wedding flowers for summer

by patty
(port byron, ny)

im planning an august wedding and would like to grow the flowers myself. im looking for lillies that i can have mid august and how to grow them. im planning for 2010 and want to start this year, if possible, so i can have them established befor i need them. any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. thankyou.

Doug says that he gets this request regularly. And I never suggest you actually do this yourself. The reason is that you can't guarantee your blooms will actually grow and bloom on the dates you want. Even the pros can't always hit their production dates - depends on sunshine levels, heat levels etc etc. For example, you want to plant the bulbs this fall but what happens in squirrels eat the bulbs? It happens.

So for me to tell you that you can hit this date or that date is not possible. And this is particularly true for beginning gardeners. Understand I'm not trying to be hard to get along with - I've just been there and done that. I won't even try to do flowers for my own kids weddings.

Frankly, while it seems like a really good idea from this far out -when the actual day comes around, you (as the bride) will have a ton of other stuff to do - so you won't want to be messing about in the garden stressing over a few flowers.

And we won't even get into the Mother of the Bride - unless your mom is a lot more relaxed than other moms I've seen, you don't want her stressing out over flowers either. (trust me on that) :-)

My best advice. Find a good florist. Order the flowers for a party not a wedding (funny how the prices always go up when it's for a wedding) and have somebody else do it for you.

You won't thank me now - but you will thank me then.