Plant Talk

Flame Bouquet - A Mix of Home-Grown and Store-Bought

Just a small bunch of deep amber, red throated calla lilies make all the difference. As painful as it is after a long season of gathering from the garden, it's time to break down and buy some flowers to perk up what's left out there in the garden. After the frost, rain and wind the pickings are skimpy. Here's a bouquet I made for a recent opening at Museo Gallery in Langley.

I bought five calla lilies at Metropolitan Market on the top of Queen Anne hill, which always has something tempting. Tulips were cheaper, but I just can't buy tulips yet....I'll save them to perk up bleak January. Don't you love how the calla's curl like seashells? At least their deep, autumnal colors look as if they might have been growing in the garden this late in the season....

I wanted the bouquet to look pure November, so added some leafless rose hips, coral bark maple leaves turned golden, purple hydrangea leaves, and the drama of fluffy chocolate mimosa foliage. A few Chinese lanterns dangle over the edge of the cylindrical raku vase for their hot orange autumn color as well as their appealing puffy shape.

Aren't those skinny dark mimosa twigs gorgeous against the round, red rose hips?  I picked it literally two days before the whole mimosa tree dropped every last leaf...

Homecoming - Settling Into the House with Flowers and Foliage

Every week when I arrive on Whidbey Island from Seattle - usually first thing on Thursday morning - I head out into the garden. I know I should put away the groceries, check the mail, unload the dishwasher....but I can never wait even a moment to see what's happened in the few days I've been gone. While it's frustrating and sometimes sad not to live with my garden full-time, this thrill of discovery, of returning, never dims...I come to the garden fresh every week.

Today I still found raspberries, which have grown small but very sweet as if they contain all of summer's concentrated sunshine, and a few 'Sungold' tomatoes still hanging on the vine. I'm surprised at the flowers; helenium, hydrangea, an abundance of nasturtiums, hardy fuchsia, Verbena bonariensis, a dahlia or two and agastache are still blooming despite the cold nights...I've brought along some bright orange puffs of Japanese lantern (Physalis alkekengi), bought in Seattle, to add to the mix.

I smooth the transition from condo to house with a ritual of picking flowers, foliage, pods, branches - whatever I can find. I bring them in, plunk them into a big jug of water to hydrate, then think about how I'll arrange them while I go about all the tasks of settling back into the little Whidbey house. Then I make a cup of tea, and arrange a few bouquets so that I feel like the house is inhabited....it's a comfort ritual, pure and simple and as effective as lighting a candle, reading a book in bed, or taking a hot bath...are these left over from childhood? Probably, which is why they are soothing...

Between a spray of coral bark maple leaves in a slim black vase on the kitchen windowsill and a trio of bouquets for the bookshelves, coffee table, and bedroom, I feel at home, and can, finally, concentrate on finishing up my column for the week...

 

 

A Mellow Hydrangea and Dahlia Bouquet

Japanese maples and smoke bushes may be turning to flame, but the rest of the garden is gently (or not so gently depending on wind, rain and cold) fading away. It was only after I picked these dahlias, 'Annabelle' hydrangeas, grass spikes and snake root, and pulled them together with a few cherry tomatoes to dangle down the side of the vase, that I realized how much the colors had mellowed from the hot autumn hues of a few weeks ago. These gentler colors seem to reflect the pearly light, soft mists and gray skies of mid-October.

The rich bordeau color of the wooden vase (lined with a glass so it won't leak), and the bright little orbs of 'Sungold' tomatoes, as well as the golden dahlias from my neighbor's garden (a trade for the last of my raspberries) warm up the white coneflowers, fragrant pale flower wands and dark foliage of Actea simplex 'Brunette' and the fading-to-green hydrangea heads. The spiky striped grass is a dwarf Miscanthus sinensus 'Zebrinus' from Joy Creek Nursery, and the burgundy leaves are from a lacecap hydrangea that's finished blooming..

All of a Sudden the Light Has Changed In the Garden, and So Has Our Eye for Color

I was so excited when these Helenium autumnale (a.k.a. sneezeweed) started blooming in July. I'd been craving their warm, rich colors for bouquets, and have used their golden, orange and chocolate tones in every arrangement I've made since.

Until this week, when the cooler September sunshine slanting weakly across the garden changed how all the colors looked. All of a sudden my eye changed too, and I wanted to work with more subtle flower colors; yellow, peach, lavender and faded creams.

An earthenware vase grounds this bouquet, which starts with a splay of rigid, striped zebra grass. Lemon yellow sunflowers are the boldest element, in contrast to the stick-like stems and tiny lavender flowers of Verbena bonariensis.

The fragrance  is richer than the colors; honeysuckle, the spicy-smelling foliage of agastache, and the sweet perfume of the fluffy white wands of Cimicifuga simplex 'Brunette'  are a headily sweet mix. The apricot crocosmia, peach Peruvian lilies, yellow stripes on the grass, creamy lacecap hydrangeas, and patterned, fancy-leafed geraniums warm up the look.

The Soggy January Garden Offers Up Bouquets from Casual to Elegant

Not much more than witch hazel is in bloom out there on these dark and soggy days, but it's surprising how much mileage you can get out of its curious little fragrant flowers and stiff branches. Really, witch hazel is better in a vase than in the ground, for out in the landscape the blossoms can almost disappear, and all you see is the gangly vase-shape of the shrub itself. Indoors, close up, the flowers are intriguing, with their spidery filaments and sweetly clean, astringent scent.

 While a modern metallic vase might seem an odd choice to hold such rustic looking branches, I like how  its slim, shiny sweep glams up the matte of the bark and dark flowers.  The metal's silver sheen shows off the copper color of the Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena' flowers. While these darker witch hazels aren't as cheery in the garden as the more common yellow-bloomers, up close their flower color is so unusual. The bottle is by Kirkland artist Deloss Webber.

In the kitchen, I've mixed sprigs of the same witch hazel (I only have room for a single one in my garden) with heart-shaped cyclamen leaves, pine, camellia leaves, and hellebore buds in a little white vase designed to hold a bunch of single stems. A Christmas gift from my friend Richard Hartlage, I can't wait to display tiny spring treasures like anemones, crocus and dwarf narcissus in this favorite new vase...but for now, it's pretty much witch hazel...

Everyday Bouquets

It's a blue, blue June and not only because the chilly, wet weather is getting us down. Gardens are blooming in sophisticated shades of blue and lavender. So even though delphinium, the obvious star of such a scheme, aren't quite open yet here in Langley, I decided to celebrate the colors of sea and sky with a bouquet. 

The vase was a problem. Who would have thought flowers as striking as lavender allium and midnight blue Japanese iris wouldn't hold up to a white vase? Nope, the chalky shade bled the life out of these richly colored flowers. I went through a trayful of vases before settling on a plump melon colored vessel made by glass artist David Levi. Doesn't anything that holds water qualify as a vase, after all?

The sleek, shiny citrus shaded glass in a slightly off-kilter shape somehow suits the long-stemmed allium globes, spiky Japanese iris and the baroque ruffles of the bearded iris. Supporting players are cobalt-colored hardy geranium 'Johnson's Blue' and a variety of silky clematis from tucked in around the base of the arrangement.

 

Everyday Bouquets

Lilacs are the sweetly scented abundance of spring in one hardy shrub. They mark the change of season; when the lilacs bloom we can be sure, as gardeners before us, that the daffodils are past, the trees have leafed out into a chartreuse haze, and perennials are up and unfurling their leaves.

What greater pleasure than to cut branches of white doubles, dark purples, pale lavender, bury your nose in their delicious scent, bring them indoors to put by your bed, on your desk, near to where you eat breakfast? They bloom so lavishly you can fill the house with lilac perfume; I fell in love with Langley because, like so many old towns, it's filled with big old lilac bushes.

Be sure and split the woody stem up a couple of inches so they drink water efficiently. You can stick a single branch into a narrow vase for a simple, austere look that shows off the overblown beauty of the flowers. My favorite bouquet is a big mass of lilacs, the colors jumbled together. You don't want to use a vase that's too fancy or one with an old-fashioned look, or you end up with a period piece of a bouquet. This simple, modern vase has a bulgy base to balance out the voluptuousness of the lilacs, and its matte, metallic surface doesn't detract from the absolute perfection of the flowers.

This Week's Bouquet

Finally, the first big bouquet cut from my own garden....well, the white lilacs are from the neighbor's garden, but that's only just across the fence, so hardly counts...From now through mid-October even a tiny garden like mine (a spare 2500 square feet) will yield up fragrant, sumptuous weekly bouquets if you treat every inch as a cutting garden.

I chose one of my favorite vases for this week's arrangement, a slim, matte-black vessel that shows off the purples, violets, chartreuse and pinks of early April.

The impetus for this bouquet was mislabeled tulips - I never meant to plant purple and white striped ones. So I picked the interlopers out of a mass of orange tulips, adding purple pasque flowers (Pulsatilla vulgaris), white and lavender lilacs, euphorbia, hot pink spikes of bergenia flowers, and the paler pink blooms and lacy foliage of bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis 'Gold Heart'). The lilacs add fragrance, the tulips and pasque flowers are large enough to ground the arrangement, and the euphorbia and bleeding heart's yellow foliage lighten the intensity of the darker colors.

 

 

Flowers, Chicks, Lambs...Happy Easter

Easter is one of my favorite holidays (even though I'm Buddhist if I'm anything at all)... but I love to celebrate spring and have fond memories of childhood Easters finding eggs in the long, wet grass. So I picked a big bouquet yesterday in the gale force winds on Whidbey Island, and here's an Easter bouquet for you:

 

The purple money plant (Lunaria annua) came from a nearby alley; its pretty purple flowers show up best if you strip off the droopy big leaves. The stem of the euphorbia needs to be cauterized with a flame before adding it to the bouquet so that its milky sap doesn't run into the fresh water. I split the stems of the hellebores, the not-quite-open lilacs, and the two kinds of viburnum. The spirea with the little orange leaves is 'Magic Carpet', and the sweetly pink bleeding heart is a bit of Easter nostalgia (also a contrast to the orange tulips).

These are the chicks, in a wire cage from Crate and Barrel (usually used to hold magazines on the coffee table), nestled in moss with my collection of little speckled eggs and plenty of dark chocolate ones from Fran's. 

 

Can you imagine anyone eating lamb for Easter after seeing these babies relaxing and smelling the breeze in Langley's pastures?....Happy Easter, Happy Spring...

 
 

On the Cusp of Spring

Despite last night's dash of frost and a month to go until the equinox, we must surely be teetering on the cusp of springtime. Today may be 60 degrees and sunny...but didn't it snow last March...or was it early April??? We're right at that delicious point where the weather can go either way. This moment is seasonal change boiled down to its essence, slapping us in the face with its unpredictability....

Our weather limbo is captured in these two new bouquets I made today.  The little arrangement is colorful springtime, the taller one silvery winter.
They both show off the benefits of scavenging....I picked up the magnolia branches with their furry buds when they were torn from a street tree in our Queen Anne neighborhood by an errant moving van, the transparent white pods of the money plant pods (Lunaria annua) were gathered growing wild along an alleyway here in Langley.

For the spring bouquet in the "carrot top" vase, I cut the twigs of purple-leafed flowering plum off a neighbor's tree that hangs over our Langley fence (fair game); the fragrant Daphne odora, crocus, tiny Tete-a-tete narcissus are from my garden.

When else could you create two arrangements so evocative of different seasons, on the same day? Only when we're on the cusp, with one muddy boot still mired in winter, our other boot feeling more firmly planted in springtime every day....