TARA & JAMES / PARO

For Tara and James’ second celebration, we travelled to Paro, Bhutan, with an unusual freedom: to arrive without a fixed design and let the season, the people and the place shape what we made.

On our first visit, we found tiny roses, single- and double-petal clematis, forget-me-nots and edible cymbidiums. These discoveries gave us a first understanding of the local plant life. What we would find on our return remained an open question.

Months later, their Buddhist blessing took place among towering Himalayan cypress. We drew several paths through the gathering of friends and family, giving guests different ways to approach the ceremony.

Rice-straw runners edged with fallen pine needles recalled harvest and threshing floors. Water primrose, marigold and amaranth brought the colours of a cleansing fire through the congregation. Tara followed her chosen path carrying a double-ended bouquet of magnolia fruit, as the monks’ throat-singing carried through the trees.

At dinner at Amankora’s Paro Lodge, the windows framed Mount Jomolhari, freshly dusted with the season’s first snow. We filled brass bowls with what a local plantswoman’s garden offered that morning: potato vine, lacinato kale, Himalayan mint and early persimmons. Together, they recorded what was growing in the valley that day.

Our guides, growers, hosts and their families helped us understand where we were and what was possible. Materials were gathered with permission, and contributions acknowledged and compensated. Their knowledge became part of the design.

We could only have made this work by being there. Looking, listening and meeting people gave us ideas we could not have arrived with, and the freedom Tara and James gave us meant we could follow them.