Years ago, I was a greenhouse grower for a couple who also ran a floral shop.  Aside from the chaotic flow from holiday center pieces and romantic bouquets to  Mother’s Day (the flower holiday of the year), they had the constant flow of birthdays, anniversaries, and funerals.  I found out soon enough that no floral job ground things to a halt like a wedding.  All other work suffered, morale was tenuous at best, and the amount of overtime clocked in was staggering.  Even the greenhouse staff would get roped into making deliveries to ensure the flow of highly perishable flowers and greens to their destinations.

So, the idea of working as part of wedding preparations makes my shoulders tense up.

I got a call from a client that we have enjoyed working for since 2005.  Their neighbors across the street were getting married in a few months and wanted the garden to look nice as the whole shebang was happening there.  The couple was young, very modern, and had enough of the details worked out that talking about the concept for the garden was a piece of cake.

I proposed that instead of dumping a bunch of money on throw-away floral stuffs, we could stage the wedding with plants that would be reused in their garden installation.  I’m not going to claim we had 100% success with the concept.  We had to integrate a long-term plant palette with a palette of blooming plants that may not be so long-term.  Luckily, the couple had little preoccupation with the exact shade of pink or coral.  We were able to plan out most of the compositions with three to five types of plants and tie them together with a few ground covers.

Repeatedly disturbing the roots of plants is contraindicated to ease in transplant and acclimation.  To avoid this, we popped the plants out of their less-than-aesthetically- pleasing plastic pots and put them in peat pots.  The peat pots worked well with a mulch camouflage and made redistributing plants into their post-nuptial layout a cinch.  We did have a few hiccups with the drip irrigation wetting through the pots.  We spot-watered by hand and that revived all but select few little ones.  May they rest in peace.

I cannot claim that this idea of reusing plants was my great eureka! moment.  People have been planting their Christmas trees after the New Year for generations.  From Get-well plants, to pots of Easter lilies, it seems unconscionable to through away a living plant when one has a bare spot of earth outside their kitchen door.