by Mags Riordan
Bumblebee Flower Farm
You’ve settled on your date and are making a conscious effort to be more thoughtful about the environmental impact of your wedding. The biggest decision will be your venue including your menu choices. Next step wedding flowers, which I’ll give a few tips on sourcing eco-friendly options.
It’s no secret the atrocious negative impact commercial flowers have on our health and the health of our planet from the herbicides, pesticides and fungicides used in their production. Many of them banned in developed countries but still used in developing countries like Brazil, Colombia and South Africa. Then there are the air miles in transporting them thousands of miles across the world. If you are using a florist, do ask them for Fairtrade flowers; at least these will be produced in a more caring environmental manner. Please choose your arrangements carefully and avoid single-use formaldehyde-filled floral foam – this product is leaching into our water-courses and contaminating our fish and the water we drink.
If you decide to use a farmer florist, in West Cork alone you have quite a few choices, from Ruth Fortune flowers in Glandore to Howehill Farm in Kilbrittan, who also supply certified edible flowers. If you go across the county you will find many more.
You have the power to exact change with your buying choices for the better of the local economy and health of our planet and thus ensuring a positive future.
Choose seasonal flowers; by that I mean flowers that grow naturally in a particular season.
Trends for 2020 and beyond are for more flowing unstructured designs; these are so much easier to create with naturally grown flowers than the straight ridged commercial stems. Naturally grown flowers and herbs will fill your venue with the most wonderful fragrance and leave a lasting memory with your guests.
Regift your flowers so someone else can go on and enjoy them. Donate to a local hospital or nursing home, flowers are uplifting and if they are organically grown there are added health and emotional benefits too – they will keep on giving!
Spring flowers include scented narcissus, hyacinth, tulips, anemones, ranunculus, calendula with Iris, sweet William, allium, gyp and antirrhinum and under cover.
Summer flowers are roses, campanula, foxgloves, dahlia, marigold, feverfew, lavatera, scabious, triteleia, sweet William and alstroemeria with an incredible variety of scented herbs as fillers or focal points in their own right.
Autumn flowers are roses, dahlia, asters, chrysanthemums, alstroemeria, sweet William, amaranth, gomphrena, antirrhinum, grasses and rudbeckias.
This is not an exhaustive list but give you an idea of the wealth of flowers to choose from and many of these varieties have a full range of colours to choose from.
We grow a couple of thousand dahlias in wonderful shapes, sizes and colours.
With a little thought and planning you can have the florals of your dreams and they ‘won’t have cost the earth’
Let’s all work together for a future we would like to live.
