Helen Sawden’s award-winning wedding flowers are coveted for their eye-catching designs and beauty, but once the “I dos” have been said, the happy couple have been toasted and the last guest has left the party, very often they have to be thrown away.
Not anymore. Now, most Sunday mornings between April and November, a rotation of twenty-five volunteers from The Garden Club of Bermuda, led by Floral Friends founder Beth Miller, let themselves into Sawden’s studio, take the wedding arrangements apart and rearrange them into as many as thirty smaller flower arrangements, which are then distributed to twelve different care homes throughout the island.
Miller was inspired to create Floral Friends in 2023 after the coronation of King Charles III. The coronation flowers were donated to UK-based organisation Floral Angels, who do the same thing as Floral Friends, just on a much larger scale. “[The king] is all about sustainability and community, and so I had heard about Floral Angels and thought, ‘We should be doing something like that,’” explains Miller. Sawden was “elated” at the idea.
“A lot of my brides are overseas, so they fly back on the Monday,” she says. “I don’t have enough time because I’m a small team to repackage them and send them out, so I always just tried my best to give them to people or say to people come and get them, but a lot of them would go to waste.” The couples love that others will get to appreciate their beautiful wedding flowers. “They are always so happy and grateful for the ladies who are doing it,” continues Sawden. “To know that they are going to a good cause afterwards really warms people’s hearts.”
Even though they are giving up precious weekend time, the volunteers love what they do, and one of the reasons is the quality of the flowers they get to arrange. “It’s fun because we get to work with these beautiful peonies and hydrangeas and things that you don’t have growing in your garden and are expensive to buy,” says Miller, whose favourite flowers so far have been coral-coloured peonies from South America. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen peonies that big before,” she exclaims. “They’re called Coral Charm,” Sawden explains. “They start off as a really dark colour and as time goes on they lose their colour. By the time they lose their petals they’re completely white. They are a very interesting flower.” Other wedding flowers they work with regularly include roses, orchids and anthuriums, all of which are considered a luxury and if someone were to walk into a shop to buy the type of arrangements Floral Friends delivers to the care homes, they would cost around $100 to $150 each. “They are big sums of money that are being recycled,” she adds.
Once arranged, the flowers are delivered by either Miller or her co-chair, Dominie Doig, and other volunteers will pick up the vases once the flowers have lived their lives and bring them back to Miller to use all over again. The people who work in the island’s care homes are busy, so often the arrangements are just dropped off, but sometimes, Miller gets to enjoy the residents’ reactions. “Flowers make everyone smile,” she says. “This past week, at Westmeath, their faces just lit up and they asked what kind of flowers they were.”
In total, between April and November 2025, Floral Friends delivered over 480 arrangements.
“We call it going to another party,” laughs Sawden, since they are continuing to be enjoyed long after the wedding celebrations are over!
