Wildflower Wedding Flowers

In the same way that there's no point in trying to make a small room look larger by paining it a light colour, there's no point in trying to compete with a massive empty space by stuffing it with flowers.  A massive empty space is a massive empty space.  However, an intimate ceremony happening inside a massive empty space can be framed carefully with flowers - though I still say don't fight with the space, don't compete with it.  Make lovely flowers to frame the ceremony and let the space be what it is.  

And so it is with the Radic Pavillion in the Piet Oudolf garden at Hauser and Wirth just outside Bruton in somerset.  The Radic Pavillion is like a giant, empty dinosoar egg at the top of the garden, a huge, hollowed out space with nothing in it but rows of chairs for your wedding ceremony, and maybe a table if you ask for one.  The view faces through trees and over hedges towards the little Somerset town of Bruton, and the sun sets in the view, as wedding ceremonies always happen there towards the end of the day (the garden being open to the public until 4pm.) 

This is not a space which lends itself to a Cabbages and Roses look of lush roses and foliage.  The Oudolf garden, as you walk up through it to the Pavillion, is planted in stunning, jarring shafts of hot colours; oranges, purples, silvers, and wild shapes: thistles, grasses, daisies.  After your ceremony in the Radic Pavillion, you have dinner in the Roth Bar and Grill, a space with a post-industrial feel dressed with neon lights, leather and steel.  

Luckily we have our flower farm just a few miles away from sunny Bruton and Somerset's Hauser and Wirth, and we grow masses of wild flowers, so for any event in the Radic Pavillion we recomend framing the space where the event will take place with flowers, rather than trying to fill the whole pavillion.  Framing the view, framing the couple, making a carpet of flowers which reflect the gorgeous colours of the Oudolf garden outside.  So here we've made floral foam free arrangements with buckets topped with cushions of chicken wire so that the wild flower meadow we've made in them isn't too dense.  After the ceremony the buckets are taken back down to the Roth Bar where they dress the bar and the window sill for the reception.  Then we made posies which dressed the long, narrow tables at the Roth after making a magic circle of flowers in the Radic Pavillion, framing the wedding ceremony happening there.

The mix of flowers in this end of June wedding included: ammi majus, sweet peas, roses for the posies, pot marigold, geums, dock seed heads, giant scabious, field scabious, devil's bit scabious, verbena bonariensis, geums, achillia, astrantia, candytuft, cardoon leaves, and more... all grown, cut, conditioned and arranged here at Common Farm Flowers and delivered to Hauser and Wirth Somerset after the public have left, just in time for the wedding.  

By the way, if you are looking for a wedding venue in Somerset, do ring lovely Jules at the Roth Bar - they don't do hundreds of weddings a year at Hauser and Wirth, just a few select events.  You can stay at the stylish Durslade Farmhouse on site, and sometimes people walk down into Bruton for a church wedding at St Mary's, or they like a more home-made ceremony for which the Radic Pavillion is perfect.  Guests can stay at lots of great local places like At the Chapel, the Oak House and Number 21 in Bruton, and Jules, Steve and the team put on a great dinner in the dining room of the Roth Bar.  Go and have a look, and say I sent you.