The Cut Flower Podcast

Growing your own wedding flowers

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 143

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Join our 3 Masterclasses at 8pm on the 22nd, 23rd and 26th January by clicking here

In this episode of the Cut Flower Podcast, Roz Chandler discusses the joys and challenges of growing your own wedding flowers. She emphasizes the personal significance of using self-grown flowers, offers practical advice on flower selection, and stresses the importance of planning and timing. The episode also highlights the upcoming free online masterclasses designed to guide listeners through the process of growing and arranging flowers for weddings.


Takeaways

  • Growing your own wedding flowers can be incredibly special.
  • It's important to set realistic expectations when growing flowers.
  • Foliage can enhance arrangements and add texture.
  • Timing is crucial for successful flower growth.
  • Plan backwards from your wedding date to ensure blooms are ready.
  • Harvest flowers early in the morning or late in the evening.
  • Keep arrangements simple and natural for a beautiful look.
  • You don't need to be a professional florist to create beautiful arrangements.
  • Flowers represent months of care, intention, and love.


Roz Chandler (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Cut Flower Podcast. If you're new here, I'm Ross from Fieldgate Flowers. I'm a cut flower growing farmer, educator and someone who spent many years, over 15, growing flowers for weddings, events and special moments.

And today I want to talk to you about something I get asked about all the time, growing your own wedding flowers. So what happens in January, and welcome to the Cut Flower podcast in January, is that we run a short series of four or five different podcasts about the reasons why you grow cut flowers. And that's just at the beginning of the season. And then on the 22nd, 23rd and 26th of January, we run our free online master classes all about cut flowers.

There are three one-hour sessions streamed into a Facebook group and we answer all your questions in there. So if you're thinking about growing your wedding flowers for instance, do pop along and join these master classes and we're sure we can impart our knowledge to you and get you growing for one of your dream events whether it's a wedding or the friend's wedding or whatever. The link to join the master classes will be in the show notes. If you can't find it, just drop me an email at roz.ro.z.

at fieldgateflowers.co.uk or drop me a DM on Instagram or Facebook at fieldgateflowers and I'll be sure to come back to you with the link but again those dates are the 22nd 23rd and 26th of January

So as I said today I want to talk about growing your own wedding flowers so this is whether you're planning your own wedding, helping a daughter or a friend or just dreaming of a deeply personal meaningful celebration growing your own flowers can be incredibly special.

but it can also be overwhelming. What if they don't flower on time? What should you even grow? And is it realistic to be able to do this? So today I'm going to walk you through what does work, what to avoid and how to keep this joyful, not stressful. Just some overall hints and tips and we'll be covering more in our master classes. So why grow your own wedding flowers?

There is something incredibly powerful about carrying or arranging flowers that you've grown yourself. They're not just flowers. They're months of care, intention and hope and love. It's taken many, many months, many, many looking after seeds, getting them to germinate, then planting them outside and then becoming the beautiful flowers that you're going to use on a wedding or a special celebration.

For many couples there are lots of reasons why they do this. The reasons are sustainability, reducing costs, avoiding imports or creating something deeply personal and thoughtful and meaningful for themselves. And the good news is you don't need acres of land or experience, you just need the right approach and some planning.

So let's start with some realistic expectations. One of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to grow absolutely everything. Instead, I always recommend growing key hero flowers and supplementing with foliage, dried flowers, or brought in blooms if needed. Here in the UK, we have an association of flower farmers, flowers from the farm.

And there are many, many hundreds of flower farmers across the UK that you can supplement your wedding flowers with. There are also some wholesalers in the UK you can supplement. You can buy in British blooms during really from most of the year from January to December, actually from the wholesalers. There are two down in the Southwest, one that we use over in Lincolnshire and then the great Alstromeria Ben who has Alstromerias as 12 months of the year growing under glass. So there's always

always

a way and there's always a way of doing it. So I don't want anyone to feel any overwhelm because honestly it doesn't need to be like that. So it is about not being perfect. It's about getting your key flowers right. They need to be yours. Things will happen, weather will happen. Aphids will make their way. And if you have rabbits or deer, they'll also have a little munch. But that's part of the beauty.

So what works best for DIY flowers? Let's think about this. You don't need to be the best florist in the world. You don't even need to be a florist. Think about easy things like jam jars or ⁓ bud vases along the center or small vases. think what flowers you would like to have at your wedding. What would your colors be? What would your color palette be? So some brilliant choices are grow flowers that are generous, forgiving and flower over a long period

period. these include things like Cosmos, you know, they have beautiful pink colours, they have the cupcake rice, they have lots and lots of different varieties. Xenias.

who doesn't love a sweet pea? Sweet peas are great because you you can start them off in December, can start them off in the spring, you can get them outside. They're very very forgiving and they're very very hardy and they will keep on giving as long as you keep on picking. Then you have the wonderful dahlias for late summer weddings. You have calendulas, nigellas, ami, cornflowers. These flowers produce lots of stems. They love being cut and they give you flexibility

of time and shift slightly. Foliage is also your secret weapon. If you walk around your garden, what do you already have? What bushes and shrubs do you already have? Do you have any viburnum? You know, we use lots and lots of viburnum here on the farm and we deliberately grow things like common nine bark. We grow cutinus, but we also use beech or oak and laurel. So what do you have in your garden?

I would always, always supplement, certainly if I'm doing bud vases, I would supplement lots and lots with grasses and with things like rosemary and mint. Mint, we grow about seven different types of mint here on the farm. Mint's great. It does grow very, very fast and gets out of control. So always good in a container or a raised bed unless you don't mind it taking over.

Foliage fills arrangements fast, adds movement, scent, texture, always worth adding lots and lots of foliage. So you need to think of things like, what will your focal flowers be? Are they roses? Are they dahlias? Are they peonies? What will your fillers be? So things like ami or laya, cornflowers, your smaller blooms, what will they be? And what will your foliage be? So they're the three areas that you need to consider.

Timing is everything and this is the part people often underestimate. Quite often we have people come to us and going to do the whole of the DIY wedding themselves and they become quite overwhelmed the day before. So it's okay to do all the jam jars and bud vases and so on but when it gets to arranging bouquets and bridesmaids bouquets and buttonholes, perhaps that's one step too far and they ask us or a local florist to do that bit and they do the whole of the venue dressing themselves. A lot of venues these days are

dry higher and you go in and it's up to you to decorate completely and it requires quite a lot of work

Please don't do what some of my, I had one mother of a bride once who insisted on doing the table centers. We did the church and then we did all the bridal bouquets and so on. So there was a lot to do, but she insisted on doing the table decorations herself from her own garden. Boy, did she have a beautiful garden and loads of beautiful flowers, but we're still doing it at 3 a.m. the night before her daughter's wedding. And I really wouldn't want any of you to do this. So it's about planning and planning backwards. So if you're going to make arrangements, can they be in water?

that's obviously easier if they're in water and yeah if you're doing sort of big installations and arches and so on then it's out of water and you have to prepare for that so be realistic about what your level of floristry is and what you're prepared to take on. Ask yourself so you need to work backwards from your wedding date so ask when does this flower usually bloom so let's look at dahlias yes they usually bloom in late August

2025 was a late blooming year and they weren't great for day years so there will be changes. You know we were growing roses under cover for instance and they were blooming at the beginning of May which is very unusual.

Does it need sewing indoors or can it be direct outside? How hardy is it? Does it flower once or over a period of weeks? This is why planning matters more than perfection. It needs to plan when the wedding is and work backwards. And it's exactly what we go deep into inside my free online master classes. Because once you understand timing, everything else feels much calmer and much more doable. And don't forget, there is always a solution.

On your wedding week, harvest early morning or late evening, so if the wedding was on Saturday, I would probably be picking early Thursday morning. Condition your flowers properly, get to know what flower needs what type of conditioning and keep designs loose and natural. British flowers love that style. Think about buckets, jugs, jam jars, simple hand-tied bouquets. These are often the most beautiful.

And please remember you're not running a professional floristry studio unless of course you are a professional florist. You are celebrating love. So if you're listening to this and thinking I love this idea but I'm not sure I'm confident enough that's exactly what I'm teaching on my three master classes.

In the middle of January, I'm running three free online masterclasses all about growing flowers, whether for weddings, for joy or for income. They're happening on the 22nd, 23rd and 26th of January inside our free Facebook group where you can ask questions, learn amongst others, collaborate, get proper guidance without overwhelm. You'll find the registration link in the show notes. And if you have difficulty finding that, just if you could DM me on Instagram at Fieldgate Flowers,

or on Fieldgate Flowers on Facebook or drop me an email roz at fieldgateflowers.co.uk and I'll be sure to send you the link. Come and join us even if you're just dreaming at this stage. Thank you so much for listening today. If this episode helped you share it with someone who's planning a wedding or dreaming of growing their own flowers and I'll see you inside the master classes.