Tag Archives: Design

Cut Flowers, Three Ways

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People, like bees, are attracted to flowers, always for beauty (and occasionally for food).

We enjoy flowers in our gardens, but we want them indoors, as well. Americans buy some ten million cut flowers a day. About eighty percent are grown outside of the United States and brought in by air, in a stunningly efficient transition from field to vase.

Amy Stewart told the story of the global flower industry in Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful (Algonquin Books, 2008). Her fascinating book explores “the startling intersection of nature and technology, or sentiment and commerce.” According to one reviewer, Flower Confidential reveals so much about the technology and chemistry of the flower biz that it “may compel us to return to something purer, more local.”

Stewart’s fellow garden writer, Debra Prinzing, responds to that vision in The 50 Mile Bouquet: Seasonal, Local and Sustainable Flowers (St. Lynn’s Press, 2012).

Prinzing clearly favors emerging alternatives to the $40 billion dollar floriculture industry, which focuses on uniformity and durability. In her view, “factory flowers” may seem close to perfect, but they offer little or no scent, a maximum of preservatives and pesticides, and by the time they reach your vase, a relatively short life. She writes that they “have lost the fleeting, ephemeral quality of an old-fashioned, just-picked bouquet.”

The alternative she applauds is the nascent industry for producing cut flowers that are sustainably grown and locally sold. The 50 Mile Bouquet profiles a series of small-scale organic flower businesses, mostly on the west coast, and operated mostly by couples that are inspired by nature and particularly by flowers.

Prinzing explores floral design, featuring imaginative individuals who advocate “green” floral design. Their arranging supplies do not include green foam, the main ingredient of which is a known carcinogen, formaldehyde.

A chapter on “The DIY Bouquet” explores flower arranging by amateurs who love flowers, including some who prefer their flowers in the garden, arranged by nature.

The final chapters address the role of florals in celebrations & festivities, and resources for flower growers and arrangers.

The book is a feast for all who enjoy having flowers in their lives and in their gardens. It is the product of a flower lover and gifted writer (and president of the Garden Writers of America, no less). This beautiful book also includes fine photographs by David E. Perry, whose pictures capture the book’s spirit and the commitment of many flower growers and floral designers that we come to know.

My third perspective involves designing and cultivating personal cutting gardens, and “The Gardener’s Dilemma.” Read on!

One of a gardener’s dilemmas (there are several) is whether to enjoy flowers in their natural state, in the garden, or to cut them for indoor display.

George Bernard Shaw said, “I like flowers, I also like children, but I do not chop their heads and keep them in bowls of water around the house.”

He was one who prefers to enjoy flowers in the garden!

There is a solution to this dilemma: the cutting garden.

By definition, a cutting garden functions as a bloom producer. By comparison, a tropical flowerbed has the very different purpose of providing an attractive vista.
In planning a cutting garden, the gardener’s priority is to prepare an efficient growing ground, one that can be used to produce a large number of blooms with a minimum of effort.

This perspective leads the gardener firstly to selecting a site that receives at least six hours of sunlight each day, because plants that produce a lot of blossoms need full exposure to the sun.

The size of the site depends on how many flowers the gardener wishes to grow. A bed of just twenty square feet could accommodate a couple dozen plants.

An important consideration is that the bed will be fully accessible by the gardener, for preparing the soil, planting seeds or seedlings, mulching, weeding, and harvesting blooms. For good access, the bed should be no deeper than four feet, and accessible from both sides. A larger bed should have a path every four feet to provide equivalent access.

Because the cutting is intended to be productive rather than beautiful at all times, it could be located in a less prominent area of the garden.

Secondly, the soil in the cutting garden should be have soil that is not mostly sand, so it will hold moisture, and not mostly clay, so it will drain well. Stated differently, the soil should be good garden loam, with a balance of sand, clay and organic material. If your soil is less than ideal, dig in a generous measure of compost, or, for extremely poor soil conditions, consider installing raised beds and filling them with amended soil from a landscape supply outlet.

The third consideration is that the site should have easy access to water. A automatic irrigation system would be most convenient, but at least hose watering should be readily available.

Then, select plants that produce the flowers you want. A great many flowering annuals and perennials would be suitable for a cutting garden, so the selection is a personal matter. If you need suggestions, consider the nominations of Roger Cook, landscape contractor, visit the This Old House website and search for “cutting garden.”

Buy either seeds or seedlings, again depending on your preference. Seeds are less expensive; seedlings are easier and faster to grow.

Read the seed packages or plant tags to learn how large the plants will grow, how to space them, when they will bloom, and other useful information. You might want to select plants that bloom at different times, to provide cut flowers over a long period.

Place taller plants where they will not block your access or the sun’s access to the smaller plants. This might be in the middle, or on the north side of the bed.

Other placement issues to consider include grouping plants with similar sun, water and drainage needs.

After watering in the plants, plan on mulching the bed, providing regular water and weeding as needed. When the plants begin to bloom, deadhead the blossoms to enjoy them indoors and promote more blooms.

Enjoy your cutting garden.

Blossoms in WInter

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At this time of the year, gardens could be at rest and —let’s be blunt—relatively bleak.

Still, depending on the plants in your landscape, there could be a gratifying display of blossoms and foliage, or at least scattered bright spots that mimic the spring.

This year, of course, the weather has been extraordinarily dry and warm, fooling some plants that the warmer season has arrived. My many daffodils, liberated by last fall’s division of crowded clumps, are beginning now to bloom.

My daffodils are all the same cultivar, Mon Cherie. There are other varieties as beautiful or more beautiful, but for larger areas I prefer massing the same plant rather than collecting multiple cultivars. A floriferous hodgepodge could bewilder the beholder.

My garden, like most, has only a few winter bloomers. They get attention simply because they are surrounded by plants that are declining.

Here is a sampling of what’s now in bloom in my garden.

Winter Daphne (Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’)

This evergreen, shrubby plant from Japan has leaves with yellow margins and pinkish buds that open to pure white. Its great value in the garden rests on the fragrance of its blossoms, which rank among the most pleasant in nature. The species has several potential problems with insects and diseases and a reputation for sudden death but my specimen has had no health issues for several years.

Paper Bush (Edgeworthia chrysantha)

This relative of the Winter Daphne carries the name of Michael Edgeworth, a 19th century plant collector. The plant, a native of China’s Szechuan province, produces clusters of buds that open into buttery-lemon colored, very sweetly fragrant flowers in early March. (I check it regularly!) The Chinese use its bark to make high-quality paper for currency.

Corsican Hellebore (Helleborus argutifolius)

This robust Mediterranean species, with pale-green, cup-shaped flowers, is probably the most common of the genus. It proliferates freely in my front yard, and often attracts attention. I whack its three-foot stems in the spring, for renewal, and it comes back stronger than ever.

Winter-blooming Iris (Iris unguicularis )

The evergreen Grecian iris, which has just finished blooming, offers off-season iris blossoms as complement to the familiar tall bearded iris. Its flower stems are shorter than the leaves, so the pretty blossoms are not easy to find, nestled within the plant.

Torch Aloe (Aloe arborescens)

This big South African plant is widely grown on California’s central coast for its dramatic coral-red flower spikes, rosettes of soft green succulent leaves and minimal demands. My plants bloomed later than others in the area, probably because they get some shade.

What’s blooming in your garden? Survey your landscape now to appreciate the present color and consider planting more that would enliven the dormant days.

An Uncommon Tool for the Garden

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By most measures, garden tools are not expensive. Only a few dollars are needed to own a satisfying tool like a sturdy trowel or the right kind of shovel for the day’s gardening task.

There are very costly garden tools, including any that uses gasoline or electricity, or are so narrowly specialized that finding where you left it takes longer than the time it saves.

I recently discovered a garden tool that combines exceptional value and very low cost: the marker flag.

Marker flags, typically, are squares of colored plastic on a wire “mast” about twenty inches long. They are available in several colors that could be used to represent various categories of items. In a garden environment, for example, the colors might be used as codes for different kinds of irrigation devices or plants.

Marker flags often are seen in collections arrayed on a landscape in development, e.g., on the banks flanking a new highway, where a landscape architect placed them to guide the installation of plants by a worker crew.

I have come upon a novel application of marker flags in the renovation of a garden bed.

Sometimes, when a gardener creates a new planting bed, or changes an existing bed, he or she plans the project to feature specific plants and selects the plants before beginning work. In such situations, the usual procedure includes a typical sequence of steps:

  1. Clear the existing vegetation.
  2. Loosen the soil and evaluate the need for amendments (this could include an assessment by a soil laboratory, or the gardener’s informal assessment).
  3. Install the selected plants and water them in.
  4. Place a drip irrigation system in the bed, with a manual or automated controller.
  5.  Cover the bare earth—and the irrigation lines—with mulch to conserve water, suppress weeds and add to the overall appearance of the bed.

For a small planting bed, this “by the book” process could be completed during a weekend or two. Some projects, however, might be larger in scale and intended to include plants that the gardener has not yet located for purchase.

In such cases, as gardeners know, life doesn’t always proceed in such a tidy manner.

My recent experience includes the renovation of several larger garden beds to contain collections of plants from each of the world’s five dry summer climate zones: the Mediterranean basin, coastal California, the central coast of Chile, South Africa, and the southwest coast of Australia.

With this ambitious goal in mind, I cleared the plants that didn’t suit the theme of each bed, and prepared the soil, following the first two steps of the standard sequence. Plants that are native to California are fairly easy to find: retail nurseries often reserve an area for the more common California natives.

I soon discovered that acquiring a desirable selection of plants from the other dry-climate zones would take time.

A gardener who is developing a bed with any particular theme in mind could encounter similar challenges in acquiring the preferred plants. For example, finding the right plants for a white garden (one of the classic themes), or a rose garden, or any other thematic planting could require weeks or months of searching for plants to comprise a satisfying design.

Patience is a virtue in gardening, as it is in other activities, but to delay the planting of a garden bed invites an invasion of weeds. The best practice, summarized above, is to plant, irrigate and mulch in short order, but that timely process might not be workable in all cases.

Here is where the marker flags can be helpful. When the selection, purchase and installation of plants must proceed slowly for any reason, use marker flags to indicate where plants will be located in the future. The gardener can then proceed to install irrigation tubing and cover the bare earth with mulch.

The immediate benefit of this strategy is to discourage the growth of weeds.

An additional benefit is that it allows the gardener to focus on the number and spacing of plants in the landscape design. If desired, the gardener could use flag colors to indicate the intended kinds of plants: ground covers in the front, mid-size perennials in the next tier, with taller shrubs (or perhaps small trees) in the background.

This approach could support thoughtful design and purposeful shopping for plants, and replace the too-common practice of impulse buying that can result in a hodge-podge collection of plants.

Although marker flags have potential value in planning and developing a garden bed or a larger landscape they are rarely found in garden centers or mail order catalogs, which typically encourage impulse purchases. To find marker flags for uses in your own garden, visit an irrigation supply store or search for “marker flags” on the Internet. These reusable tools sell for less than twenty cents apiece, usually in 100-flag bundles, making them a great bargain in the garden.

You might not want to leave these flags in your garden for long periods (visitors eventually will ask what they are about), but when the flags support the timely use of mulch to suppress weed growth, they earn their reputation as the least expensive garden tool.

Our seasonal rains are slow to arrive this year, so there is still time for a new or redesigned garden bed to establish roots before the spring. Marker flags could ease the process of planning and mulching the bed.

Enjoy your garden.