Dear Avant Gardener

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Cut Flower Arrangements With Native Plants

Heather Evans

Celebrate the delicate beauty of your native plants in cut flower arrangements.

I like the contrast of this winsome arrangement from my garden with the formal setting in my living room. (Photo: Heather Evans)

Dear Yardener,

As I write, Pete is outside digging huge holes to plant a privacy hedge of seven-foot tall witch hazel shrubs (Hamamelis virginiana) along the end of our driveway. It’s our second take on this hedge; I lost patience with the young blueberry shrubs (Vaccinium corymbosum) and moved them to extend an existing row of blueberries along the back fence.

We should have finished all our planting before the arrival here of summer’s heat and lower rainfall. Unfortunately, the witch hazels arrived at the nursery the day we left for a long-planned vacation to England, so they had to wait. But it was worth it.

Our trip included visits to many gorgeous gardens and a week of hiking from inn to inn in the Cotswolds, culminating at the ​Garden Museum Literary Festival​. What I appreciated most about this itinerary is that forced me to stay in the moment. Whether catching up with old friends over dinner or focusing on avoiding cow and sheep manure as we hiked, getting out of my own head was enormously restorative.

J is for July — and joy

I’m going to continue practicing mindfulness throughout July and I encourage you to join me. Let’s skip the lists of chores to celebrate our gardens at, for most of us, their peaks. As Nigel Slater wrote recently,

[I]t takes something of an effort for this amateur gardener to just sit and breathe in the garden. ... This summer I will do better. There will be a glass of rosé drunk while the path is still littered with dead petals, and tea will be served (cake too), even though I really should be clearing the leaves from the gutters. Making time to sit and simply take in the delights of the garden, to breath, to smell, to hear, all the little wonders that exist in this space, is a must. Surely it is why I made a garden in the first place? A place in which to ‘be’ as much a place in which to grow and work. What was that about ‘time to stop and smell the roses’? Well, perhaps that time is now. — ​Gardens Illustrated​

Frankly, my garden would benefit if I were more of a compulsive worker like Nigel; I’m more of a compulsive planner, but the net effect is the same: We forget to enjoy the moment. It’s a great time to take a break from planning and working in the garden and to stop and smell the roses — or the Monardas and Monardellas.

Mindfulness practices

I have already developed a few habits to force me to closely observe my garden’s beauty and wonder: Arranging furniture so we see the garden from inside many times a day — e.g., turning our three-season porch into a dining room and angling my desk so I look down on the midnight garden (Look! There’s a baby bunny emerging from under the spruce.)

I also stroll a circuit of the yard at least daily, often more frequently, observing changes and activity, like bees and butterflies. On Mondays, I note what’s blooming and note the plants in ​RHS Gardener's Five Year Record Book​. And most evenings, we enjoy cocktails in the midnight garden, facing the snag with its show of birds, including four species of woodpecker, often with the ​Merlin app​ open to identify other birds by sound.

This month, I’m going to try to develop a new habit, inspired by garden designer Sean Pritchard’s talk at the literary festival and his scrumptious book, ​Outside In: A Year of Growing and Displaying​: I aim to have fresh flowers from my garden in the house at all times. Selecting and arranging flowers requires observing them closely, a powerful exercise in mindfulness. Moreover, it’s a way to circumvent the toxic fresh flower industry (more below).

Will you join me?

Fondly,

— The Avant Gardener

Why, How, Wow!

Why?

The fresh flower industry uses vast quantities of pesticides, packaging, and fossil fuels to deliver flawless blooms. Most cargo moves by ship, but flowers must travel by air to maintain their freshness. Unfortunately, air travel generates 47 times more carbon emissions per ton-mile as ocean freight, according to MIT scientist ​David Simchi-Levi​.

Brandon Graver ​did the math​ on the annual carbon cost of transporting Valentine’s Day flowers from Colombia alone, concluding, “Flying that much sweet-smelling cargo burns 114 million liters of fuel and emits approximately 360,000 metric tons of CO₂.” For comparison, he noted, “A forest larger than the area of Houston (1,624 square kilometers) would be needed to sequester that amount of carbon.” If you add the carbon cost of the flowers’ protective packaging and of getting them to customers’ doors, you’d need a bigger forest still. — Margaret Renkl in ​The New York Times​

In addition, the foam used by florists to create arrangements breaks down into microplastics proven toxic to aquatic animals. When florists — or you — pour water from arrangements down the sink, the microplastics enter our waterways. A study by scientists at RMIT University in Australia found:

— Phenol-formaldehyde microplastics are eaten by marine and freshwater invertebrates.
— These microplastics leach phenolic compounds that are toxic to aquatic animals.
— Animals respond to both the leachate and physical effects of these microplastics.
— Ingesting phenol-formaldehyde microplastics alters antioxidant enzyme biomarkers.
— ​Science of the Total Environment

Floral foam microplastics are invisible to the naked eye but extremely persistent in the natural environment, taking thousands of years to completely degrade. (Source: ​Sustainable Floristry Network​)

How

Sourcing cut flowers from your own garden eliminates all the environmental hazards of the fresh flower industry. Moreover, selecting and arranging them encourages you to look more closely at your flowers, a mindfulness practice. Photographing them, as Sean Pritchard does, adds another layer of observation and creativity.

A celebration

After hearing Pritchard’s talk, I immediately bought his book as a gift and then read it myself on the plane home. What inspired me most about his approach to floral display is how he celebrates the ephemeral, creating a tableau vivant with flowers as the actors and the containers and an interior vignette as the scene.

Everything I display, both inside and out, comes from a need to celebrate the majesty of colour, scent, shape, and texture found within plants and flowers. My life is improved and enhanced immeasurably by them. … It doesn’t matter if it’s the most perfect roses or the simplest little primrose; both remind me to exist only in this moment. — ​Outside In​

Formal elements of displays

My takeaways from Pritchard have nothing to do with his ravishing flowers. My commitment to growing “​two-thirds for the birds​” — i.e., >70% of the vegetation on my property is native to this region — means my floral palette barely overlaps with Pritchard’s. I appreciated but ignored the palette and looked to the formal elements, including:

  1. Richly patterned settings

  2. Groupings of containers

  3. Tiny and unusual containers

  4. Books as platforms

  5. Single flowers or species

  6. Floating flowers

The day after returning to Rhode Island, I applied these elements in my first display. I’m pretty pleased with the result, below, although it’s far cry from the opulent models. What do you think?

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and floating fleabane flowers in antique sake cups and foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) in a 16th c. Vietnamese bottle sit on a book stack in front of antique Japanese screen. (Source: Heather Evans)

Just do it

Most importantly, Pritchard inspired in me a “just do it” attitude and the resolve to create and photograph home-grown fresh flower displays at all times throughout the year. That’s possible wherever you live if, like Pritchard, you prepare by drying flowers and/or forcing bulbs (narcissus, lilies, hyacinths) when you don’t have fresh flowers in the garden.

Game on!

A North American native! Dried oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) flowers in ​Outside In​; I have six of these shrubs in my garden. (Photo: Sean Pritchard)

Wow!

Despite the exotic floral palette, I highly recommend ​Outside In: A Year of Growing and Displaying​ to stimulate your imagination. The photographs are so sumptuous I want to eat them. Weird.

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