English Country Garden Weddings: How To Make Them Bloom, Your Way
Image by Victoria Baker Weddings
English Country Garden Weddings: How To Make Them Bloom, Your Way
English country garden weddings
If you’re dreaming of an English country garden wedding, you’re probably imagining making a champagne toast on the lush lawn, the scent of lavender in the air, and the gentle hum of buzzing bees and the chatter of your loved ones. Rich in colour and vividly lively, this vision transports you to the exact ambience you want to create on your wedding day.
This guide is about making your English country garden wedding bloom your way, showing you how we can create the vision in your head through considered use of flowers to ensure it’s packed with your personality. I love this style of wedding flowers, and you’re about to find out it’s surprisingly diverse in nature…
Image Lauren Braithwait Photography
Considering Your Venue For Your English Country Garden Wedding
Designing wedding flowers in any style begins with careful consideration of your venue; the backdrop to it all, the hostess with the mostess for your ultimate garden party. I want to start by saying that just because you’re looking for English country garden wedding flowers, you don’t have to be getting married in a garden. There’s a whole section on how we can successfully bring this style indoors a little later on.
If you are planning to get married outside, take note of what the gardens are like normally. For example, are they walled gardens filled with rose bushes and hydrangeas, manicured with box hedges and topiaries, or oriental style with lots of grasses?
Make sure you consider what your wedding venue’s gardens are like at the specific time of year you’re getting married, and if you can’t visit during that period you can ask the venue to send you photos. This helps you get a feel for how it will really look.
Utilising what is already around at your venue is the first puzzle piece in the design of your English country garden wedding flowers, ensuring they feel like an extension of the natural surroundings.
Read more about my signature style of wedding florals: the ‘just grown here’ natural look.
Image by Eyes to Pixels
Invoking A Memory Of A Real Garden
Many couples that come to me seeking English country garden wedding flowers do so because, either consciously or subconsciously, they have a sentimental connection to or memory of a specific garden from their life. When I uncover this, it provides the perfect starting point for your design. My wedding flower designs are always rooted in the sentimental, and I love finding out the root of your love of this particular style.
This is all about finding out what ‘country garden’ means to you - did you love playing in your local woodland as a child, or enjoy spending time with your Nana in her shrub-filled garden like I did? Personally, I take great inspiration from my Nana’s garden. She was a keen gardener and the place was filled with beautiful David Austin roses, shrubbery and tall trees, bulbs bursting out in the spring - a very traditional garden.
Find out how I connect your wedding flowers with sentimental moments in your life.
Image by Emmy Lou photography
Different Styles of Country Garden Wedding Flowers
‘Country garden’ can mean so many different things and you can really put your own touch on it. Part of my process is to find out what’s important to you, and blend your connections with the style you’re looking for.
For example, Emily and Luke’s garden style wedding took place in a marquee on their home farm estate. They wanted to blend the quintessential English garden with a regal atmosphere, almost like a floral palace. There were already beautiful garden flowers in the surroundings, so we built on that and designed their wedding florals with big urns, lots of foliage and lots of romantic texture. We used lots of seasonal and scented flowers like peonies, ranunculus, stocks, hydrangeas and fragrant garden roses, really thinking about how Emily and Luke would feel (and what they would smell!) when they walked through the florals at the entrance of their marquee and into their garden wonderland.
On the other hand, Jess and Michael’s wedding at White Syke Fields offered country garden with a Mediterranean twist in an industrial barn…yes, really! We blended the bountiful English garden style with some nods to Michael’s Italian heritage, bringing terracotta roses together with yellow and apricot tones to marry up with their venue.
Images by Victoria Baker Weddings
You can choose from many different styles of garden for your wedding flowers, including;
Oriental: using grasses, rockeries and carefully chosen vessels
Mediterranean: making use of blue and white pots, adding fruits
British summer time: foliage and greenery, bountiful florals organised in clusters, use of plants and wicker baskets
Woodland: lots of foliage, rocks and logs, mosses
Image by Emma Ryan Photography
How To Have An English Country Garden Wedding Inside
If you’re getting married indoors but still want to create an English country garden wedding feel, the most important thing is to consider the journey your guests will go on. Landscapers and professional gardeners always design spaces that take people on a tour, entering different areas and telling a story through the journey. We will do the same thing for your wedding inside your venue.
We’ll consider which spaces in your venue will be used for which parts of the day, and can make each area feel distinct and guide your guests through the flow of your wedding using strategically designed florals. Playing with your florals can create cosy, snug breakout spaces or beautifully decorated large open rooms, segmenting an area or drawing attention to one element or another.
This wedding at Thicket Priory is a perfect example of how your florals can physically guide your guests through your venue, showing them where to walk, inviting them through doorways or down stairs, and connecting each part of your wedding day seamlessly together.
When bringing English country garden into your venue, the more florals you have, the better to deliver the feeling of bringing the outside in. Read more of my advice on how your wedding venue influences the design and style of your flowers here.
Image by Hannah Brook Photography
Top Tips & Takeaways For English Country Garden Wedding Flowers
Think about what a garden style wedding means to you. Is it rooted in a love of a specific garden from your life, or a connection to nature?
What is your wedding venue like, and how does it look at the time of year you’ll be getting married? Give this information to your florist
Consider your choice of florist carefully - English country garden wedding flowers lend themselves more to florists who work in a more natural, organic and abundant style vs someone who prefers a more structured and dense style
Don’t shy away from plants and foliage if recommended by your florist - it helps your garden flowers blend with their natural surroundings
Lean into what’s in season at the time of year of your wedding - working with seasonal blooms will make your garden florals feel more natural and authentic. You can find my latest seasonal style guide for Spring wedding flowers here.
Contact me to begin your country garden wedding floral journey here.
Images by Laura Calderwood Photography
