Flowers for Cutting

Salvia and pink cosmos

One of the joys of having a garden is being able to give away plants. Last  weekend a number of gardeners gave away divisions of their plants to the Bridge of Flowers Plant Sale, helping the Bridge and a lot of other gardeners.  That is one way.

Another way is to give plants to friends or acquaintances who are starting a garden and might not be able to tell a bean from a bachelor’s button

Still another is to make up a bouquet of whatever is blooming and give it to a friend or acquaintance who is celebrating or struggling or recuperating. Of course, you might give away a bouquet just because you like giving away bouquets, even if, like me, you belong to the stuff a handful in a jam jar school of flower arranging.

If you like giving away bouquets think about the best flowers to include. This will depend on your own taste and the season, but some flowers will last longer than others in a vase.

The point of a cutting garden is to grow the healthiest flowers possible, without worrying about ‘design.’  Cutting gardens, straight rows of brilliant or delicate flowers, can be beautiful but it is the beauty of bright abundance, not the beauty of carefully thought out schemes of color and texture.  A cutting garden planted in rows can allow for sufficient space between plants to give them good air circulation and room to grow their best.

It’s easy to direct seed a variety of familiar sun loving annuals like cosmos, marigolds, sweet peas, nigella, annual salvias, pollen-free sunflowers, and zinnias in the ground. Annuals usually begin blooming at the beginning of summer and continue into the fall.  These are not exotic flowers but even this short list includes a variety of color, form and texture and they never fail to give pleasure.

I’ve bought seedlings of less familiar annuals like gomphrena or globe amaranth. The globe shaped blossoms on sturdy stems come in a variety of shades of pink and red. I also buy snapdragonseedlings because they take such a long time to get to transplanting size.

Some people dislike raiding the perennial plantings for bouquets, but removing a few carefully chosen stems doesn’t have to make the ornamental garden suffer. Delphiniums, in various heights and shades of blue, are a great addition to any early summer bouquet.

Astilbes have the benefit of tolerating some shade and moist sites.  Most blooming plants need a lot of sun. These plants with plumy spikes, white, shades of pink and red or peach, grow into big clumps in the garden, ready to donate a few stems to an arrangement. The airy, almost fern-like foliage is also useful in an arrangement.

Two plants that always attract my attention in the garden are astrantia, which is related to scabiosa and has a similar pincushion flower in shades of pink or white.  The other is knautia which also has a similar flower – to me.  I particularly like the deep wine red shade. Both of these perennials attract butterflies.

The columbine, a delicate spring bloomer with starry outer petals and long spurs, is beautiful in a bouquet. I have a deep purple native variety that grows vigorously and makes a good cut flower if only because I try to cut as many of these as I can before they scatter seed all over the flower bed. Other hybrids will self sow, but usually not with such vigor. The columbine comes in many colors, pale shades of white, yellow and pink, and bi-color forms like “Tequila Sunrise” a stunning yellow and coral, or the red and white “Songbird Cardinal.”

Lady’s mantle, achemilla, is useful in a flower arrangement because the airy sprays of yellow green flowers are unusual and neutral, and the round scalloped leaves can form a decorative collar surrounding the bouquet, or the edge of the vase.

Like lady’s mantle, coral bells have useful flowers and foliage. The delicate little blossoms on wiry stems usually come in an array of pink and white. There are many hybrids now where the interest is mainly on the foliage. Heuchera “Caramel”  has foliage with an orange blush, “Frosted Violet” has broad pinky purple leaves dusted with a silver shimmer. The low growing ”Citronelle” is a bright chartreuse and “Peach Flambe” has bright peach foliage that becomes darker and richer as the season progresses.

Dahlias are a mainstay of the autumnal cutting garden. There are hundreds of varieties from small button types to large dinner plate blooms in shades pale or dramatic. They begin blooming in mid-summer and continue into the fall. The more you cut, the more they will bloom. They last handsomely for a week or more in a vase.

A flower arranger might also raid the vegetable garden for some interesting foliage. The famous British flower arranger Constance Spry may have been the first to put kale in her “decorations” but she certainly isn’t the last. A very different sort of foliage is provided by the ferny bronze fennel.

Some gardeners will like the simplicity of a cutting garden planted in rows. Others may simply prefer  to plant a variety of cutting flowers in mixed garden beds. Either way, including a selection of flowers that can last well for a few days in a vase is a beautiful way gardeners can express their generosity.

Between the Rows    May 21, 2011

April Fool!

Still Snowing April 1

We left sunny Houston yesterday at noon, and got into sunny Nashville, but by the time we arrived in Hartford at 6:30 the rain was falling. Our son drove us to Greenfield where our car waited for us at his house. Quick! A few groceries! Quick up the hill. The snow is falling. And still falling this morning. My plan was to plant spinach today, but I guess that will not happen.

photo by Kirsten Luce for the New York Times

The only flowers in my view this morning come from the New York Times (3-31) with Christopher Petkana’s story about Emily Thompson “who has  become New York’s surprise floral designer du jour,” and the “fantasy tabletop woodland” arrangement”, which includes a tree stump, she created f or an event at La Grenouille  for Kenneth Jay Lane.  She is being compared to Constance Spry, who has been celebrated (several times)  right here on the commonweeder.  Ms. Thompson gives full credit to Spry’s  inspiration. ”She loved things that were unpopular or considered without class – weeds, pods, edibles – and is responsible for those distinctions ” she said. Once again we are being reminded that we can go wild with our palette of flowers, plants in all their stages, and containers. I’d say I’ll keep my eyes open for a suitable stump, but that is not the point.  Have you used an unusual container for an arrangement, or ‘decoration’ as Constrance Spry would say?

Constance Spry in the 21st Century

Recently I was able to find a used copy of Constance Spry’s book Flower Decoration which includes a few black and white photos of her arrangements. Actually, she did not use the word arrangements, but decorations.

If you look really closely at the decoration on the cover of this book you can see that it includes fruits, seed heads, and grasses in an almost invisible vase. I suspect this is not one of her own arrangements by a  painting by an artist the publisher has not chosen to identify, however Mrs. Spry was influenced by the painters of this sort of still life.

When she came to the US in January of 1938 on a speaking tour the press had a field day with headlines like “Decorator for the Windsors Uses Vegetables or Weeds if They Are Ornamental.”  She was unruffled and said, “Provided the plant is beautiful, I cannot see why I should not use it for decoration just because it has the added advantage that it can also be eaten.”

Barbara Wise does not arrange or decorate flowers for indoors but she designs hundreds of containers a year at the Southern Land Company. When she is not creating and planting she is on the loose admiring other arrangements. On her blog she has been documenting plantings she has created and visited. She knows that Constance Spry’s theories are alive and well outdoors as well as indoors. This container is a perfect example. Mrs. Spry loved urns and was alway on the alert for old urns, and she was notoriously famous for her love of kale as a decorative element.

I had to reduce this photo that Barbara sent me to get it to fit but the kale is clear and if you look closely you can see that the planting contains chard as well as pansies, grass and other graceful foliage plants.  A tour of Barbara’s blog, bwisegardening, will inspire you with many more container plantings.

How Constance Spry Prepared Her Flowers

Gloria Pacosa uses Spry's method

Many of us probably don’t fuss very much when we are making a flower arrangement for our dining table. We run out into the garden and cut a little bit of whatever is in bloom and a few leaves, put them in a vase with little fuss and we are done.

However if we are make a more important arrangement for a special party, for a friend’s wedding, or the church altar, we will need more flowers and foliage and we should take more care with preparing them.

According to Sue Shephard, author of The Surprising Life of Constance Spry,  ”She always picked her own garden flowers at least a day before they were needed, and put them in deep pails of water in a cool place. This enabled them to absorb plenty of water before being exposed to the rigors of travel, warm rooms and over handling during arrangement.”

She also often removed most of certain flowers’ leaves to help them last longer, and for the design. This spring I am planning to try an arrangement of lilacs only, no other flowers and no foliage – just like Constance.  My friend Gloria Pacosa follows many of Spry’s in her arrangements.

Gloria's foliage

Swiss chard and kale!

Spry’s Fresh Bouquets

Photo Courtesy of Debra Prinzing

Constance Spry found beauty in places others had not noticed. The unexpected drama of the plants she used surprised and delighted people. She turned to the vegetable garden and found one of her favorite plants – kale – but used other vegetables and fruits to brilliant effect.

Her arrangements would not have the same  startling effect today, because the ideas she propounded, her cry to forget about the rules and have fun, to see beauty in the commonplace have actually become commonplace today.

Garden author and blogger Debra Prinzing is working on a beautiful book,  A Fresh Bouquet, with photographer David Perry. Their journey among flower growers, the flower industry, and floral designers is being captured in their A Fresh Bouquet blog. There I found instructions very similar to what Constance Spry was following and teaching in the 20’s and 30’s.

Photo Courtesy of Debra Prinzing

“Use twigs and branches as well as more common foliage, conifers  and broadleaf evergreens.

Use fruits and berries, and maybe vegetables.

Use other natural materials, seedpods, pine cones, grasses, moss.

Use commercial flowers with restraint. Flowers are not always necessary.”

For the full post click here.

Constance Spry

Constance Spry

“I want to shout out: do what you please, follow your own star; be original if you want to be and don’t if you don’t want to be. Just be natural and gay and light-hearted and pretty and simple and overflowing and general and baroque and bare and austere and stylized and wild and daring and conservative, and learn and learn and learn. Open your minds to every form of beauty.” Constance Spry

Those passionate words came from a woman who was born into poor circumstances in England in 1886. There was little beauty in her world, but young Connie Fletcher spent most of her ‘Saturday pennies’ on packets of seeds so that she could have something pretty.  No one could have dreamed that one day she would be arranging flowers for British royalty, and hobnobbing with the bright lights of high society.

In her excellent biography, The Surprising Life of Constance Spry: From social reformer to society florist, Sue Shephard takes us from Spry’s humble beginnings, to her 1929 meteoric success as a ‘flower decorator’ to the noble and wealthy in London, through the wartime years when her efforts led her into the kitchen as well as the garden, and closing the circle with arranging flowers for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and back to teaching

Spry held several jobs into and through the 20’s beginning with a traveling program in Ireland educating people in an attempt to wipe out TB. That job led her to a short lived marriage and a son. She  then worked for the Red Cross; as a welfare supervisor; as an educator for the Ministry of Aircraft Production; and as headmistress in a school for teenage factory workers where she added flower arranging to the curriculum. There she saw the girls’ hunger for beauty, and showed them how flowers could fill that hunger.

At the same time Spry’s local fame as a flower arranger grew, as she did the flowers for friends’ parties and wedding. In 1929 she agreed to do large arrangements for the windows of a new fashionable perfumery. This was an adventure; Spry was always ready for an exciting project. The shop was to open in November, not the best time for interesting flowers, but when the carillons rang out in joyful celebration the windows  were filled with “old man’s beard with silvery seed-heads, copper colored leaves, great trails of hops turned to strawy gold,” and heavy green orchids she added at the last moment thinking that all those ‘weeds’ might not go over very well.  The windows were a sensation and the beginning of her business. It was also a lesson in the use of plant material that was usually discarded “gone with the wheelbarrow”.

Along the way she set up housekeeping with Ernest Spry and became known as Mrs. Spry, but they never were officially married.

Later Shephard tells us, she met the artist Hannah Gluckstein, known only as Gluck. Their quiet relationship was accepted for four years in their circles, until Gluck ended it. This had not been widely known until Shephard’s book..

All during the 30’s Spry was The Person to arrange the flowers for society parties. She and Syrie Maugham, the famous decorator, known for her white rooms, often worked in tandem. At one elegant party Spry used celadon vases filled with “white lilies, eucalyptus, green hydrangea heads, lichen covered branches, with perhaps one brilliant spike of scarlet anthurium for drama.” Such combinations became all the rage.

She traveled to France to arrange huge pink peonies, cascades of lilies, lilac and flowering laurel, acanthus and white yucca for the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Wallis Simpson,  Her friendship and work for this couple put an end to other royal commissions. For a while.

She did not do all this single-handedly. At one time over 70 people trained in her style were employed by her business.

At the end of the 30’s Spry came to the United States under the auspices of the New York Botanic Garden and the Garden Clubs of America for lecture tours. She was such a success that wealthy New York matrons prevailed upon her to open a New York shop. She loved new projects, and with her usual enthusiasm and energy she plunged in. However, with the declaration of war in Britain, she returned to do her bit.

Her energy and optimism never wavered. The war sent her in a slightly new direction – the vegetable garden. Her thoughts about fresh vegetables and cooking would sound up to date today. The kitchen garden had always been a part of her decorating. She once said, “One has only to look at the lovely line and form of a group of kale leaves to realize that the humble kitchen garden can hold its own with the aristocrats of the hothouses.”

Indeed, Shephard makes it clear that Spry’s approach to gardening, and to ‘decorating’ with plants changed the way that we handle flower arrangements today, looking for original plant combinations and unique containers.

She also captures the verve of this un-prepossessing woman  who inspired David Austin to name one of his hardiest roses after her, and whose exhortation to be confident and  to plea

please ourselves in the garden can still inspire us today. ###

Between the Rows   January 15, 2011

Hurry Up and Wait

Snow on April 16

A wet snow was falling on Friday morning. It did not last long on the ground, but the day continued wet and chill and not suitable for gardening.  I was happy that I had spent most of Thursday cleaning out, weeding and putting some semblance of an edge on the Herb Bed in front of the house. Since we added the Entry Walk to the Piazza and Welcome Platform, the Herb Bed has expanded to approximately 33 feet long, and 5 feet deep.

With all that room I added a rose, and three golden Henryi lilies and three White Henry lilies last year. I can’t wait to see them. I also seeded some spinach on April 1 and it has sprouted and has managed to survive the snow and cold rains. I guess that’s why they call it a hardy cool season crop.

I also moved some six packs of lettuce, broccoli – and even cosmos – down to the cold frame early this week.  The seedlings survived strong sun on the two days when I needed to open the ‘lid’, as well as near- freezing temperatures. They are sitting in a plastic tray so that I can add water every day and keep them watered through osmosis action.

Seedlings in the cold frame

Other six packs of parsley, cosmos, and zinnias are doing well on a windowsill upstairs. I planted more seeds as well: Sakata Sweet Treats cherry tomatoes sent as a sample; Seed Savers Exchange Hot Biscuits amaranth given as a sample at the nursery trade show; and purchased seeds including High Mowings Belstar broccoli; and Renee’s Garden cosmos, and Blue Boy Cornflower. I am determined that this year I will have flowers for cutting and arrangements as well as veggies on the plate.

Nothing much is happening so far in the new Front Garden. Lettuce and spinach have been planted, but without composted manure from the local horse farm I haven’t tried to plant the second bed there. I did go down to the Potager and weeded and dug one bed. I planted blue sweet peas, another sample from Seed Savers, as well as swiss chard and onion sets. I had to hurry because I did only have the day – as it turned out.

Daffodils are still coming. Everytime I have to drive down Route 2 I see more and more of the Mystery Daffodils coming into bloom. This is the third spring for these beautiful flowers which appeared mysteriously – and no one knew who had planted them. The secret leaked out a little bit, but I have kept my lips sealed. I love thinking about this Secret Sharer, making all of us smile as we drive back and forth to work or on our necessary errands.

I have daffodils, obviously of late varieties, but I have been admiring the progression of foliage on the trees with special attention and joy this spring. Flower arranging is not my forte, but I thought I would have some luck with foliage arranging. There are wild cherry buds, deep red ornamental plum leaves, birch catkins and I’m not sure what else.   I stuck in a handful of daffs and brought the arrangement to sit on the Coffee Table for social hour at church. It was admired!

A Trio for Trillium

Jeff, Gloria and Lisa

Last Sunday was muddy and dreary but the group that gathered in front of the blazing fire at Curtis House in Ashfield was as bright and sunny as a summer day. We had all gathered to have Jeff Farrell, Gloria Pacosa and Lisa Newman, the newly formed Trillium Workshops, teach us how we could all have cutting gardens to fill our houses with fresh flowers while leaving our flower borders intact.

These three friends came together hardly more than a month ago to share their collective knowledge and experience and to have some fun. It all began when Pacosa, a floral designer and owner of the multi-faceted Gloriosa and Co. (www.gloriosaco.com), called Ashfield friend and neighbor Jeff Farrell and asked him to help with a cooking event. He said he couldn’t cook but he could help with gardening.

Hmmmmm. That started the wheels turning and they quickly called Newman and before they knew it they had a name, a list of programs they could offer, and a website, where they could promote them. “This is kind of guerilla organizing,” Newman said. “We have no shortage of ideas! We decided to just do it.”

The list of workshops  calls on skills they all possess. Farrell is a skilled professional gardener and garden consultant. He currently tends 12 gardens including the garden in Heath that belongs to Northampton artist Scott Prior, previously owned by Elsa Bakalar. At the beginning of his career Farrell worked for several years with Elsa Bakalar and he has arranged three tours of that garden giving gardeners a chance to see the interesting and varied progression of bloom beginning on June 20, and later in July and September.

I met Gloria Pacosa years ago when I worked at Artspace (then called the Arts Council) and was impressed with her sense of design and exquisite craftsmanship, all in evidence at the cutting garden workshop.

The vivacious Lisa Newman grew up gardening and has spent her professional life in publishing, but often connected with gardens, scouting for gardens and organizing photo shoots for various publications like Horticulture and other magazines and book publishers. She gets to test and review new tools and equipment. A good person to know!

I wanted to attend this workshop because flower arranging has never been my forte. I put a bunch of peonies or autumn branches in a vase and call it a day. I needed Trillum.

Now I already know that perennials have a fairly short period of bloom, and I know a few annuals like zinnias and cosmos, but I never seemed to be able to put together a pretty bouquet or arrangement.  The Trillium crew anticipated my ignorance and handed out lists of annuals, perennials, herbs and shrubbery  and even vegetables that can be used in flower arrangements.  Suddenly I realized I  had many more plants in my garden that I could use, without even buying more seeds or starts, but I am never one to pass up a chance to buy more plants.

Some good annuals for arrangements are Bells of Ireland, pot marigolds, cosmos, delphiniums, love in a mist, snapdragons, snapdragons, sunflowers and salvias. You can use any perennials that are in bloom at a given moment, but I had never thought of pea vines, kale, chard, and dill from the vegetable garden as bouquet material. Foliage from oakleaf hydrangea, cotinus, and Diabolo ninebark which have dramatic dark leaves are useful additions.

Mid-arrangement

After getting answers to our own garden problems, and a delicious tea time, Pacosa put together a beautiful arrangement in a pretty little tag sale bowl. That was an important tip for me. If you have inexpensive containers you can make an arrangement and give it away without worrying about reclaiming the vase.

I also learned from the demonstration that I haven’t been using floral foam correctly. It needs to be soaked ahead of time! I never knew. After the foam was in the bowl she topped it with moss from the lawn she had harvested last fall and stored in her basement. Branches of dark leaved azalea and pink stocks from the supermarket were the main ingredients. “I love pink and brown in arrangements,” Pacosa said.

Gloria's arrangment - fini!

After she even more quickly put together another very different arrangement in a tall vase it was clear she is never stymied.

For full information about additional workshops, April 25 – Container  Design and Planting; May 16 – Daffodil Workshop; and May 22 – Creating an Outdoor Garden Room for Entertaining and relaxing as  well as short demonstrations in the Curtis House garden on Saturday mornings while the Ashfield Farmer’s Market is in operation logon to www.trilliumworkshops.blogspot.com.

Other interesting and informative meetings are coming up. The Franklin County Giant Pumpkin Growers are meeting on Tuesday, March 30 at Turner’s Falls High School at 7 pm in Room 206. If you are interested in competitive pumpkin growing this is place to learn how to do it.  Call Lu or Sue Chadwick, 773-3283, for more information.

Ed Himlan, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Watershed Coalition, will be at the Greenfield Public Library on Tuesday, April 6 at 6:30 pm  to give a free presentation about the benefits of rain gardens, and how to plant and create one of your own. This program is organized by Greening Greenfield, and co-sponsored by many local organizations. ###

Between The Rows  March 27, 2010

Driven to Spring

The Boston Flower Show is back!  There were flowers everywhere, in all kinds of arrangements and gardens.

There was also a lot of water – a pond like this one with a stone ‘lily pad’ that appeared to float on the water. The pond was surrounded by azaleas, conifers and bulbs. I may have to do a whole posting about water in fountains and streams.

There were flower arrangements like this simple vase of brilliant tulips for a table setting.

as well as  any number of big bouquets of mixed flowers and foliage,

and single color arrangements like this bouquet of white roses, snapdragons, stocks and chrysanthemums.

There were cakes made entirely of dried flowers, including hydrangea blossoms, dusty miller and roses, but for those who want a real cake for a really special occasion

there were real cakes created by any number of skilled bakers.

Looking at all these flowers was inspiring and there were flowers for sale

inside the Flower Show . . . .

just outside the Flower Show doors . . . .

at South Station and at any one of a thousand street corners.

Flowers and More Flowers

Kerry Mendez and me

What a weekend. While I am waiting for the snow to melt I had a glorious weekend thinking about – and looking at flowers!

On Saturday I got to meet Kerry Mendez, the spirited, humorous and knowledgeable keynote speaker at the Master Gardener’s Spring Symposium on Saturday. She engaged the audience in lively conversation and talked about how to have a successful flower garden- choose the right plant for the right site – and gave great design tips.  Fortunately, if you can’t attend any of her talks you can get her excellent and useful book The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Top Ten Lists.

Do you have dry shade, want unusual perennials, need annuals? Kerry has lists for you that will give you quickly accessible information and suggestions.

That was on Saturday. On Sunday I attended the first workshop given by the three charming and skilled gardeners,  Jeff Farrell, Lisa Newman, and Gloria Pacosa who formed Trillium Workshops just a month ago.

Gloria Pacosa at work

There was information about planting and maintaining a separate cutting garden,  including many annuals that bloom all summer, so  that you don’t ruin the effect of your borders and gardens when you want to bring  flowers into the house.  I also learned a lot about arranging flowers – not my forte – but Gloria Pacosa is a master. I learned that the best time to pick flowers is early in the evening when flowers have gained a day’s worth of sun and energy, that they should be conditioned by standing in clean deep water in clean containers overnight, and that I need to soak my floral foam until it is really saturated. Of course, I learned A Lot  more, and you’ll be hearing more of that over time.

Jeff told me that Horticulture magazine is publishing a follow-up article about Elsa Bakalar’s Heath gardens this spring. I wrote  the original article for Horticulture, published in 1987, in which Elsa expounded on her theories about color in the garden.  The follow up article includes interviews with Jeff who began working with Elsa on her garden over 20 years ago, and has continued maintaining it with the new owner, the artist Scott Prior and his wife. The article will include many photographs of the garden taken last summer. Those who would like to visit the garden again, or for the first time, can join one (or all) of the three Trillum tours of Elsa’s garden scheduled for June 20, July 18, and September 19.  For more information about registration logon to the Trillium blog.