It’s a new year and now that the festive period is put to bed for another year, I have been drawing my attention to my 2025 growing season. What I am going to grow, and more importantly in which colours.
I have found myself looking through a vast collection of previously grown seed packets as well as a few packets I purchased in the autumn last year. Annoyingly I seem to have lost a few new packets including my Misty Lavender Larkspur.
I am looking through my stock to see what I need to order, and this year I have decided that I really need to use up or throw away my current seed collection as its viability is reducing owing to the fact, I have been storing it for too long. This does mean that I will likely have reduced germination rates this year, but I have so many opened seed packets that I am confident something will grow. I then intend to start with a fresh collection of seed in the autumn.
The result of this decision is that I do not intend to order seed unless I don’t have any, for example my orange up sunflowers, and those of you that follow me know I accidently purchased annual lupin seed , so need to order the perennial one this time. The other excuse I will be making is that I need a particular colour for and event.
And as usual I will be growing way too many things, although I am not trying so many new varieties this year, but am giving ‘Omphalodes Linifolia’ a go, so let me know if you have grown this and what you think of it as a cut flower.
So often I see bouquet recipes based on varieties of flowers, for me I much prefer to compile my bouquets with colour at the forefront mind. Not forgetting the important aspect of design shapes and textures are also an important consideration.
We are all very used to making a bouquet that includes the Basics, green, filler, focal, spire, and air, but as I found when I embarked on this journey if the ratios and colours of these elements are not considered the end result may not be in balance or harmony.
Many surveys have not surprisingly revealed that bright and bold flower colours are the most sought after in retail bouquets, where as wedding flowers often follow fashion and trends.
When considering which flowers to grow, I will consider which colours they come in and how that will work in my bouquets. For those of you that know my work you will know that I favour adjacent colour schemes, those colours being next to each other on the colour wheel, such as oranges and yellows. Sometimes you can just use many different shades of the same or similar colours.
I also love designing using complimentary colours, those opposite each other on the colour wheel. This autumn I planted purple and yellow tulips together and this is an example of a complimentary palette.
One design style that I am yet to get the hang of is a polychromatic palette, this is a balance of many colours, and honestly is probably what I should be growing for retail.
When I chose Purple Ranunculus to plant in the autumn, I had no idea what the 2025 trends may be, but I did think purple would compliment yellow daffodils, so we will have to wait and see if they both flower at the same time.
I now have an idea of what I think the 2025 trend of flower colours could potentially be.
By looking at the pictures, inquiring brides have been sending me, and I love it, so I really want to make sure my garden offers a mix of colours through the season, that can allow me to create bouquets based on this on trend palette of pinks and oranges and yes that reliable apricot colour which just seems to go with everything, and never seems to go out of fashion.
And the great news about this seemingly on trend palette is that pinks and oranges are readily available as a colours in so many easy to grow cut flower varieties.
Such as Antirrhinum (Snapdragons ), Stock, Poppies, Zinnias, Cosmos, Dahlias, Asters, which are all available in shades or both.
Honestly there are so many flowers that can work in this brief, and luckily for me so many of my opened packets will work if they do actually germinate.
With Apricot still seeming to dominate as the most popular colour for flowers, I will definitely be making sure I have the odd bit of pale lavender in my cut flower patch as for me it is my favourite complimentary colour palette of all time. So with that I better continue my hunt for that missing packet of Misty Lavender Larkspur.
What is your favourite colour palette, and is there a colour you really do not like?
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