From England, With Love

As some folks probably already know, our gal Carmen is off in England.  Although we miss her terribly, we are loving getting her photos and thoughts from her trip.  Because she’s Carmen she is noticing all kinds of amazing trends and gathering ideas like crazy – folks working with her when she gets back are going to be in for a serious treat!  Carmen has been digging through incredible old shops and haberdasheries, heading to the countryside to amazing antique spreads, and of course: touring gardens large and small.  Below are some photos of her adventures!

Kew Gardens, from a distance.

Kew Gardens, inside – what a building!!!

The oldest potted plant in the world – brought from South Africa in 1773!

Making friends with other plant lovers.  How ’bout those hanging melons?  Yes, please!

Posies in a vintage strainer!

More photos still to come.  We hope that all of you have been managing in the heat these days.  Summer tip: better to water fewer times and longer.  Really soak your plants down deep when you water, short waterings can train your plants to keep their roots toward the surface which will make dry periods even more stressful.  Don’t forget to water yourselves too!

- Love from the Nectar Crew

Kitchen Gardens

Howdy Nectar Friends!  How is July treating everyone so far?  Goodness knows we’ve had some serious weather to mark the change in calendar.  Everyone keeping cool?  Working those sprinklers?  Making some yummy cold drinks to stay hydrated?

As usual the Nectar Crew has just been so busy.  We were delighted to see our super succulent container in Southern Living this month, and even more excited to have done another shoot with them featuring some of our beloved kitchen gardens.  We do lots of things here at Nectar that get us all a-twitter; you know, talking fast, waving our hands around, talking on top of each other.  But kitchen gardens hold a special place in Carmen’s heart.  It’s a place where we connect with people who are just as passionate about plants and food as we are.  It’s a place where we spend some time passing on what we know about how to grow things, where we get to know you as you tell us what you hope to be able to walk out the door and pick for the supper table.  It’s a place where we hear a lot of wonderful stories about your families – a grandfather who grew the sweetest tomatoes you’ve ever had, an aunt who grew and made the tastiest Dilly Beans in the south, a grandmother whose peppers made her relish the talk of the town.  We love those stories, as many of us here at Nectar inherited our love of things that grow from our elders.  Growing food is a way to reconnect with our past, through family recipes and heirloom seeds and the simple act of weeding a lettuce bed just like your grandparents once did.

So stay tuned for our spread in Southern Living where we talk about this more.  And in the meantime – what questions do you have about starting or caring for a kitchen garden?  What’s growing in yours?  Is there anything out there that you just can’t get to grow for you?  In my garden we are picking beets and cabbages and carrots and lettuce.  And I have the hardest time growing spinach!

More With Color!

Hello Nectar Friends, and happy summer!  Hoping this finds each and every one of you healthy, happy, and enjoying your garden to its fullest.  Team Nectar has been keeping busy – weddings, events, plantings, you name it.  As we cruise into an incredibly busy time of year we are just so grateful that we have such a stellar crew of folks to work with – we could not wish for a more cheerful, hardworking, fun group of people!  And on this note, we recently were so thrilled to decorate for a positively stunning wedding in Columbus.  We love weddings of all sizes, but every once in a while it’s just so fun to really let our imagination run, and this wedding was absolutely that opportunity.

As we mentioned last week, we are seeing a lot of brides incorporate colorblocking into their weddings, and this is one wedding we had in mind.  We are also seeing an inclination to classic glass shapes, which you will also see here.  And lastly, I have to say that Carmen is simply one of the most creative minds out there when it comes to looking up.  Seriously, girl could turn a barn roof into the most stunning landscape you’ve ever seen.  We’ll get a peek at this too.

This gorgeous couple chose yellow, white, and gray for their colors, which we just loved.  Since gray isn’t your typical flower color we got to be extra creative in using materials that would supply that part of the palette – glass, water, metal, and fabric.

Here you can see one of the chandeliers we constructed with large metal frames and tear drop vases with candles and yellow orchids.  Our aforementioned amazing crew made over 1,000 glass drops to make a 8 floral chandeliers.

Carmen is putting the finishing touches on one of the chandeliers – fabric and florals.  Once the main lights were cut these installations were just stunning.

We hope to share more photos of this wedding with you as they arrive!

Colorblock

Happy Last Days of May!  Can you guys believe that it’s almost June?!??!

While we have been busy doing installations and containers and photo shoots, we have also been super busy with one of our favorite part of the Nectar experience: weddings!  We are just about to split with excitement over several really exceptional marriages coming up.  We will be sharing photos and tips of those as we can.  Until then: we are just loving the colorblock trend we’ve been seeing this season.  You might have noticed this trend showing up in some of your favorite clothing lines last fall, but it wasn’t until this spring that we saw couples integrating this eye catching style into their weddings.  Below are a few inspiration photos, more to come!

 

What do you think?  Are you in or out on this trend?  Next up we’ll look at invitations, decorations, and food within this theme!

Until then: happy gardening!  We hope all your flowers are blooming!

Source One, Source Two, Source Three, Source Four

Bouquet Fever

Hello, hello, hello!  How is everyone out there?  How are those gardens growing?  Does everyone have their lettuces planted?  How ’bout their tomatoes?  And how are the container gardens faring?  We want to hear all about it, tell us here or on Facebook, we love to talk shop!  My garden is kicking down some delicious greens, some baby beets, and some delicious green garlic!

We have got one heck of a busy summer lined up – plantings and weddings and more plantings and a boxwood garden and then even a little UK trip for our gal Carmen.  We all know that touring UK gardens is on every gardener’s bucket list.  Can’t wait for the photos from that voyage!

Source (photo #2)

We will be sharing photos and tips from all of our plantings this summer, but for the very moment we thought we’d get excited about weddings!  We love-love-love weddings.  It’s a chance for us to be super creative; creative with our flower choices, creative with what we put flowers in, creative with lights and candles and things that hang.  We know that for some of you starting with a color palette can be helpful, but sometimes we find brides and grooms that just want to rock and roll with the full spectrum of nature’s beauty.  Today we’ve selected several of our most favorite WILD bouquets – you can see more on our Pinterest page here.

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Which bouquet is your favorite?  We’d love to see your inspiration boards if you are planning a wedding!  And happy gardening out there!!!

A Drink to Celebrate the Week!

Happy Friday, Nectar Friends.  We hope this week has gone swimmingly for you, and that many of you have been enjoying planting and caring for your Garden Market plants.  We would LOVE to see photos of your plants – post ‘em to our Facebook page and we’ll love you forever!  And of course you can post any care questions to the blog or one Facebook, we’ll get right back to you with tips and tricks.

This week and next have been busy installation weeks for us – we’re sprucing up containers and landscapes for commercial and residential colors.  As you all know we have been l-o-v-i-n-g Guara this year (pictured above) – this is just such a generous, lovely perennial, we can’t get enough of it.  And you know we love our lantanas (Sunrise Rose pictured below) and supertunias.  These gals will bloom like crazy for you all summer long.

Lastly, we have really been enjoying playing around with stevia these days.  You know we work some long and hot days this time of year so we’re always on the lookout for refreshing beverages.  Stevia is not only a beautiful soft-green plant to have in your garden,just a pinch of a leaf will sweeten your tea or lemonade or other special drink with zero calories added (stevia is 300 times sweeter than sugar so you don’t need much).  Here’s a delicious and refreshing recipe for a sparking lime-mint drink – let us know if you tinker around with it!

Sparkling Lime Quencher
1/3 cup lime juice
1/2 cup seltzer
5 mint leaves
3 stevia leaves
1/2 cup crushed ice

1. Muddle the mint and stevia in a metal shaker until oils are released (ie, smash them until leaves are well bruised). 2. Add the lime juice and stir. 3. Add seltzer and stir. 4. Taste for sweetness – muddle in more stevia if needed.  4. Once its sweet enough, add ice and drink immediately.

Stevia leaves…

Happy Weekends out there!

Thank You Thank You Thank You!!!

Oh my goodness, friends, you absolutely knocked our socks off last week.  Really: no socks around here, and there might not be for some time.  You came from far and wide, with friends, with family, with room in your trunks and backseats for our lovingly chosen flowers and vegetables.  You let us kiss your babies and hug your mothers and talk to you about every garden spot under the sun.  We had almost 2000 visitors and we had to restock that huge tent every! night! of! the! sale!

Cutest greeters in town, right?

We loved every minute of it, and we owe it all to you!  We hope you had as much fun as we did, and we cannot wait to hear from you over the summer about how your plants are doing and how your fruit preserving and salsa making and drink concocting goes.  We will want to see some photos, so get those cameras ready!

Carmen likes to get them gardening YOUNG!

As everyone knows, this party took a huge team of people to pull off, and we are so grateful to all of our partners – The Museum of Arts and Sciences, Youmans Chevrolet, Sorella, The Bo Henry Band, Fountain of Juice, Preserving Pros, Goaroundtown Middle Georgia, Dynes Media, Two Friends Events, Jenny Evelyn Photography, Feathered Nest, DKH Entertainment, Macon Tent Rental, our community service helpers and volunteers, and of course the hard working Nectar Crew themselves!

Have a wonderful week, and we’ll be back soon with more wedding, container gardening, veggie growing, and plant care tips!

Pickling okra! Babies! Good times...

Love,

The Nectar Team

Salsa guru!