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

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!

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!

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

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!!!

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!

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!

Well folks, here we are: it’s Garden Market week, that is our big tent going up in the photo above!  We can pretty much keep you busy all week long if you’re game, that is for sure.  We’re handing out free tomato seedlings today (College Hill and Vineville locations of the Fountain of Juice), our Lunch and Learn with Jenks Farmer is on the 19th, as is our Rhythm and Bloom party that evening (remember, attendees of this event will take home some special party favors AND get to shop the Garden Market before anyone else).  And then of course the big sale takes place the 19th, 20th, and 21st.  We hope you’ll bring your friends, bring your family, bring your kids, and just have fun with us.  Talking to you about growing plants and making tasty things to eat and drink (preserved pears! char-grilled salsa!) with those same plants is the name of the game this year, we can’t wait!

Carmen doing an interview about container gardening!

In anticipation we are running two more contests this week for two more $100 gift certificates for the Market.  You can enter two ways – one, just leave a comment on this here blog post.  Tell us what you’re looking forward to seeing at the Garden Market!  You can enter the other contest by retweeting our tweets this week – follow us here.  Game on!

So as you all know we ran a wee contest last week for a $100 giveaway for the Garden Market on April 20, 21, 22nd.  Our handy random number generator chose…drumroll…Angela!  Congratulations and please leave a comment with your email so we can send you the details about collecting your winnings.  And to those who entered but did not win: take heart!  We are running a different contest this week for another $100 gift certificate.  To enter this contest please “share” the Nectar and Company Facebook updates on your personal Facebook page.  Every share will count as a contest entry – we’ll announce the winner next week – let the games begin!

In other Garden Market news, we’re thrilled to unveil the final concept shop for the Market.  We’re calling this one Grillin’ and Chillin’ because you know we Nectar folks love nothing more than good food and drink in a beautiful spot outside!  This will be another DIY how-to kind of shop where you will learn how to make char-grilled salsa, tasty veggies, and herb-infused mixed drinks.  Plants in this section will do nothing but stock your kitchen full of all the ingredients you need for these kinds of culinary creations and help you create a gorgeous atmosphere for entertaining.  For example the gorgeous containers shown below contain Better Boy Tomatoes, Rosemary, and Thyme, and Basil – yum!

We can’t wait to see you there, and don’t forget – share our Facebook posts for a chance to win $100 worth of free plants at the Market!

We are just hopping on here to remind everyone to enter our giveaway for a $100 gift certificate for the Garden Market.  See here for details on how to enter.  Also just a reminder that we will be giving away free lovingly grown tomato seedlings at two Fountain of Juice locations – the College Hill location and the Vineville location.  We’ll be there April 16th from 11-2 (or while supplies last) – come see us!

We have been thrilled to our tippy toes by all the terrific press the Garden Market has been getting – super big thanks to Macon Magazine, Green Profit, and Southern Living!

Lastly, shooting all those DIY videos for the Garden Market got us thinking about tools and supplies, so we’ve created a pinterest board dedicated to collecting all those essentials – including Carmen’s signature red boots, of course!  We’d love to know what you can’t do without in the garden – let us know in the comments section!