Thinman - practice and experience with your flowers will make it faster! I have new helpers this year and I've told them they have to make 20 bouquets! I usually can do lots more, but I also do vases and the "bigger/more expensive" bouquets. We also strip the foliage as much as we quickly can when harvesting. We pick for about 3 hours, go in for dinner, and then head back out to "arrange" - last week it was after 2:00 am before everything was put away and ready for market! Ugh...we were all toooooo slow!!!! (I work fulltime too, so can't pick in the mornings...have to after work!) We use our "short stuff" in jars (old canning jars, pickle jars, etc.) that we sell for $5 - just quickly bunched and plopped in the jar! I've told my helpers to think of a recipe (which of course changes with the flowers over the seaons). 3-5 stems greenery or filler (lemon balm, solidaster, ladies mantle, statice), 3-7 main events, 5-7 accent flowers (salvia, crocosmia, etc.) We usually end up with a predominant color of pinks/purples/whites early in the seaon, add reds, then move to the fall colors! We are also trying to keep the flowers on tables at a height that keeps you from bending over to get them out of the buckets. I'm also not mixing different flowers in the same bucket (unless I have to for storage later). Good luck, you'll get better! Wendy

I like the suggestion of kale but sometimes getting it to be at the right stage at the right time for a wedding can be tricky in a home garden. For an autumn wedding, you'd have to start it from seed in summer, transplant into the garden in autumn, and keep it sprayed to keep the cabbage loopers (I've been hand-picking them off cole crops all week longs) or imported cabbage worms from leaving holes in the leaves. You also could grow it in containers. I wouldn't try to raise kale plants in anything smaller than a gallon container, with one plant per container. You could put several of them in a really large container though, or grow a row in your garden to harvest and use as needed. Ornamental kale comes in green (kale's green tends to be a dark bluish-green), white, pink, red, and purple, although the red is not a bright red---it is more of a subdued wine red or almost burgundy. Most ornamental kale plants are two tone---like green and purple, green and white, green and pink, etc. Growing kale from seed is ridiculously easy---you grow it the same way you grow cabbage, broccoli, etc. Grasshoppers prefer edible garden kale to all other kale crops, at least in my garden, but rarely touch the ornamental kale. Maybe they don't like the frilly leaves. The ornamental kale plants in my garden were planted into the ground in early October from transplants started from seed in August, and they're about 1/2 grown now. They might be larger but early in the fall they had to fight a lot of hot, dry weather and grasshoppers. I have seed for pink, red and white varities for spring. For fall, I am growing white and purple ones. There's a special kind of kale grown for cut flowers. The variety of the cut flower kale with which I'm familiar is 'Crane' and it comes in several colors. It is a hybrid which means you would get fairly uniform plants with it, which would be important if raising them for a wedding. I'll link one example of crane below. Harris Seeds has a good selection of ornamental kale varieties as does Pinetree Garden Seeds. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Kale Crane at Harris Seed

Hi Linda, Might I offer a hearty congratulations on your upcomming wedding! I have some suggestions on species, but am not at familiar with florists in NSW, unfortunately. Perhapse contact your local ASGAP people on this link: http://www.austplants-nsw.org.au/index.htm Species (all should be available with a Google Image Search): Keep in mind the availability of these depend very much on the time of year you're getting hitched (sp. = various species, lots of different colours in most cases). Banksia coccinea (stunning dep red/scarlet colour, smaller inflorescence compared to most Banskia sp.) Goodia sp. Kennedia sp. Darwinia sp. Arthropodium strictum (Chocolate Lily) Hakea sp. Indigofera australis Callistemon (of course!) Grevillea (of course!) Eucalyptus caesia Eucalyptus macrocarpa (pretty hard to come by, very limited season, but brilliant flower) Corymbia ficifolia (they finished flowering about a month ago, so won't be available until the start of next year) Acacia sp. (hundreds, something should be in flower no matter what time of year) Tetratheca sp. Correa sp. Xerochrysum sp. (paper daisies) Eremophilla sp. Anigozanthos sp. (kangaroo paws) Scaevola aemula Dampiera sp. Doryanthes excelsa (Gymea Lily, huge flower, but would make a great centre piece for the boquet or table) Macropidia (more kangaroo paws) Haemodorum (kanga paws, again) Telopea sp. Good luck, Linda! I hope all goes well on the day. Don't forget the, "I do," bit! Regards, Jim

Don't forget the Dahlias. They make a great addition to your already beautiful bouquets. Also I know you mentioned snap dragons and Larkspur, those are great additions as they add height to your bouquets. I also use large spikes off of my 3 Butterfly Bushes that I have growing in the yard. They don't always last long but they work. A good cut flower that few people know of are petunias. They last forever and sometimes I cut long trailing branches and let them hang down the vase for a beautiful effect. The double petunias are also wonderful as they look like carnations (another good choice). Dianthus are also great.