Plant Talk

Petal & Twig in the Sunday Seattle Times - and a Party Invitation

I'm thanking my editors at Pacific Northwest mag for printing an excerpt of my new book in today's Seattle Times. Check it out here for a first look at photos and text from petal & twig and to learn about simple, unintimidating, easy and fun flower arranging from the garden in every season. Yes, even in January; see witch hazel 'Jelena' below, in full, fragrant bloom today in my Langley garden. 

The story includes an invitation to the launch party for the new book this coming Wed night Feb 1, a benefit for the Miller Library - hope to see you there....also, today's issue of Pacific has a sneak preview of the brand new 2012 Great Plant Pick choices....

 

A Few Flowers for a Bouquet as the Garden Fades Away

It takes awhile to pick a bouquet now it's October, for it means poking about in every corner of the garden to fill even a medium-sized vase. A flower here, a flowering grass there, to tuck into a square, green glass vase.

One of the last mophead hydrangea heads, a bronze Rudbeckia hirta 'Autumn Colors' and a bright golden, chocolate-centered R. hirta are the showy elements. These brazen flowers are fluffed out and blended with the leaves and flat seed heads of sea oats grass (Chasmanthium latifolium) and the stiff spikes of violet-flowered Verbena bonariensis. The colors, shape, and chocolate centers of the rudbeckias are echoed in the much smaller Helenium autumnale.....

 

 

Simple Evergreen New Year's Bouquet - an Antidote to Holiday Glitz

It's time for a simplicity break. Quiet winter beauty is so welcome after the rush and glitz of the holidays. Majestic magnolia leaves are a quintessential winter bouquet unto themselves, loosely arranged in a raku vase....This is Magnolia grandiflora 'Victoria' - a small evergreen tree which is perfectly hardy here despite its Southern, warm-weather good looks. The bud hints of the large, fragrant ivory flowers that'll open in summer. But for now,  the magnolia's glossy green leaves, in contrast to their furry golden-brown undersides (called indementum, and some species of magnolia are more blessed with this attribute than others) are understated perfection.

I love that you only need cut a few branches and you have a stunning arrangement that lasts for a couple of weeks, even in a warm room. The only other winter shrub or tree that I can think of that makes an arrangement all by itself is the strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo), with handsome bark, little white flowers, narrow evergreen leaves, and bumpy little red fruits (hence the common name) all happening at the same time in early winter.

If you can think of any other plants so well endowed in winter, please let me know...and I'll include them in the book I'm writing and photographing...."Petal and Twig: A Little Book of Bouquets. Fresh, Organic, Handmade From Your Garden" (working title & subtitle), due out next fall...

Everyday Bouquets - Winter Simplicity

Winter strips our gardens down to their bones, and now before I get around to Christmas decorating, I especially love the clean simplicity of branches and buds brought inside. This paring down of the garden, the bleakness of winter, is worth celebrating every bit as much as spring's verdancy. Especially before the onslaught of holiday excess, bare branches look elegant and restful.

Here are a few branches of deciduous magnolia displaying their soft, fuzzy buds already plump with the promise of spring. The tall, opaque vase holds the heavy branches securely...the painting is by Whidbey artist Marianne Brabanski and it's called "Walking The Dog" - there's a leash in the woman's hand....the oil hangs in the hallway where I leash up my dog every morning for her walk...

Holiday Centerpiece from the Garden

Pull on your warmest hat, gloves and boots, and use your garden as an excuse to get out in the sun and fresh air, even on this most frigid day. Brush the snow and ice off shrubs and trees and you'll find that with a bit of foraging and plenty of imagination, your garden will still yield up just what you need to grace your Thanksgiving table.

Seasonal foliage, pods, berries and branches look so much better to me than anything formal, stiff, store-bought and out-of-season. What could be more perfect than the remnants of summer from your own garden as a reminder of all we're thankful for? Bringing outdoors in is just the hit of nature we need this time of year, when we're indoors so much of the time....

It's a temptation to do generously-scaled, fluffy arrangements, mixing together the smorgasbord of textures out there, from the burgundy leaves of a chocolate mimosa to rose hips and autumn ferns, as in this big bunch clipped from my garden.

Better for the Thanksgiving table areseveral low bowls of berries and leaves to mix with candles down the center of the table.  The key is to repeat some materials for continuity, yet make each arrangement unique. This draws guests in to look closely....who needs flowers when you have such variety waiting to be clipped just outside your door?

Rose hips and viburnum berries, chartreuse 'Granny's Ringlets' dwarf conifer (Cryptomeria japonica 'Spiralis' ) epimedium, and silvery senecio. The dark notes are curly kale and glossy Hebe 'Amy'. The puff balls are the leftover seed heads from yellow ligularia flowers; all are loosely arranged in three Japanese bowls down the center of my favorite holiday table runner...

Happy Thanksgiving....here's your close-up...

Grasses Save the Bouquet

A burst of spiky green striped in pale gold, zebra grass is as pretty in the vase as it is in the garden. The pickins are getting slim out there as the rains set in, but ornamental grasses are looking their best this time of year. Count on their strong foliage and fluffy flowers to carry late season bouquets.

Miscanthus sinensis 'Little Zebra' is a dwarf version perfect for smaller gardens, because it tops out at 2-3 feet high. The foliage is stiff and fanlike, which is why it stands up so well to autumn rain and wind. But it also means that to avoid a rigid military effect, you need to mix this sternly upright grass with softer shaped flowers and foliage.

So I raided the vegetable garden for some frilly purple kale, and waded into the border to cut a big mauvey-blue mophead hydrangea head. The little coral bark maple (Acer palmatum 'Sango-kaku') is holding onto its filigreen golden leaves, so I cut a spray to fluff up the bunch a bit.

This simple bouquet works because each of the four ingredients is so different:  the grass is striped and spiky, the kale is dark and frilly, the hydrangea distinctly spherical, and the Japanese maple leaves, with their finer texture and windblown look,  lighten and brighten the composition.The handmade vase, by Whidbey artist Al Tennant, adds a swirl of color and yet another contrasting texture.

You can leave this bouquet to dry, and it'll last for more than a week. Just as the maple leaves are falling outside the window, they'll drift down indoors to pile up around the base of the vase. 

Artichoke Past its Prime

By the third week of October, most anything left standing in the garden is fair game for bouquets. I scavenged just before the rain set in, fighting my way past the spider webs to harvest these final flowers: hydrangea, Northern sea oats grass (Chasmanthium latifolium) with its flat, reptilian-like blooms, a re-bloom of grape colored penstemon, sneezeweed, and an artichoke so past its prime that it was topped with a fringe of purple-buzz cut.…..I’ve mostlly been away from the garden for weeks, traveling and then busy in the city. In my absence, the spiders took over, wrapping shrubs and perennials in their sticky, dew-drenched masterpieces.

Are spiders the sign of a healthy garden? If so, mine is doing great….the dahlias had a boost from a few days of warm weather, as did the sneezeweed….love the hot orange of 'Fortnett’s Furnace' dahlia, with yellow centers that inspired the choice of vase…The green tomatoes tell the story of a chilly summer or perhaps fall arriving a couple of weeks too soon (doesn’t it always?) and the purple grape leaves turned burning red play off the intense color of the dahlias….

 

Everyday Bouquets - Almost Over

Picking the last really big, fill-your-arms bouquet in autumn is a bittersweet pleasure. Still, it should probably be acknowledged as a seasonal marker, if not celebrated as joyously as the first big bouquet in spring. Although I still have sweet little raspberries, increasingly skimpy dahlias, heliotrope, a few last 'Westerland' roses, and nasturtiums that are actling like it's mid-summer, the garden is mostly winding down. 

I felt like I was stripping it clean as I gathered the last of the sunflowers, red and black hypericum berries (leaves stripped off so they’re spikes to stick in last among the flowers already in the vase), dahlias, sneezeweed, crocosmia. The big autumn flowers, like sunflowers with their heavy stems, need a heavy, wide bottomed vase like this two-toned pitcher.

The glossy hypericum berries in red and black spark the autumnal yellows, rusts and gold, but a few sprays of purple and watermelon-colored asters would be the perfect color contrast. As I put this bouquet together I resolved to somehow shoehorn in at least one hot pink 'Alma Poetschke' aster, and a plant or two of the long blooming, purple-blue Aster x frikartii 'Monch' to add to next year's final, bounteous bouquet.

 

 

Everyday Bouquets - Dahlia Now & Then

Only a week after a fat yellow and red ruffled dahlia anchored a summer bouquet, autumn has descended and that same dahlia looks very different in an autumnal arrangement. Instead of a sunny yellow pitcher, a ribbed wooden cyclinder of a vase (with a glass inside to hold water) in a dark bordeaux color emphasizes that even though October isn't here yet, the garden looks as though it is.

The hot orange single dahlia is 'Forncett Furnace', an old, vigorous variety that blooms like crazy and lasts well in bouquets. A couple of mophead hydrangea blossoms add globe shapes and their blue tint tucked in at the bottom to ground the bouquet. Achillea 'Terracotta' lightens the look with its paler color and finer texture; deep purple Sedum 'Black Jack' adds shadowy, flat flowerheads. The same Peruvian lilies I've used to fill out every bouquet since June make an appearance here, as does dependable golden sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale). The spear-like seed pods of crocosmia add texture and an upright thrust. The cinnamon-colored droopy spikes  of love-lies-bleeding (Amaranthus cruentus 'Hot Biscuit' ) finishes off the bunch with its weird look of soft, chenille fingers poking up through the blossoms. 

 

 

 

Everyday Bouquets - Dahlia & Tomatoes

How can it already be time for harvest bouquets? Despite the plant palette, I tried to keep this bouquet looking summery with some fat sunflowers to balance out the extravagant dahlia, the biggest, showiest one I grew all summer. A sturdy, yellow Le Creuset pitcher grounds this heavy-headed bouquet, and keeps it from looking too autumnal, despite the cherry tomatoes and artichoke adding a harvest-look to the mix of flowers.

With a flower as lush and attention-getting as the dahlia, a bouquet needs plenty of fluffing out with flowers that are distinct in their own right. Here purple coneflowers and spiky orange crocosmia play off all the yellows and gold, the flat, dusty pink flowers of Sedum 'Autumn Joy' add texture, while hypericum berries draw you in, along with the spray of just ripening 'Sungold' tomatoes, to take a closer look.