Cut Flowers

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Not everyone likes cut flowers in their house, to some they seem funereal I guess.

I like 'em. I like having tulips in a vase in the spring. I hate trying to arrange flowers though, all the cutting of the stems and the organising. I just dump them in the vase and enjoy.

Spring is in the air la la la de de da

― rumpie, Monday, 5 March 2007 11:51 (eighteen years ago)

No love for flowers?

― rumpie, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:11 (eighteen years ago)

Flower Confidential has caused me to rethink my position on cut flowers. I've always been terrible at arranging them, but loved to have them in the house, especially sweet-smellers like freesia. It would be nice to have enough space for a cutting garden.

― Jaq, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:17 (eighteen years ago)

I like flowers fine but have no idea how to have a cutting garden

― Ms Misery, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:28 (eighteen years ago)

My mom doesn't like flowers.

― Jesse, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:32 (eighteen years ago)

Not because they're funereal, just because she doesn't like flowers. Ironically, I was a florist for a few years.

― Jesse, Monday, 5 March 2007 14:33 (eighteen years ago)

I always imagine a cutting garden being a large, wildish space full of perennials, sort of hidden away so I could hack away at will. And the next day, for every flower I cut, there'd be 5 more blooming. Also: full of exotic butterflies and no other bugs.

― Jaq, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:28 (eighteen years ago)

The cutting garden of Eden.

― Laurel, Monday, 5 March 2007 15:28 (eighteen years ago)

I used to clean house for a woman who always wanted fresh flowers in every room of the house, including guest rooms where no one was staying, and bathrooms. So that was part of my job, picking them and arranging them. I lost my taste for cutflowers after that, and prefer to just have them in the garden. However, I always put in cutting flowers for my mom, and now and again for landscaping clients. The old standbys are dahlias, zinnias, and blue salvia— the kind you buy in a six-pack. "Blue Bedder" is really tall, the blue is not as saturated and cobalt as the shorter "Victoria." Both blues bounce off the peaches and magentas of the zinnias and dahlias very well. There are so few blues in high-summer flowers.
I've been letting mu mom's dahlias overwinter in the garden rather than digging and storing. SO LAZY. That way, you get to pick all new colors each spring! Actually, last winter was so mild they survived. Not this one, I fear.
Some of the artemisias are nice in arrangements, too—the silver is nice with delicate colors. The stems wilt when you pick them, but they plump up after you put them in water.
Perennials are of limited use as cutflowers. They are crucial for garden design, because over the years they get bigger and bigger, making for architectural mass, giant clumps, repeating motifs, anchors for the eye, yadda yadda. Avoiding visual chaos. But for flower production, annuals, with their generally less-elegant growth habits, are the workhorses. Since the mother plant doesn't winter over, setting seed is its only reproductive gambit. If you cut a flower before the seeds have matured, the plant replaces it with two more.
Don't try to grow Zinnias and Dahlias unless you have lots and lots of sun. They are Mexican! Nothing beats them for fabulous colors, though, so cut down some trees and demolish your neighbor's house!

― Beth Parker, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:06 (eighteen years ago)

Oh my god, the long-windedness of me. Beg pardon.

― Beth Parker, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:06 (eighteen years ago)

Beth always drops the gardening science.

― Ms Misery, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:09 (eighteen years ago)

Lots of tulips and daffodils are grown commercially around Seattle - there's an amazing area about an hour north that has a tulip festival, field after field of beautiful tulips. Acres of shimmery color blocks. Our tiny dark damp yard is going to produce nothing by slugs and moss from the looks of it. Maybe I could set up reflecting mirrors on the neighbors' roofs.

I put my name on the list for a pea-patch. If I get one, I'll make 1/2 of it flowers.

― Jaq, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:11 (eighteen years ago)

Oh, those perennial sweet peas are great cut-flowers. Absolute monsters as plants—they make their own jungle!
Jaq, you are in Dahlia land! Did you ever go to Swan Island Dahlias?
http://www.dahlias.com/images/assets/fieldshot.jpg

― Beth Parker, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:18 (eighteen years ago)

Terribly unsustainable, especially where they are flown in from hot countries or grown in heated greenhouses.

― Ed, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:21 (eighteen years ago)

Oh yeah, the Dole company. Grow your own, for sure!

― Beth Parker, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:25 (eighteen years ago)

O white tulips, you are so velvety and luminous.

― Laurel, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:30 (eighteen years ago)

Beth always drops the gardening science.

Da g-bomb.

My housemate got a whole bouquet of lilies for her birthday recently. Now that is a funereal smell. A cutting garden sounds like a great idea. But obviously a lot more work than I would ever care to do.

― accentmonkey, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:33 (eighteen years ago)

I know—the lily smell! So much better in the garden than in the dining room!

― Beth Parker, Monday, 5 March 2007 16:58 (eighteen years ago)

Lilies give me a migraine, I can't handle them being inside at all. I love sweet peas and my pop had the knack for growing them. They covered the back of the aviary at his place and smelt amazing in summer. I will have to dig out a pic of it to post here. I have tried to grow them twice, but no luck.

― Hard like armour, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:43 (eighteen years ago)

Every time I see the term "cut flowers" I think "what other kind of flower is there?" and then it takes me a second to remember.

― nabisco, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:47 (eighteen years ago)

haha immaculate germination.

― Hard like armour, Monday, 5 March 2007 22:02 (eighteen years ago)

HLA, try the perennial sweet peas. They're weedy as all get-out.

― Beth Parker, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 00:05 (eighteen years ago)

Lathyrus latifolius, as opposed to lathyrus odoratus. They don't have the sweet smell, but they're beautiful.

― Beth Parker, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 00:09 (eighteen years ago)

Yes, I've only tried the seasonals. The first time was in a garden, but I think bugs were the problem that time. The second time was in my new place in pots on the balcony. Do they like lots of sun? I only get morning sun where I am now. I don't think they liked the pots. Not enough room for their feet. They sprouted and climbed well, but then stopped, didn't flower and died. :(

― Hard like armour, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 00:12 (eighteen years ago)

Sweet peas are beautiful, but I love them more so for the smell. It's absolutely a smell of summer for me.

― Hard like armour, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 00:17 (eighteen years ago)

Some favorites:

Cala lilies
Quince/cherry blossoms or dogwood
Daffodils/ narcissus/ jonquil
Chrysanthemums (in small rooms) last forever
Daisies make me happy
Gardenia in water in summer
White roses are my personal symbol
Sunflowers or artichoke blooms in late summer/early fall

― Michael White, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 02:50 (eighteen years ago)

[i]White roses are my personal symbol[/i[

Do you leave them in the empty safes for the police/sexy insurance investigator to find after you've gone?

― accentmonkey, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 09:58 (eighteen years ago)

Only if she's sexy. Otherwise, it's cheap carnations.

― Michael White, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:03 (eighteen years ago)

Cherries are starting to bloom around Seattle now. For you, Michael White, from a few years ago:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/156/412627856_b0f02b24eb_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/147/412627865_ed1d2f0ae7_o.jpg
Cherries of the UW quad.

― Jaq, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:19 (eighteen years ago)

The plum trees started flowering here about a month or so ago. I had some in the window until recently but next I think I'll go with some dogwood.

They have some in GG park but I've never seen anything like the cherry blossoms in Japan, though I've never been in DC in the spring.

― Michael White, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:21 (eighteen years ago)

When growing up in Indiana, we had dogwood and redbud in the woods surrounding our house. Forsythia has never done it for me as a sign of spring; I don't really like yellow so much. But pink and white blossoms on stark black branches cheer me to no end.

― Jaq, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:24 (eighteen years ago)

I like forsythia's starkness and how artlessly it sends up bare sticks, and then overnight they suddenly become slashes of color as seen from the NJT train window on your way to work. All of which is ruined when people in the suburbs think it should be pruned like a boxwood, god help us all.

― Laurel, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:28 (eighteen years ago)

Btw, jaq, that quad looks lovely. Are there ever undergrad girls there hugging their books up to their sweatered bosoms whose French I could help improve?

― Michael White, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:30 (eighteen years ago)

Those cherries!
I love forsythia. I love all flowers. I used to be more picky, but they wore me down with the constant exposure.

― Beth Parker, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:30 (eighteen years ago)

Flowers, man. They just don't know when to quit.

― Laurel, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:31 (eighteen years ago)

All the time MW, all the time.

― Jaq, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:44 (eighteen years ago)

J'y arrive!

― Michael White, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 15:46 (eighteen years ago)

My pop and his sweet peas, circa '87.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/414942433_f8e00643d9_b.jpg

― Hard like armour, Friday, 9 March 2007 05:16 (eighteen years ago)

Woah, sorry for huge pic.

― Hard like armour, Friday, 9 March 2007 05:16 (eighteen years ago)

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