I may well have created a vase on Monday with the title ‘Candy Girl’ before, but with Dahlia ‘Eye Candy’ as the main focal point that is what popped into my head, alongside lyrics of the Archies’ late 1960s song ‘Sugar Sugar’.
29.07.2024 - 08:59 / ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com / Cathy
Three weeks ago I posted an ‘Armful For Julie’ on IAVOM, blooms scheduled for my retiring Pilates teacher but, thwarted by her illness, not given. After battling a nasty bout of Covid, her third and worst, she will be calling into our class tomorrow to say a belated goodbye to those who have known her a long time, so I am trying again and have created a slightly smaller armful of blooms to go with the vase that is wrapped and ready for her.
I deliberately avoided most of the blooms I used last time, but the result is still on the pink spectrum, albeit a paler one. Beginning with a head of phlox and three ‘Eye Candy’ dahlias, the phlox was quickly abandoned because of its size, and the dahlias joined instead by Cosmos ‘Double Click Rose Bonbon’, Zinnia ‘Purple Prince’, Knautia ‘Salmon Queen’, Limonium ‘Rose Light’ and clarkia from the cutting beds. Venturing back into the rest of the garden, the bunch grew with the addition of Sanguisorba ‘Candyfloss’ and spent heads of S ‘Pink Tanna’, Veronica ‘New Love’, Persicaria ‘Pink Elephant’, Stachys ‘Cotton Candy’. a dark astrantia, Gaura ‘Gambit Pink’, nigella seedheads and some alchemilla froth to soften the edges.
Their temporary overnight home was what could perhaps be called a ‘handkerchief vase’, with an asymmetrical neck, whilst the prop is a metal spider that lives in the bus shelter alongside a sign that says ‘Spiders Keep Out’: apologies to anyone offended by its presence and the absence of a warning! Its use as a prop is a nod to Robert the Bruce who, as legend has it, was inspired to persist in his fight to lead Scotland to independence from England by a spider repeatedly trying to spin its web despite several failures.
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I may well have created a vase on Monday with the title ‘Candy Girl’ before, but with Dahlia ‘Eye Candy’ as the main focal point that is what popped into my head, alongside lyrics of the Archies’ late 1960s song ‘Sugar Sugar’.
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Well, I did it, got out our stepladder and climbed up to cut some of the mammoth sunflowers for today’s vase! Joining them are several stems of Rudbeckia ‘Cappucino’ which work brilliantly with the sunflowers as they are all on the same colour palette. The sunflowers, ‘Velvet Queen’ and ‘Earthwalker’, are both shades of copper, and the rudbeckia range from pure to two-tone copper in various coppery degrees.
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There is so much material to choose from in the garden and there have been more than a few warming Monday vases of late, but I particularly wanted to include a couple of seed successes whilst the opportunity was still there. I have grown gomphrena from seed before, but with minimal success, so this year’s three plants (right) were par for the course, each bearing a single bloom. Although supposedly mixed colours, the only variety I could find at the time, all three are this fiery orangey-red. Emilia javanica ‘Irish Poet’ (left) is new to me and has been very much an eyecatcher since early June, with its tiny fluffy orange blooms. I shall certainly grow it again.
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Not having used fiery colours for a few weeks, that is what I had in mind for today’s IAVOM contribution but, having picked a stem of Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’ as my starting point, I found there were no suitable blooms on Dahlias ‘David Howard’ or ‘Totally Tangerine’ to continue my planned theme. However, there was a single bloom on new Dahlia ‘Blyton Softer Gleam’, albeit looking slightly more yellow than the colour that attracted me in the catalogue, so this was snipped and the search continued.
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Today’s boozy vase shares some elements with last week’s although lacks its fullness, containing less than an armful but more than a small posy, although with more time at my disposal it could have become more fulsome than it is. Having achieved my personal challenge of creating a vase with such a large number of blooms, I feel more confident of repeating the exercise and the garden is certainly proving the material to do so.
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