Plant Talk

Whidbey Island Artist's Extraordinary Cutting Garden - And Her Advice On What To Grow For Bouquets

  I never (well, hardly ever) buy a flower from April through October...It's so easy to grow your own fragrant bouquets this time of year. But there are so many possibilities, and most of us don't have time or space to grow every kind of flower we love. So I turned to Whidbey Island artist and gardener Cheryl Kamera for advice, for she tends a huge, beautiful cutting garden (above), orchestrated by color.

Cheryl's advice is impressively hard-earned - she plants, tends, cuts, arranges from her garden. Here's she's winnowed out for Plant Talk readers the flowers she's learned perform best in the ground and in the vase....(like the 'Stargazer' lily, above...)

"My favorite flowers are easy to grow and last a long time in a vase.  Most are bulbs or bulb type plants (as opposed to annuals or regular herbaceous perennials). I think they make the best cut flowers - but I could also be influenced by growing up on a bulb farm."

For Early Summer:

Peony - easy to grow; very long lived; bloom reliably; don't need frequent dividing. Dramatic in a vase, foliage is useful after the blooms are over.

Iris - I grow lots of kinds of iris but my favorite for cutting is Iris 'Gerald Darby' - looks great with peonies (& blooms at same time). 'Gerald Darby' takes some space but looks good even when not in bloom - will bloom insun and some shade. For range of available colors, I like Dutch iris.

Summer through Fall:


Lilies - Asiatics, martagons, trumpets, Orienpet and Orientals - all kinds for a long season of bloom. Easy to grow and will increase in time to a clump but still will not take a lot of space.  Lilies are dramatic in large bouquets - or you can use one stem with a hosta leaf for a simple small bouquet. I take the stamens off all lily flowers when I cut them. 

Dahlia - Dahlias take some space and need to be staked but are worth it because they give armloads of flowers from July until November - and because they come in so many different colors and flower shapes. I seek out varieties with long stems for cutting.  Dahlia catalogues usually list those that are good for cutting.  I deadhead religiously to keep them blooming and looking good.

Alstroemeria - the long stemmed type - takes more space and needs to be divided periodically to keep it blooming well. Blooms over a very long period; colors are lovely. (Val's note: beware for those of you with smaller gardens like mine. Alstroemeria loves to spread....the more beautiful, subtle colored ones are less aggressive - the old fashioned orange ones are invaders...)

Crocosmia (left) also need dividing every few years.  But there are crocosmia varieties that bloom from July through October.  Are wonderful in the vase (and garden) with dahlias.

Aster - easy to grow, good filler in bouquets, good with dahlias, types available that bloom from midsummer to frost.

And I can't forget these favorites:

Campanula persicifolia (self sows, early); Phlox paniculata (easy to grow, nice color range, fragrant); the
hairy sunflower Helianthus hirsuta (long blooming, great with dahlias - nicer than Lemon Queen - I LOVE this flower, pictured left).

Spiky flowers - I like to use spiky flowers in the vase as a foil to the bolder flowers - salivas (my favorite for cut flowers are 'Indigo Spires' and 'Mystic Spires' because of extremely long bloom period & long stems); Astilbe (tall varieties, early); Cimicifuga (Actaea) simplex (no special cultivar, very fragrant, late bloomer); Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Firetail' (long bloomer, lots of flowers, but sadly, foliage of all persicarias wilts in a vase). 

Favorite foliage plant - hostas - bold enough to work well in a vase with all the showy flowers on my list."

 

The Birds Are Back - Including the Singing Wilson's Warbler

They're baaaack! Wilson's Warblers. Thanks to Ellen Blackstone at BirdNote for letting me know these lively bright yellow birds aren't the Goldfinches I'd no doubt mistake them for. The sporty black cap of the male Wilson's Warbler is distinctive and hard to miss. And males are the first to return each spring from the tropics.

You may hear them -- but can you see them? With all their flitting about, foraging for insects in the trees, flicking their wings, and hopping around, Wilson's Warblers can be hard to spot despite their vivid color. But you can identify them from their song...listen here, courtesy of the Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds.

Learn more about Wilson's Warblers' a story on BirdNote.org.  And remember that buying shade grown coffee can help warblers and other song birds...

Thanks to Gregg Thompson for these beautiful photos....

Bamboo and Peonies - Twin Treasures of Chinese Horticulture Celebrated in This Weekend's Festival at the Seattle Chinese Garden

The Seattle Bamboo Festival and Seattle Luoyang Peony Festival join forces to bring you the ancient, leafy beauty of bamboo and some of the most striking flowers on the planet...peonies and more peonies at their peak. Admission is free. Celebrate these twin treasures of Chinese horticulture this weekend (May 18-19, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.) at the Seattle Chinese Garden.

You'll not only be able to check out progress on the newest pavilion at the garden, but view the first blossoms on more than 200 tree peonies donated to our Chinese garden by the city of Luoyang, considered the peony capitol of China. We're lucky to have more than 19 different varieties of Luoyang peonies, one of the most diverse collections of on the West Coast.

There's be a raffle for peonies, plant displays, a bamboo sale, artist demonstrations, as well as horticultural
talks and tips. Learn how to divide and prune bamboo. Riz Reyes of Landwave Gardens will give an illustrated talk on Sunday on the culture of peonies.   Check out the Seattle Chinese garden website for a complete schedule of all the talks, demonstrations, and festivities...

The Seattle Chinese Garden is located on the South Seattle Community College campus in West Seattle at 6000 16th Avenue S.W. Parking is free, admission to the festival is free. Questions? Call the garden office at 206-934-5219, or email info@seattlechinesegarden.org

 

The Art of Spring Nesting - Bushtits use Spider Webs, Lichen, Grass and Feathers

Springtime is deeply, profoundly layered, from that smell of fresh grass to showy tulips blooming, and the sweet haze of leaves opening on deciduous trees. And up in those trees, there's another layer of activity, as busy little Bushtits weave their sock-like nests.

Ellen Blackstone of BirdNote tells me that you can tell it's spring when pairs of Bushtits break from the flock to get to work on nest-building. And it's no small task, for they must forage for a variety of materials.  The tiny birds begin by attaching spider webs to a forked branch until there's enough bulk to create a kind of platform. Now, one of the Bushtits sits on the springy platform and stretches it downward, eventually expanding the nest into a foot-long pendulous sack. The birds add grass for strength and lichen for camouflage and line the whole thing with feathers and downy plant material. Truly, a miniature, aerial down sleeping bag to enclose and protect their eggs and babies.

By mid-summer, when all the baby birds have fledged, the bush tits will again be traveling in sociable flocks of 20 or more again.

Thanks to Mike Hamilton for these enchanting photos... you can tell the male bush tit by his dark eyes; the female's eyes are yellow.

Such skill and determination in a bird that weighs a fraction of an ounce - these clever nest builders are equal in weight to about four paperclips...

This architectural prowess is no doubt going on in your garden right now, hidden away in the branches of trees newly leafed out...

It looks as if this femail bushtit is building her sock-like nest where two rose canes intersect...thorny but probably a safe spot.

You can easily see the female's yellow eye as she peeks out of her newly woven nest. What an accomplishment...

Is there room for the babies in there?? I think you can see bits of the spider web here that is the first material used in nest construction...

Exquisite, Ephemeral Peonies Bloom Just In Time for Mother's Day

Happy Mothers Day - what's more celebratory than a peony in full and glorious flower? Their brief bloom span makes these flowers so precious....just like a Mother.

Thanks to Nancy Heckler for these photos of peonies flowering in her Indianola garden...Above is a Paeonia rockii seedling, and below is a fragrant seedling cross from the classic 'Joseph Rock' peony.

The Best (Last Minute) Mother's Day Gift - Farm-Fresh Bouquets from the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market

Starting just this week, Nicole Cordier and her assistants at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market
are fashioning fabulous, fresh bouquets to sell at local grocery stores. You can pick up a bounteously big $20 Farmer's Bouquet or a somewhat smaller Dining Table Bouquet for $12 at Puget Consumer Co-ops, Central Market, and Town and Country Markets.

Nicole has at her fingertips such an array of flowers, leaves, branches, buds, pods, grasses, and - did I say every kind of flower you can grow around here? Up until this week, we had to wait and see what the grocery stores or florists selected at SWGM and then buy from them....or the public is invited in to the historic Georgetown building housing the flower farmer's co-op every Friday. But now....you can buy the freshest flowers chosen and arranged with great artistry...pick up a bunch for Mom and for yourself...SWGM will be shipping to the markets listed above every week through the summer.

Here's one of the bouquets you'll find this week, composed of ranunculus, peony tulips, roses, and dicentra foliage...all locally grown!

Heronswood Resurrected - First Garden Open and Plant Sale on May 18

 
It's been too many years since eager gardeners thronged Heronswood in hopes of finding the rare, unusual, beautiful, and thrilling - but it'll happen again next weekend as the resurrected Heronswood Garden throws open its gates for its first Garden Open and Plant Sale.

And you won't be disappointed. Regional nurseries, like Naylor Creek, Windcliff, Dragonfly Farms, The Desert Northwest and Colvos Creek Nursery will be on hand with a wide variety of exciting plants, including Far Reaches Farm's Cardiocrinum 'Big & Pink', and the gorgeous Iris laevigata colchesterensis pictured on the poster.    

You'll be able to tour the garden and check out the progress being made on its historic renovation. Dan Hinkley, Kelly Dodson and Sue Milliken (co-proprietors of Far Reaches Farm) will give free talks: (Seating is limited to first-come,first-serve.)  

-At 11:30 a.m., Dan will talk about Heronswood’s early days and the work being done today to restore the garden in a talk called “Heronswood: Past, Present, and Future.” At  2:30 p.m. Dan will give a talk on “Foliage First.”

- At 1 p.m.  Kelly Dodson and Sue Milliken from Far Reaches Farm will speak on “Plants Outside the Mainstream.”

Admission to the plant sale and lectures is free of charge. Tickets to tour the garden will be available for $10 with all proceeds going towards the restoration and maintenance of the garden. Entrance for garden tours will close at 4 p.m.

 The Heronswood Garden Open & Plant Sale is being hosted by the Port Gamble S’Klallam Foundation, which—along with a Steering Committee made up of plant enthusiasts, tribal leaders, and respected horticulturalists—has been charged with managing restoration and community outreach activities at Heronswood. The S’Klallam Singers will also perform throughout the day and local vendors will be set up to sell food to visitors and participants.

 

 

Plant Materials? Floral Designer? Really???

Do the word pairings of  "plant materials" and "floral design" irritate you as much as they irritate me?

I'm emboldened in my rant by the words of 89 year old Seattle landscape archited Richard Haag at a recent talk he gave to the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture at a conference in Austin Texas. “The term plant materials should be banished from our vocabulary. Plants are not materials. They are living organisms.”

Yes, exactly!! It always sounds so pretentious to me - or maybe ignorant - yet so many people refer to living, breathing, growing plants as "plant material' - as if they are one indistinguishable mass, inert as a couch or roll of wallpaper. And why use two words when one - plants - does a more precise and honest job?

Then there are those who refer to themselves as "floral designers". We're talking about people who arrange flowers, yes? Flowers are miracles of nature, the sex organs of plants, painted by the finest artists on the planet for centuries....how can we ever improve on them by "designing" with them?? 

There are true designers, who using nature as a muse, create something totally new and different, like Portland florist Francoise Weeks...see a story about her amazing work here. That's her pink flower purse, left: she also composes shoes, hats, and magical woodland creations out of vegetables, flowers, fruit, bark and a variety of botanicals she picks up at markets and clips from the garden.

But "bouquet maker" or even "flower arranger" although that sounds a little stiff, would better describe what most of us are up to.

What I love most about bringing flowers, leaves, bits and pieces in from the garden and plunking them into a vase is their individual shapes and colors, the sense of nature and wildness they bring with them. Don't you hate to see flowers arranged artifically, overstuffed, wired or  sticking up rigidly out of a frog in the bottom of the vase? I want them to tilt and bend and cross, just like they do in the garden. The last thing a bouquet needs is over-thinking, overworking...designing....let the flowers speak for themselves. Which, like this black-bee-centered delphinium, they do quite eloquently.

 

 

 

Ornamental or Edible? Rainbow Swiss Chard Blurs the Lines in this University Village Planting

I've never thought of Swiss chard as a spring ornamental, let alone one that can hold its own with tulips.  But the talented University Village gardeners know better...check out this gorgeous planting of tulips, rainbow Swiss chard, ferns, heather, and heuchera.  I'd say the chard steals the show...the long, narrow, raised bed is a striking medley of tall skinny tulips, fluffy ferns, glossy-stemmed chard, dark-leafed purple heuchera, and bristly heather, as satisfying texturally as it is in its color play.

We're right in front of J. Crew here, along the walkway to the Apple store...

The planting borders a lawn on one side and is raised above the sidewalk on the other...

And here's your chard close-up. Remember how Rosalind Creasy's "The Complete Book Edible Landscaping" seemed quite revolutionary when it came out in 1982, suggesting that food plants can be beautiful in the garden, especially when integrated with more traditional ornamental plants? Well, now we even see her ideas illustrated in commercial landscapes....

 

Bouquet-Making Party Inspires Guests To Get Out In the Garden and Cut

Three moms of students at Lakeside school used my bouquet-making book, "Petal & Twig" to raise money for their kids' school.The April 21st event was oversubscribed - love that they billed it as a "BYOC". Here's the listing in the Lakeside auction catalog:
 
Petal & Twig: A Morning of Simple & Creative Flower Arranging
Please join Master Gardener and Lakeside parent Kelli Curtis in her Kirkland garden. Kelli and her apprentices, fellow Lakeside parents Lora Mason and Karen Summerville, have been inspired by Seattle garden writer Valerie Easton, whose book 'Petal and Twig: Seasonal Bouquets with Blossoms, Branches, and Grasses from Your Garden' shows how to create simple flower arrangements from your garden. Each participant will receive a copy of Easton's book at the auction. At the event itself - rain or shine - you will be treated to brunch and some time in Kelli's garden to clip to your heart's content, then create a few flower arrangements with vases/containers from the hosts' stash or with those you bring yourself. BYOC! (Bring Your Own Clippers!)

At $75.00 per person, they ended up oversubscribed, with twelve attending rather than the original 8 people they'd envisioned. And despite a rainy April Sunday, I hear from Lora that people had great fun, starting with pansy-bedecked mimosas at brunch, then a tour of Kelli's garden, followed by clipping and arranging flowers.  
 
"We had a collection of about 40 vases procured from our school rummage sale and from our own stash. Some people brought their own. Kelli’s big teak table under an awning on her patio was a great work space. A couple of guests of  were very hesitant about cutting from the garden, lest they hurt the plant or ruin the beauty, but then they saw that small cuttings hardly made a difference outside, but when placed in a pretty vase mixed with some other things, made a wonderful  arrangement to bring indoors," wrote Lora.

Which is exactly the message of "Petal & Twig" - experiment, play around, be creative, enjoy the textures, and colors of leaves and flowers up close, and your garden probably could use a little pruning anyway!

Lora kindly sent me the photos of the event below....and ended her email with "We really enjoyed this community-building event, bringing together a group of people from our school to practice what you have written about in your wonderful book! Thank you for the inspiration!"

I'm inspired by how these women not only came up with an original and effective fund-raising idea, but used "Petal & Twig" as the basis for a creative morning in the garden with friends...

Starting out with inspiration and mimosas...

Let the cutting begin...

Sheer creativity...looks so fun to have so many leaves and flowers to choose from...I'm sure the women inspired each other as they worked...

I bet if you'd asked these women before the party, they would have said they didn't know how to arrange flowers...and look at these beautiful bouquets....I think and hope that this innovative fund-raiser created a dozen new fearless flower arrangers....