Create your own seasonal bouquet with the help of the book Grow & Gather by Grace Alexander.

In her book Grow & Gather, Grace Alexander discusses how to grow your own flowers. Below she describes how to then use the home grown blooms to create a seasonal bouquets – perfect for your big day blooms, or as a gift to those who have helped you throughout your planning…

Creating your own bouquet for your wedding day is a perfect way to add a personal touch to your nuptials. It is a great conversation starter and guests will be able to see the effort and the beautiful arrangement that you made.

The bouquet that you choose can be personalised to suit your taste and your colour scheme, and is a budget-friendly way to still get the beautiful bouquet of your wedding dreams. You can choose local flowers or wildflowers found on one of your woodland walks in the area you live in, or buy from a floral wholesaler, and include a variety if you can, but not every single stem needs to be different.

 

 

YOU WILL NEED

 

 

• 7 stems flowers

• 7 stems foliage

• 7 seedheads stems or fruits

• String or garden twine

• Brown paper

 

You can put it together in your hand, but remember to takes the leaves off the stem because they really will get in the way otherwise. Lay out all your flowers and bits of greenery on a table in front of you, and take up the first one in your non-dominant hand. Use your other hand to pick up and add the different stems, alternating foliage, filler and flowers so everything doesn’t clump together and come out lopsided.

If you keep your hand holding the flowers quite relaxed, forming a circle with your fingers and thumb, you can act as if this is the neck of a vase and just keep dropping the flowers through the circle, letting the stems cross and support each other. If this feels a bit difficult, then use a jug or vase with a narrow neck and just keep adding your foliage, fillers and flowers to it until you are happy with it.

You will need to trim the stems so that all the flowers sit at roughly the same level to do it this way. Once everything is in, tie a piece of string around the neck of the vase or jug and tighten it all up. You can then take the flowers out of the vase, and you will have a hand-tied bouquet.

Wrap the bouquet using brown paper to make it look really professional. If you are travelling any distance with it, take the vase with you and make sure the bouquet is in water until you hand it over, if you possibly can.

 

When to make

 

We reccommend making the day before to keep your blooms perfectly in tact and as fresh as possible! If you don't have time to make a fresh bouquet the night before, maybe even consider arranging a dried flower bouquet, that way you don't have to make it the night before and they will stay preserved.

Dried flowers are gorgeous and are a longer lasting alternative to freshly cut flowers. This will mean that you will not only have a keepsake of your big day but also a beautiful floral arangement.