Get Close to Nature and Grow Your Own Wedding Bouquet

How to Grow Your Own Wedding Bouquet
There’s lots of things to think about when it comes to wedding planning; picking the perfect wedding ring, hiring an experienced photographer and choosing a cake that you both love. And then you have your bouquet to think about too. You want one that complements your colour scheme, your dress and looks beautiful in pictures.

For a truly unique wedding bouquet, why not grow your own? Here, Angelic Diamonds tell you how to grow and arrange your own bunch of flowers for your special day:

Deciding on the flower

Before you head out to the back garden to start planting, you need to decide which seeds you want to sow. Let’s take a look at the most popular:

Naturally, as the symbols of love and romance, roses are a popular wedding flower. With their large blooms, you only need a few of them to make a bouquet look full. The good thing about roses is that they are available in a range of colours, so you can match them to the colour scheme of your wedding.

Meanwhile, tulips can be grown in bright and vibrant shades such as magenta, red and purple. These flowers are at their best from mid-March to May, but are available all year round.The classic tulip is the Dutch tulip which you’ve probably seen at your local florists.

Carnations are another decorative flower that can bring texture and volume to your bridal bunch. Their ruffled flower is available in a range of colours, so you can choose your favourite. There are a range of carnations out there — large flowered carnations (likely to be the one that you’d go for), spray or mini carnations, and dwarf flowered carnations are just to name a few.

Sowing and growing

For added sentiment to your bridal bouquet, grow and nurture some of the flowers in your bouquet (it might save you a few pennies too!).

If you want the rose to be your focal flower, it’s best to purchase a plant that has already began to grow rather than a seed as this can take a lot longer to flower. A bare-root rose (one that is not in a container) is best planted in the late autumn and from late winter to early spring — before growth begins. If you purchase a containerised rose (bare-root roses placed in pots to prevent them drying out), you can plant this all year round as long as the ground is not frozen or very dry.

Tulips are grown from bulbs and should be planted in the autumn for a spring bloom. Bulbs are easy to grow, as they only require well-drained soil and sufficient sunlight. Remember to plant bulbs with its top facing upwards and at around two to three times their own depth for the best growth.

The carnation can be planted in flowerbeds, borders, rock gardens and pots. You can sow carnations January through to March and expect a flower from July to mid-October. Carnations need full sunlight — around 4-5 hours everyday.

Follow gardening advice, specific to your growing flower, from the Royal Horticultural Society to keep your plants looking their best.

Arranging your wedding bouquet

When your flowers have bloomed, you can pick your favourites and begin arranging.

It’s likely that you’ll have a few of your focal flowers (roses, tulips or carnations) accompanied by some filler and greenery. For a medium bouquet arrangement, you’ll need around 18-20 stems to create a really full bunch.

A good filler is hydrangea. This can add texture and volume to your bouquet and is likely to be available in your local florist. There are different varieties of this plant, so you can choose the colour that you think would look best. Also ask your florist for some complementing greenery — the darkness of the colour acts as a nice background to your colourful bunch.

If you choose to add roses to your bunch, don’t forget to de-thorn them. For all other flowers, make sure stem lengths are around the same size and use floral tape to secure them together. You can then cover the floral tape with a lovely ribbon to set off your bridal bouquet.

For a step-by-step guide on flower arranging, read The Telegraph’s guide here.

So, there we have it — how to grow and arrange your own wedding bouquet. If you’re having a 2021 winter wedding, it might be a little too late to grow some variations of flower from scratch but you could purchase some separate flowers from a florist and do the arranging yourself. It could save you some money and you can make it look exactly how you want it!