Local flowers and foliage are a perfect way to have a beautifully coordinated wedding, whilst being more sustainable and environmentally friendly at the same time.
Sustainable weddings are a hot topic, and rightly so. The wedding industry produces a huge amount of waste, from single-use items to confetti that never quite breaks down and glitter that is actually just microplastics being thrown in the air – all of it is bad for the environment and can be quite expensive for couples wanting to keep their wedding budget under control.
One of the areas with the most amount of waste and impact on the environment, in the wedding industry is in flowers. Many cut flowers sold in Australia are imported and those that aren’t, still travel many kilometres from the point of growth to get to your venue.
Typically, flowers are cut and conditioned, often wrapped in plastic, before being transported to market. From here they are purchased by florists, transported to their studios and/or to your wedding venue and constructed into your required arrangement or installed in your wedding space.
Your flowers and foliage are by now several days, if not a week old by your wedding day. This means that by the end of the wedding, your flowers have done a lot of kilometres and are probably just about at the end of their life and need to be thrown out. That means lots of waste. The same is true even if you are trying to save costs and buying your own flowers.
So, is there an alternative?
Here at The Secret Garden, we are proud to offer a more sustainable solution to the brides and grooms who use the property for their wedding.
Whether you’re keen to incorporate local flowers as part of your design or simply want to save on your carbon footprint and floral costs, The Secret Garden offers you the run of the property to gather specifically grown cut flowers or any foliage you may need.
We are happy to work with a florist or stylist of your choice or with friends and family to help you create unique floral designs for your wedding day.
At a wedding in mid-October, one couple (Emma and Ben 20/10/18), took their sustainability challenge to its limits wanting all their florals to came from our garden or to be foraged locally.
They had a sympathetic florist, Kate from Two Wild Hands, who created incredible wedding florals within the couple’s brief.
They foraged along local roads for large branches of foliage for their ceiling installations, the wreath was clad in variegated ivy from the garden and all table arrangements were of flowers also from the garden. The bouquets and boutonnieres were just delightful with all the flowers, except for a couple of flannel flowers, being picked from The Secret Garden.
By going with this approach and having a florist willing to take on the challenge, they certainly ended up with wild, romantic and unique florals that added greatly to the images and memories of their wedding day.
Whilst Emma and Ben took the sustainable approach to their wedding florals to its extremes, many of our brides’ just source simple wedding ceremony styling elements from The Secret Garden.
Whether it is a few flowers and foliage to decorate the arch, silver dollar gum to line the aisle, petals for tossing or to decorate the ceremony area, we offer a range of ways for you to incorporate locally sourced, sustainable florals into your wedding day.
We also offer a composting service, so your florals do not end up in landfill.
If you’re interested in creating truly sustainable wedding day flowers, we would love to help you.
Send us an enquiry and we can give you an idea of what will be available around your special day.
We would love to work with you to help you reduce your carbon footprint on your wedding day.
Photographer: Thomas Stewart
Florals and Styling: Two Wild Hands