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....

 

Bringing Winter Indoors - Ligularia Pods In a Raku Vase

Time speeds up as the year ebbs - with only a bit more than three weeks until Christmas it's getting crazy. As  days continue to darken and every bit of light is precious, bringing nature indoors feels vital. Deep green magnolia leaves, a spray of camellia sasanqua, a sprig of fragrant rosemary or sarcococca, a hellebore in bud, all seem like a dear, sweet message from nature declaring that she's persisting out there in the cold and gloom. And will triumph again come spring.

All the tulips and lilies, and even amaryllis and paperwhites, in stores and nurseries are gorgeous and I'm sure I'll fall for a few before the season is over. But they are more distraction from winter than winter itself.

So I'm making do, for now, with what I can find in the garden. These fluffy seed pods, perfectly spherical, hazily ephemeral yet impressively tough, are what's left of the long-spent flowers on the dark-leafed Ligularia dentata 'Britt Marie Crawford'. I left a generous share for the birds, and at first cut some camellia foliage and coral bark maple twigs to go with them. But it turned out the pods are so textural, so deeply and unusually colored, that they look best clustered by themselves in a raku vase by Whidbey Island artist Al Tennant.

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...

The Last of the Harvest - Sunflowers, Sungolds and Raspberries...

The shaggy Teddy Bear sunflowers are from Trader Joe's (a great deal at 5 long stems for $3.99), but the flat, reptile-like heads of sea oats grass (Chasmanthium latifolium) and golden leaves from a fast-fading coral bark maple were wrested from a garden that seems tired out from its months of productivity.

I picked the last few ripe-enough 'Sungolds' just before I gave it up and tore out the last of the vines over the weekend. It seems like every cold night shrinks the raspberries, but the tired vines are sitll producing a few small, sweet berries...there's kale and a bit of arugula, and that's it.  I look forward to the respite, as well as the satisfaction of planting bulbs while next year's garden dances in my head...

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 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.....

 

 

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 Zen of Flower Arranging - Accepting the Time It Takes and the Mess it Makes

Who has ever cut just the right amount of leaf and flower for an arrangement? Running back out into the garden with clippers in hand to cut a few more branches of this, or blooms of that is part of the process...Arranging flowers is like any other art or craft - you have to accept there'll be waste involved. Having plenty to work with, messing around, composting what doesn't work, playing around with possibilities is what turns flower arranging not only into an art, but a relaxing and absorbing expression of joy in the natural world.

I was making bouquets for the house and for an opening party at Museo Gallery in Langley - so I wanted a compact arrangement for the table, a fragrant bouquet for the kitchen, and a big, showy bunch for the gallery. I cut early in the morning, and let the flowers and foliage rest in cool water for an hour or two in the kitchen, while I thought about vases and possibilities.

Here's what I started with; the early September garden is ripe with inspiration, from hydrangeas and sunflowers to blooming fennel, hydrangea, raspberry canes and an assortment of daisy-like flowers. Sweet peas and cimiciuga or acteae (the common name is snake root or bugbane) provide the fragrance, grass blooms and artichokes lend plenty of texture.

The fragrance bouquet with a few sweet peas tucked in here and there, dahlias, spikes of Crocosmia 'Solfatare' and Verbena bonariensis, the yellow flowers of ligularia, peach Peruvian lily, and sweet smelling, violet butterfly bush.

The low bouquet for the center of the table is pure late summer, a simple combination of daisy-like flowers in shades of gold, orange and chocolate.

And here's the tall, wild, spreading bouquet for the gallery, with bronze fennel, striped zebra grass, rudbeckia, helenium, ligularia, Peruvian lily, an artichoke, and a little purple "Roguchi' clematis bloom dangling down the side of the pitcher...

A Casual, Sunny Bouquet in Celebration of Summer's Waning Days

How to make a full, fat bouquet stuffed with all the flowers of late summer without having it look too grand or rigid? It can be a challenge with all the generously scaled flowers this time of year to avoid making one of those spiky bouquets where every flower radiates out like spokes, so perfectly orchestrated that the flowers together add up to less than the sum of the bouquet's parts...

Or else every flower is cut to the same length and so stuffed into the vase that the big mass is devoid of personality. Why do we treat flowers and leaves as if they're inorganic stuff to be manhandled into an artificial shape?  Maybe florists need such grandiose displays to satisfy customers, but surely flowers freshly cut from our gardens can be more casually and loosely arranged so that the particular beauty of each blossom stands on its own while still contributing to the overall effect?

So here's today's attempt to capture summer in a vase, with lilies, dahlias, crocosmia, hydrangeas, ligularia blossoms, yarrow, and helenium all consorting in a mottled raku cylinder that contributes gloss but not much color. With vivid orange, yellow-centered dahlias ('Forncetts Furnace) and all the shades of late summer toned down by the soft lavender-blue of 'Blue Wave' lacecap hydrangea blossoms, a neutral vase is all that's needed. I photographed this in the kitchen just before I carted it down to the yoga studio for the week...