Sustainable Wedding Mechanics
Sustainable floristry has been the backbone of my business since the start. As soon as I realized that the primary means to building a profitable flower farm in my location was going to be through providing floral design work, I knew I needed to find a way to help my commitment to healthy flowers lead into a commitment to healthy design work, too.
To me, this has meant sustainable floral mechanics (absolutely NO floral foam), a rental program for vessels (we do not purchase new vessels for each event), and a takedown service so that all re-claimable materials can be re-used and all compostable materials go into composting here at our farm.
I’m typically able to walk away from an event with a handful of trash. And even that little bit bothers me. I’ve learned a lot of my sustainable floristry practice from designers like Susan Mcleary (Passionflower Sue) and from floral industry innovators, like Nathan at Floral Fabrications who developed a business around welding structures and armatures for florists. And I also never used foam to start, so I never felt like I was giving anything up. Floral foam is a relatively new invention (in the history of floral design). It’s just a blip. There is a much greater and longer history regarding how things have can be done upon which we can draw.
Most of my designs involve chicken wire and/or hidden water vessels and all of them include a knowledge of how the plants will perform in the situation I’m putting them into.
The easiest and least stressful thing that you can do when designing event floral work is to implement non-wilting materials. This solves the hydration issue from the start. I always explain to my clients that the flowers we put into an arbor that is going to be in full sun/wind/rain/and sometimes snow, without water, for hours at a time simply can not be the same dainty little things that we use to top off centerpieces that are always in water and safely hanging out in the A/C of a venue’s dining room all day. It isn’t apples to apples.
And I also explain to them that I’m not going to buy in tropical things. We work with what we can grow here and this is how our designs look natural and in-step with the season. If someone wants orchids, for example, they need to go find a different florist.
I’ve felt a little limited by the non-wilting plants that I’m able to grow in our short season here, but that limitation also keeps me exploring and testing and tying new things.
For non-wilting greenery:
Boxwood
Christmas fern
Cress - pennycress, persian cress
Eucalyptus
Evergreens (cedar, spruce, pine, etc.)
Forsythia
Lilac greens
Lily greens (before bloom)
Safflower
Snowberry (Coralberry)
Pieris Japonica
For Non-wilting flowers:
Allium
Baby’s Breath
Chryanthemums
Delphinium
Dianthus (carnations)
Flowering Cabbage
German Statice
Globe Thistle
Hydrangea (once they’ve started to dry on the plants)
Larkspur
Lilies
Lisianthus
Marigolds
Roselilies
Roses
Sea Holly
Sedum
Statice
Floral Spray designs:
Most of our outdoor arbor design work is done with tubes of chicken wire wrapped around a brick or two of Agrawool, if needed. If we have a good amount of wilt-free greenery, I’ll skip the Agrawool all togther and just anchor the greenery into the chicken wire once it has been mounted on site. The chicken wire is either tied on to the arbor frame with twine or a re-useable zip tie. Regular zip ties can be used, too, but they create single use plastic waste.
We slip in all of the non-wilting flowers and then add any flowers that are more wilt-prone at the end and we either make sure they are sunk into the Agrawool or that they have a water tube.
We return the next day to reclaim all of the installation work. We break everything down and pack at back away or compost it.
Larger Ceremony Installations:
Larger ceremony installations are made on an armature. I have one “asymmetrical arch” arbor that I had a local welder make for me. It allows me to hide water buckets in them. I wrap the frame with chicken wire and tuck in all my greenery and flowers.
I have a larger arbor kit from Floral Fabrications that can be made into all different kinds of pillars and arches. It is designed to hold special narrow floral buckets and it comes with heavy duty base plates. This was a high-ticket item. But it has made a HUGE difference in our design work. We can quickly set it up and re-configure it. It’s sturdy and can’t be blown over. A really fantastic tool. I’m happy to lease it out to people working in my area. Nathan also has a lighter weight model now.
Cost of Floral Fabrications kit: 2,000 £ (UK) shipping via UPS (not included)
2.6m Round Top FF Modular Arch Kit 1 800.00£
3.3m Gothic Top FF Modular Arch Kit 1 800.00£
2.6m Circular Arch parts 1 400.00£