Sustainable Wedding Practices

Our hand-dyed vintage ribbon made with natural plant dyes from a local source.

This year at Foraged Florals we are replacing ribbon with hand dyed vintage cotton. The dye comes from plant materials grown in Nova Scotia by VibrantAcres.ca. 

When you examine ribbon, it comes on either a plastic or cardboard spool, wrapped in single use plastic and most likely shipped from China. The materials are unknown. 

I tried to get a friend travelling from India to bring back naturally dyed silk. She became ill and returned early so not a solid sustainability plan. 

In my collection of things (that I can’t part with) is a large supply of vintage cotton, a book of my mother’s called Country Colours: A Guide to Natural Dyeing in Nova Scotia by Carolyn Lock. There’s a reference in the book where raw materials were collected in my home community of New Ross. Most cherished of all are the memories of collecting British Soldier lichen, a labour intensive activity, with my mother. I’m sure I was just happy to be in the woods. 

We build sustainability into every aspect of our flower farm and wedding venue. In Nova Scotia, when our winters are under the cover of snow, it creates an opportunity to explore all aspects of our business and to look for ways to design out waste. 

We took the Sustainable Floristry Network’s challenge to explore all our practices: how we grow our flowers, how we source our vessels, how we create the mechanics. 

When we deesign out waste we contribute to a circular economy--“a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated” from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. 

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Susan prepares flowers in wedding venue.

Our on-site wedding venue, the Bower, removes transport and allows us to reuse both the armatures and, more importantly, the sphagnum moss used in the larger designs. An on-site venue also allows us to more respectively strike the event and reuse, compost and recycle all the elements.

We already have a ‘use and return’ program for cherished vintage vases, like the milk glass and our handmade pottery. 

We reuse vases in our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscriptions. We collect three vases at the beginning of the season from each subscriber, when we deliver we pick up the previous week’s vase and leave a completed arrangement in a sanitized vase. 

We grow our flowers with the lowest carbon footprint methods, I.e. outdoors without a fossil fuel powered greenhouse. We use hoop tunnels, compost all our plant materials, we leave hedgerows for animals, we source local seeds, and heritage seeds when possible, as well as save seeds and do plant cuttings. 

We really felt the ribbon had the biggest opportunity for us to improve our carbon footprint as it primarily travels from China and we can’t know the factory conditions it is prepared in. What we can do is remove it from our offering. 

These are the steps I follow to dye vintage cotton into eco-friendly wedding ribbon:

1. Tear the vintage cotton into 2 inch wide strips.
2. Weigh and bundle the strips. 
3. Soak the bundles in water, a term called scouring. 
4. Once I know the weight of the fibre, WOF, I make all the bundles the same weight. 
5. Once I know the weight, I am able to determine the amount of mordant to use. The mordant I use is aluminum acetate from a Canadian supplier, Maiwa. 
6. I put the natural plant material that creates the dye on to steep, ensuring it doesn’t boil. I often leave this overnight, without heat. 
7. Strain out the plant material. 
8. Add the mordant to the dye bath. 
9. Place on the stove over a medium to high height, until bubbles form around the outside. At this point, lower the heat to a simmer for at least 15 minutes. Or turn it off and leave overnight. 
10. Rinse until the water runs clear. 
11. Hang the cotton strips to dry. 
12. Once dry, iron each strip. Roll on a paper towel roll cut to size or on saved spools. 
13. Store and wait for a design applicationor a would be nature loving wedding person to hand select with love. 

As a studio florist, who grows, cuts and conditions blooms, having plant dyed ribbon is one more way to have natural harmony.