Shangri-La Hotel Orchids and Backyard Bouquets....

The first Shangri-La Hotel in North America is on Alberni Street in Vancouver B.C..... It being a bit out of our price range, we were staying a few blocks away at the Listel on Robson...but we wandered through the hotel lobby and outdoor public spaces. All is elegant and minimalistic, textural and atmospheric, like this swirly steel sculpture, grove of timber bamboo and outdoor fireplace outside the Ki Modern Japanese restaurant & bar at the hotel.

And the orchids in the lobby were as classy as the chandeliers...oversized, slim glass cyclinders holding purple, chartreuse and white cymbidiums, some on cut stalks, others just blossoms floating in water. A few mossy branches grounded the vases in nature...

When I got home to Langley later that afternoon, my first stop was the garden to see what was in bloom to pick for a friend's party, and to take in to the yoga studio. I was so happy to find the hellebores and euphorbia still going strong, plenty of tiny narcissus in bloom....

I couldn't help but compare my little bouquets with the still fresh memory of the orchids....and while it's a bit like comparing the proverbial apples and oranges....The roses of winter (hellebores) are as appealing as the orchids, if not nearly as showy. The masses of orchids  had the advantage of stop-you-in-your tracks gorgeousness, a whiff of the tropics, and such elegance, while the homegrown bouquets are free (relatively...), quick, easy, organic, fragrant (the narcissus) and weren't sprayed or shipped long distances.

We may well think that our flower choices are all about the visuals, that we choose one flower over another based on color, shape, size...But really, aren't most flowers beautiful and heart warming?  As with so many other things, our bouquet choices are every bit as much about sensibilites and ethos as they are about aesthetics.

Orchids always look like money....the hellebores look like the simple flowers they are, made valuable by the fact they bloom in winter when not much else is flowering...

 

 

Comments

[Ruth]

Beautiful, Val (yours!). I'm still having trouble getting hellebores to last more than a day. I clip and burn the stems, and plunge into water, but still find them limp and drooping after a day or two. Any more tips?

[valerie Easton]

Hi Ruth,
I've quit with the burning of the stems - always necessary for poppies, and good with euphorbia...but I've found that just splitting the hellebore stems up a couple of inches and flaring them out like a skirt helps...it also depends, like with hydrangeas, how mature the flower is. Flowers that have been open for awhile hold up much better cut than buds or just-opening ones. That seems counter intuitive, I know, but seems to be true....
Good luck -
Val

[Chris]

Which is exactly why I have never owned an orchid...not that I'm poor..ha ha..just that I much prefer simple, homegrown flowers and your arrangement looks so much better than the almost, artificial look of the orchids!
Hellebore flowers also look beautiful floating in a bowl of water!

[Karen]

I think your home grown flowers are beautiful. There is something special about flowers that you nurture yourself, rather than buy, that makes them all the more beautiful and enjoyable. xx