Thryptomene is a beautiful Australian native shrub that we grow here at Swallows Nest.  This variety is Grampians Thryptomene, found as the name suggests in the Grampians region in Victoria.  It is extensively picked in the wild there, for the cut flower trade.  We only have a small number of bushes here, but they are well established and very productive. 

In mid to late winter,  the tiny bright pink buds begin to burst into dainty little flowers that erupt between the leaves and cover the length of the branches.  They continue to flower for the next few months.  I think they have the look of snow laden branches at this time of the year.

One of the features of Thryptomene is it's beautiful aromatic smell.  Fresh, clean and foresty, it really lingers.  I love it!  

Thryptomene is long lasting as a cut flower.  It looks great as a filler in a bouquet and adds a fresh scent and a touch of authentic Australian winter.  Look out for it in florists during the cooler months!