For our wedding day it felt fitting to go with a hydrangea flower theme. They remind me of long summer days and rural New Zealand to a tee.
In an annual summer display, along the fencelines of most country lanes in the Waikato, you’ll see their gorgeous display of blues, purples and pinks.
There are many pretty varieties of hydrangea although the coloured petals are due to the pH levels in the soil than the plant itself. White hydrangeas won’t change colour but for the coloured variety, the more alkaline the soil, the pinker the flowers – likewise the more acidity, the bluer the flowers.
Hydrangeas are hardy plants. They love a hard prune and not afraid of the Waikato frosts. We have several plants ourselves on the property but as I couldn’t guarantee the quality or quantity, I enlisted the help of Bloom Room, a local florist in Te Awamutu. Iona hand picked the stems for me from a friend’s house. How very cool is that!
So with bucketfuls of blue sitting in my bathtub, I was in hydrangea heaven. Here’s how my simple flora expression overflowed into the garden:
The hanging flower cans were simple and quick to create (although I had prepared them a while earlier): empty tins, PVA glue, material offcuts from my beeswax wrap making, ribbon and string.
A well frequented garden feature was a bug station. Stocked with sunscreen and mosquito repellent, the ‘self serve’ approach was handy to the activities and much appreciated in the summer heat.
While I had picked blue and purple pansies and agapanthus and lovingly dried them in my dehydrator, it was lovely to have fresh flowers to sprinkle down ‘the aisle’ aka the lawn, and offer them for ceremonious flower throwing. For the latter I rolled up 1940’s newspapers into cones and sat them in an old 1920’s tea tin. Oh the things we find under floorboards and hoard with glee for a moment such as this.
See more of Our Rural Backyard Wedding x
