Whilst photographing and writing for my EOMV post yesterday, I was struck by how quickly and seamlessly the woodland had morphed from the whites of snowdrops to the pinks of fritillaries and the early rhododendron and then suddenly into the blues and whites of bluebells and wild garlic – all in the blink of an eye! Nature continues to bowl me over with her subtle trickery…
Today’s vase showcases the current woodland occupants, bluebells and wild garlic, picked in equal quantities but with some of the latter discarded as they appeared to dominate the vase, a slim milky white glass car boot find. Leaves of arum, a smaller variety than the A italicum I usually use, were included to add extra green. The bluebells I originally planted in the woodland were the native British species, but with Spanish imposters in the vicinity there has been a degree of inter-marriage, something I am unlikely to be able to prevent.
Blue and white blooms require a blue and white prop, this time a vintage tea or sugar bowl decorated with ‘British Scenery’ and made by Booths in the 1920s or 30s. The bowl came with other random blue and white oddments in a box from a local auction.
It gives me great pleasure to pick material from my garden every Monday to create a vase and bring the joys of the garden inside – and additional pleasure encouraging others to do the same by hosting this meme. Please do consider joining us by creating your own vase and leaving links to and from this post.
The website greengrove.cc is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
I had hoped to have several long stems of Dahlia ‘Geoffrey Kent’ to place into one of my taller slimmer vases, but it wasn’t to be and instead there are a few stems of varying length with blooms of variable openness, placed into the smallest of my Caithness glass ‘Ebony’ vases with stems of Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ to add grace and movement.
Outdoor Christmas trees can be stopped from blowing over through various means, like planning the tree’s location to securing it in its position. Keeping the tree as stationary as possible without it toppling over will help it remain pristine and gorgeous throughout the holiday season.
My perennial Phlox have been a good stalwart flower for cutting and filling a vase this last few weeks. I found the pink colours had more scent but all the Phlox seemed to drink copious amounts of water (I wondered if water and scent were related). The Penstemon in the same vase as the Phlox was not as successful as they had a far shorter life. Another successful long lasting cut flower is the Alstromeria. The Reds performed better than the yellows but both lasted over a week.
My mother very successfully grew Geraniums (pelargoniums) as indoor pot plants for many years. For the majority of gardeners the zonal geraniums are an outdoor feature of brightly coloured flowers that are often treated as annuals.
I nearly shared a photograph of monstrous Rudbeckia ‘Irish Eyes’ on Six on Saturday, but had too many images for it to make the cut. It is a variety I have grown from seed for six or seven years or more, but never has it grown so tall – at least 4 feet or 120cms! Not only that, but the blooms have lasted on the plants for a good month with no deadheading required, although one or two are now just on the turn. If any bloom deserved a shout-out in a Vase on Monday it is this rudbeckia and, accordingly, its blooms make up the majority of the contents of today’s IAVOM.
Do your flowering shrubs need a makeover? Perhaps it’s the overgrown shrub that craves your contact whenever you use the front door or carport. Maybe it’s an old shrub that lost its vitality and produces few if any flowers in its dense thicket of crisscrossing branches. Then there’s the shrub that becomes top-heavy or “leggy”, with most of its leaves clustered at the top, revealing bare or leafless stems below. If you want to improve access to your home or your view from windows now hidden by leaves and branches, consider these three options.
During pollinator week (June 20 -24), I spent time hunting for native bees in the South Carolina Botanical Garden. Native bees are powerhouse pollinators and of critical importance to plant life and our food supply. Over 4000 species are native to North America, with perhaps a thousand active in the Southeast, still a rather daunting number! But you must begin somewhere, so I set out with my camera to see who was in the garden!
…to displaying flowers and foliage in a vase, but that art could be anything from utilising learned floristry techniques to basically plonking them in a receptacle. Perhaps after plonking we might then rearrange them slightly to achieve something we see as more satisfactory, without necessarily recognising why we want to tweak things, or perhaps we might place them a stem at a time to achieve some perceived kind of balance, without having any formal or even informal training in floristry.
Farmhouse sinks have been a favorite of interior designers and homeowners alike for years. When renovating a kitchen, one of the most important features is the sink, and the classic aesthetic, depth, and variation of materials that farmhouse sinks offer often make them a winning choice.
Once yesterday’s wet afternoon had subsided, I was able to venture out to cut material for today’s vase, choosing increasingly bountiful blossom from crab apple Malus ‘Evereste’ and Tulip ‘Pink Sound’. The latter were bought largely because of their bargain price for sufficient tulips to fill a few containers, but I have nevertheless enjoyed watching them springing up and growing into shapely heads in a pleasing pink ombre effect. Admiring them from the kitchen windows it occurred to me that pairing them with the similarly shaded crab apple would make a pleasing combination for IAVOM.
Thank you all for your kind words over the last week following the unexpected death of my sister; they were very much appreciated. It has been a strange week and I greatly value the support of our blogging community.