Plant Talk

Bouquets: Chatreuse and Orange

Pastels for spring are overrated - warmer, brighter colors look so good in the garden and in the vase on chilly, gray days. Or even on days like this, when the sun is slanting weakly across the garden as more pearlescent promise than a source of heat.

So instead of sweet bleeding heart pink or daffodil yellow, this bouquet is made of just three warmly colored elements. Orange tulips from Trader Joe's are a good deal at $5.99 for a big, fat, fresh bunch. The chartreuse flower heads from Euphorbia characias wulfenii and ferny foliage of golden bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis 'Goldheart') are cut from my garden. The glass block vase will fill out more when the tulips fully open, hopefully just in time for Museo Gallery's opening party tonight (you're invited!).

 

A couple of tips: Tulips leaves are flat and droopy, so I stripped them all off to emphasize the flowers. I rid the bleeding heart of its blooms, for its flowers are too delicate for the bolder shapes in this bouquet, let alone being pink. Be sure and wear gloves when you cut euphorbia, as its sticky, white sap bleeds freely and can irritate your skin.  It can also turn the water a murky white, which in a glass vase like this looks nasty. So I always sear the bottom of the euphorbia stems with a lighter or match before sticking them into the cool water. 

This is my last iPhone photo on the blog, as I'm breaking down and buying a real camera!

New Book on Bouquets

If you're considering what flowers to plant for spring and summer (and what gardener isn't so occupied at the moment? ), you'll be inspired by Suzy Bales' brand new book from Rodale, "Garden Bouquets and Beyond". Suzy flower arrangements are full of familiar flowers and foliage like roses, hosta, tulips, daffodils.....some of the bouqets are as simple as sticking some red roses into a chartreuse haze of euphorbia, others are more "built" with floral foam, wire, even plaster of Paris to make mock topiaries. Suzy's love of flowers spills from the pages of book, along with tips and techniques for making the garden an integral part of your life in every season.

Here's an excerpt from my blurb on the back of the book: "We've learned that fresh, local, organic food is best, so why are we still buying hothouse flowers, shipped halfway around the world, for our homes?....Suzy Bales not only opens our eyes to the bounty of foliage, flowers, seeds and pods right outside our own back doors, but also shares her joy and expertise on fashioning what we grow..."

The book is arranged seasonally; here are a couple of April arrangments from Suzy's Long Island garden:

Circus Razzle-Dazzle Flowers

  I'm usually the cheerleader for bouquets cut from the garden, but this time of year I long for color. We don't live by evergreens and flowering branches alone, which is about all the garden offers in January.

"The Greatest Show" running from today until March 1st at Museo Gallery in Langley was the inspiration for this razzle-dazzle of a flower arrangement. Sometimes we just need all out color - nothing subtle here, as befits the circus theme celebrated by a variety of Whidbey artists.

The show opens tonight, Saturday January 23, with a party, 5-7 p.m. - drop in to see a stunning assortment of work. You can enjoy the excitement of the circus, including the gallery draped in a simulated big-top, without watching a single poor animal demeaned or mistreated (I've been boycotting real circuses for years.......)

The yellow, orange and striped tulips are from Metropolitan Market, 3 bunches for $10. The pussy willows were foraged and dried last winter, the red branches pruned just yesterday from my little coral bark maple (Acer palmatum ' SangoKaku') -  even in January the garden does yield up its delights....

Witch hazels

I really don't have the space for a witch hazel, but I had to plant at least one. Not for the garden, but for the house; I can't imagine getting through January without the pleasure of bringing branches of their spidery, fragrant flowers indoors.

The supremely fragrant yellow flowers of the Chinese witch hazels, like Hamamelis mollis 'Pallida' and H. x intermedia 'Arnold's Promise' show up best in the garden. While they disappear in the bare winter garden, the rusty orange flowers of  H. x intermedia 'Diane' are stunning cut and brought into the house. 'Diane' has a Chinese parent, so is sweetly fragrant. In autumn, the foliage turns dramatic shades of orange and purple.

Right now 'Diane' is in full, glorious, coppery bloom. For an elegant arrangement,  just stick a few branches in a sturdy vase...cut and enjoy....

If your witch hazel isn't large enough yet to cut whole branches, even a few twigs can make a lovely arrangement combined with a hellebore bud in a little crystal vase....

The Last Bouquet?

I kept thinking this was probably the last big bouquet of the season as I arranged flowers Thursday for Museo Gallery's opening party tonight. The temperature was plummeting, wind gusting, and the rain starting to fall. A real October day, which means it's time to harvest the last of the hydrangeas and dahlias....This big bouquet actually needed three gardens to fill it out. I plundered some rusty-colored Sedum 'Autumn Joy' from a neighbor on one side, and a few dahlias from a neighbor on the other. The mophead hydrangeas, crocosmia seed pods, and little purple-belled Clematis 'Roguchi' are from my garden. The vase was made by Whidbey Island ceramist Al Tennant; its mottled glaze sets off the rich, subdued colors of the flowers, fruit and grasses.

It was lovely to arrange flowers while the rain beat against the windows and the wind "wuthered" around the house. October is my favorite month, autumn the season I love best, yet it's a little melancholy to think I'll be buying flowers for every Museo opening for the next five months. No that the garden won't flower, but the Camellia sasanqua, Viburnum tinus 'Spring Bouquet', witch hazel's  fragrant little blooms, snowdrops, and hellebores won't be enough to make an extravagant, heart-healing bunch. It won't be until April, when the narcissus, daphne, bleeding heart, and fritillaria come on full tilt that I'll be able to gather glorious big bunches of flowers from the garden again.

I do love the colors of autumn, collected here in black hypericum berries,  sedum and pennisetum blooms. The hydrangea petals add bulk and the feeling of movement. The red and orange dahlias spark the more muted tones of the other flowers.

Early Autumn Palette

The garden is so generous right now, with an abundance of flower, fruit and foliage for arrangements. A dangling cane of raspberries looks gorgeous in a vase and speaks of the ripeness of the season in a single branch.

Bouquets are amped up by colors that grow more intense as the weather cools; even better, many materials dry naturally when cut this late in the year, so arrangements last longer.

All too often, we arrange flowers in spring when we're so excited about the garden, but too often forget to do it now. But bringing the garden indoors is even sweeter in autumn, when such luxuries will be over so soon.  Fall offers sunflowers, rudbeckia, hydrangeas, sedum and grasses which combine into lovely, hazy, impressionistic bouquets.

The arrangement below is a jumble of colors and textures, including blue mahonia berries, little fox-tailed pennisetum flowers, a fuzzy-topped Italian purple artichoke, orange dahlias, hydrangeas, Sedum 'Autumn Joy', golden ligularia flowers, and some pruned branches from a Japanese maple.

How to Dry Hydrangeas

Every year about this time I get questions on how to dry hydrangeas....and no wonder, for their fat blossom clusters dry beautifully for wreaths, or just for a big vase of flowers once the garden has gone out of bloom. I've even been known to spray paint them with glitter or gold paint for the holidays...although they mellow to such lovely shades of plum, lavender and chartreuse the glitz really isn't necessary.

There are many ways to preserve their blossoms, but why not go the easy route? The trick is to wait until the blossoms dry part way on the bush; fresh blossoms don't dry well. Don't be too eager to pick them, especially after that biblical rain over the weekend. Hydrangea flowers, no matter which type, are ready to be dried when they've already turned a bit leathery on the bush.

I don't bother with powders or preservatives, nor do I hang them upside down. Just simply stick the cut stems into a vase with an inch or two of water, and let it evaporate. Don't crowd the heads, give them room for air to circulate. This method couldn't be simpler, and you get to enjoy the hydrangeas while they're drying.

You can see how these just-picked mopheads already look a bit leathery - just right for drying. That's Bridget the Wheaten Terrier looking on from her perch on the couch....

These are 'Annabelle' hydrangeas, just picked for drying...

Color Crazy

I just reviewed California artist and garden designer Keeyla Meadows's new book on color for the Seattle Times (it'll run in Pacific's fall home design issue on October 11 - yes, I really do have that long a lead time...).

The lively, lovely exuberance of "Fearless Color Gardens: The Creative Gardener’s Guide to Jumping Off the Color Wheel”, to be published later this autumn by Timber Press, inspired the flower arrangement below. The vase is "Carrot Top" by Johanna Nitzke Marquis, and the mix of maroon, orange and pink (agastache, crocosmia, sweet peas, Astrantia 'Hadspen's blood') is so....well....so Keeyla, who seeks inspiration from flowers' own fearless color combinations.

Flower Farm

When two artists get together. watch out. Diane Szukovathy is the art major and serious student of botany; Dennis Westphall is a musician (of Tickle Tune Typhoon fame) and landscaper with a special affinity for stone. Together they are powerhouses of seemingly tireless creativity, running a landscape business, rejuvenating an historic Skagit Valley homestead, planting an orchard and dozens of chestnut trees. They're avid collectors of crockery, jello molds....etc....But  mostly this tireless duo is growing and selling organic flowers. Their motto? "Our flowers are safe to sniff."

Jello Mold Farm is planted in acres of flowers and foliage plants that are harvested and shipped to Seattle twice weekly. You can buy their super-fresh, abundant cuts at Ballard Market and Ravenna Gardens...but more on this in an upcoming Pacific Magazine column. In the meantime, take a look at their "art piece" of a farm, where even the garden carts, as well as nearly every other surface, is decorated. The field of flowers, one of many, is planted in Helenium autumnale.

Summer Bouquet

One of my favorite things about summer (since I'm a Seattle native and don't like heat, I look for other benefits....) is creating huge, English-style mixed bouquets from the garden. Nothing captures the essence of summer's bountiful garden like going outdoors early in the morning and clipping here and there (color, foliage, fragrance, large blooms, fluffy filler), then pulling it all together into an arrangement.

On the first weekend of every month, I have the pleasure of creating a bouquet for the art opening at Langley's Museo Gallery (July's show is the amazing Whidbey Island Glass Invitational, with pen and ink drawings by Seattle artist Joseph Pentheroudakis).

In winter, I have to break down and buy flowers, but this time of year even my little garden yields plenty - although in the bouquet shown below I admit the sunflowers are purchased. I needed a few big, bulky flowers to balance out the centerpiece delphinium, and couldn't bring myself to cut the lilies just coming into bloom.

The rest of the flowers - sweet peas for perfume, kale gone to flower, the plum-colored Clematis 'Polish Spirit', the first of the 'Annabelle' hydrangeas, the blue shrimp plant (Cerinthe major 'Purpurascens') and the silvery blue nettle in front (Eryngium 'Sapphire Blue') which I could hardly cut  because it was bristling with bees...speaking of, check out the black "bees" in the center of each delphinium flower....are all from my garden, cut on Saturday morning....(my editors at the Seattle Times would never let me get away with a sentence like the one above!!...the pleasure and perils of blogging...)