This posting will hopefully inspire you to join me picking weekly flowers. I cut flowers on a Friday evening, often accompanied by a glass of wine! The children are in bed and I spend half an hour pottering, snipping the odd stem, popping them in my bucket and savouring the peace that an evening in the garden brings, a perfect bridge from a hectic week into the weekend.
I fill the house with flowers, foliage, and hedgerow finds March through to December (January and February I make do with dried stems from the garden such as cardoons or nigella). To me cut flowers are as important to my home as pictures on the wall. Flowers lift a room giving colour, fragrance and a very special extra dimension to an interiors look and design. Weekly flowers from florists or farm shops are out of my budget and supermarket blooms are not to my taste, they tend to look a bit plastic and rarely have any scent. The solution is growing your own supply.
I have had a re-occurring conversation with many friends and family about cut flowers, they all love to have flowers in their homes, but most don’t have the time or inclination for a dedicated cutting garden. They all have lovely gardens full of blooms which they don’t dare pick for fear of ruining the display. It is my strong belief that taking one or two stems from a plant won’t in any way ruin a display; in fact it will probably improve it. There are three key facts to keep in mind:
- Many plants work on the basis of producing flowers to create seed, pick those flowers, the plant then has to produce more flowers to fulfil their purpose in life, reproduction by spreading seed. This is the case for most annuals and many herbaceous perennials. So picking flowers for the home means more beautiful blooms in your garden.
- Popping your gorgeous treasured bloom in vase on the kitchen window sill, means you’ll notice and appreciate them far more than when they were at the bottom of the garden.
- Keep it simple. Unless you have borders bursting with flowers forget huge bouquets and hand tied displays, they require a large quantity of blooms with long straight stems. Think single stems in a vase, or just a few blooms. Use small vases, I’ve collected mine over several years and they’re nearly always saved from going in the bin. Old room fragrance reed diffusers are great for single stems. Any small jar that doesn’t have the ridges for a screw top, spice jars are often good examples, you just need to snap the plastic lid off. Long shot glasses are also a favourite of mine for 3-5 stems.
Three old room fragrance bottles, an old sake bottle, a supermarket spice jar, and a long shot glass (from left to right)
Single stem rose
Mock Orange, a fabulous scent drifts through the house.
A few flowers in the old spice jar.
Small flowers displays look great by themselves dotted around the house or grouped together in a display.
A selection of vases as a central table display
Hopefully I’ve inspired you to pick a couple flowers a week to pop in vase and enjoy. Believe me, if you miss a week you’ll notice, your home will look bare.