Reduce wedding costs and make your special day even more memorable by growing your own wedding flowers. Several easy-to-grow annual flowers such as zinnias, cosmos, celosia, and amaranthus can be showy enough for a formal affair, and are perfect for the beginner gardener. And even if you don't have the space or time to grow enough flowers for all the centerpieces, altar arrangements, and bouquets, you can keep things simpler by growing flowers for the just the bridal bouquet and boutonniere to give those pieces more meaning.
“I think a lot of people look at [growing your own wedding flowers] as a way to offset cost. That’s probably people’s first motivator if they’re not necessarily a flower person,” says Kat Willrett of Willrett Flower Company in Illinois. “But once they get a little deeper into it, it can be something that’s very special, very meaningful, and really feels like you’re doing something unique for your wedding.”'
Here are some of the best tips for growing your own wedding flowers, according to experts.
- Kat Willrett, co-owner, Willrett Flower Company
- Laura Mewborn, owner and farmer florist, Feast & Flora Farms
- Beth Syphers, Crowley House Flower Farm & Studio, author of Furrow and Flour
Tips for Growing Your Own Wedding Flowers
1. Start planning early.
If you want to grow your own blooms for your wedding, start planning at least a year out from your special day. If you’re planning a late-spring wedding, plant spring bulbs in the fall or early winter to ensure they bloom before your wedding. If you’re having a fall wedding, start planting the previous fall or early spring. If you’re having a summer wedding, plant bulbs and perennials the fall before.
2. Choose a space.
Dedicate a patch of your yard specifically to your wedding flowers so that everything is in the same place. You don’t need a lot of room; you can even plant your wedding flowers in containers and place them on your deck.
“Everybody assumes you need an acre of land to grow enough flowers to use for your own wedding, and that’s not the case for cut flowers,” says Willrett. “With cut flowers, you’re looking for long stem length. So the closer you plant them together, the more they compete for sunlight, and they grow taller and have longer stems, which you need for your designs. You can do a lot in a small little corner of your yard.”
3. Select easy-to-grow flowers.
If you are a beginner gardener, pick flowers that are easy to grow, such as annuals that tend to grow quickly and bloom profusely.According to Laura Mewborn, owner and farmer florist of Feast & Flora Farms, bulbs are also some of the easiest plants to grow.
“Things like narcissus and daffodils require so little upkeep,” says Mewborn. “Honestly, I can’t even think of anything we do for our daffodils beyond weeding and cleaning them up at the end of the season, and there are a ton of different varieties.”
Whatever you choose to grow, make sure you can provide the growing conditions the plants require when it comes to sun and soil. And for perennials and other plants that will need to overwinter, make sure they are suited to your Hardiness Zone.
4. Use succession planting.
Instead of having only a couple of plants for each type of flower that you want, plant a handful of the same plants at different times so your garden is consistently blooming and producing flowers. If you implement succession planting, you’ll have at least some perfect blooms for the week of your wedding.
“You don’t just want the flowers to look good in the garden, you want them to look good when you harvest them. So that means you want a perfect flower head, the foliage somewhat less so,” says Mewborn. “But in the summer, there are a lot of pests and diseases that can ruin the look of a flower. So if you’re [succession planting], then you’re giving yourself more of an opportunity to get those perfect flowers.”
5. Ask for help.
If you aren't already a gardener (and even if you are), tackling wedding flowers on your own can be time-consuming and daunting, so it’s a good idea to ask your friends and family for help. Maybe your mother-in-law-to-be already has peonies and flowering shrubs that you could forage for your wedding. Or perhaps you have a bridesmaid who would like to help with harvesting and arranging the flowers.
You can even enlist people to help you grow the flowers in your own garden. “I definitely see mothers—usually mothers of the bride or groom—being the ones to take that task on because they are the longer gardeners and better suited to that role,” says Mewborn.
6. Prepare for pests.
One of the biggest issues that arises while gardening is pests that eat your plants and ruin your blooms. Some flowers like dahlias are pest magnets, so you may need to take measures to stop insects from chewing on the petals. Spraying insecticidal soap or applying neem oil (both of which are organic pesticides) at the first sign of pests can help protect your flowers and foliage. Willrett also recommends “staying on top of harvesting as soon as things are blooming.”
As for deer or rabbits, tall fencing around the garden bed is the best option for stopping these creatures from nibbling on your wedding flowers. Repellents can also help, though they need to be reapplied frequently.
7. Time your flower harvest carefully.
If your wedding is over the weekend, you should cut the blooms on Monday or Tuesday with sterile garden shears or clippers. Keep the flowers overnight in a cool area of your home, changing the water daily until Wednesday or Thursday and starting your arrangements and bouquets on Thursday or Friday to prepare for a Saturday and Sunday wedding.
Cut the flowers from the plants early in the morning. If they are too open, they will wilt faster and won’t last through the weekend. They should be only close to opening when you initially cut them.
“You want to have at least one day of [the flowers] just conditioning and in water," says Beth Syphers of Crowley House Flower Farm and author of Furrow and Flour. "We cut first thing in the morning when it’s cool. If you’re cutting late in the night or in the evening in hot temperatures, they’re going to wilt, but they might bounce back. That said, I’d put some sort of flower food in the water and let them really rehydrate and cut your blooms at the right stage."
Slow Flowers, an online database created by Debra Prinzing, has an exhaustive list of all the local flower farms in the U.S. and is a great resource for sourcing local flowers.
8. Have a backup plan.
From the start, have a backup plan in case your flowers are not blooming or get damaged as your wedding date approaches. One solution could be to find out which local flower farms have the blooms you are looking for. If you need to supplement your own homegrown flowers, contact local farms to see if they can help on your special day. Otherwise, check with neighbors or family members to see if you could forage from their yards in a pinch to supplement your wedding flowers.
