Worth the wait

The roses have arrived in full. Every morning I go out to inspect the new blooms. I find it hard to cut them - I counsel myself into saving them for something really special and then can't make up my mind what that is. I find reasons to hang out with them - weeding, watering. I visualize different arrangements, but then weigh their imperfections with the cost of butchering my baby shrubs and do nothing. The next day I go out and they've shattered into a million petals. Roses don't have a lot of patience for my anxieties. 

Right before leaving town for the long weekend I threw together this little bouquet to honour the first flush of blooms. I hated to part with it. All the flowers are from my garden. 

Bouquet of roses ('Distant Drums,' 'Koko Loko,' 'Julia,' 'Sally Holmes,'), foxglove, phlox, sweet pea vines, epimedium, astrantia, oregano, cosmos - all from my garden

Late night sweet pea picking

A tribute with lilies

There is art that when you see it, makes your heart start beating like a drum, makes you feel light headed, takes you out of space and time for a while. The energy and potential in them ceaseless. For me it's been pieces like Bernini's 'Apollo and Daphne' or Jules Bastien-Lepage's 'Joan of Arc,' or visiting the Pantheon, that have left me electrified. Discovering Sarah Ryhanen's work in 2008/2009 through Design*Sponge and subsequently her own blog Saipua was the same thing. Her floral arrangements bypassed any rationality and hit me head on.  

When I look back at those early blog posts that were the roots of my obsession, they look tamer, smaller, often more clumsy, than her work today. But at the time I had never seen anything like what she was doing. Each piece was revolutionary and filled me with an immediate desire to get my hands on flowers. At some point I admit I wrote a fan email. 

Honestly, it would be difficult to overstate the impact seeing her flowers had on me, let alone getting to meet her and watch her work. Over the years her arrangements and her photographs of them have become intense experiences of nature and beauty, of colour, of texture. And she's always searching for better flowers, for better ways to do big weddings, for better ways to run the farm and her business. Recently she was featured again in the New York Times T Magazine. 

Lilies make me think of Sarah and Saipua, so once they started blooming I knew I had to make a wild arrangement inspired by her work. I present it now, without her dark sense of humor or easy grace with flowers, but hopefully in a way that conveys fleeting time in the garden and the wildness that hits in height of summer. 

Getting in the bees' good books

When you garden every day, it can seem like nothing is happening. With our hot and dry early summer, I feel like I spent the last month and a half just watering and battling various bug infestations. Even picking sweet peas has felt like a chore when it's over 30 degrees. 

But after leaving the garden for almost two weeks of travel out east, it was easy to see how much everything had grown. Within a few hours of landing at the airport I had made a big, bright arrangement of zinnias, sweet peas, poppies, foxglove, frosted explosion grass and verbena in a new pitcher I picked up while in New York. It made coming home so much sweeter. My little baby seedlings are finally producing lots of flowers! 

The easy favourites right now are poppies - every morning I walk around the garden to see the new ones that have opened. It's also a good time of day to watch the bees, who couldn't be happier with the veritable feast the garden is providing at this time of year. Bachelor buttons, cosmos, poppies, oregano, veronica, agastache, mint and perennial scabiosa seem to be their current flowers of choice. Yesterday, as I picked flowers for my grandparents' 60th anniversary party they were buzzing around me, drinking from the freshly cut blooms. 

Shirley poppies amidst the grasses

Shirley poppies are an exceptionally short-lived cut flower but I love their delicate nature - to help them take up water, sear freshly cut stems 

Phlox and oregano

I am in LOVE with this phlox called 'Creme Brulee' which I grew from seed from Chiltern Seeds in the UK

The first of the roses, Koko Loko, inspired this gorgeous colour scheme using phlox, heuchera, scabiosa, oregano, Frosted Explosion grass and calibrachoa.

I was in charge of cake and flowers for the party - two of my favourite things! I made a four layer cake (alternating vanilla and chocolate) with raspberry and vanilla swiss buttercream. I loved making the little flower arrangement on top of the cake with beautiful geranium leaves and sweet pea tendrils. 

Red Charm

Last weekend I got to put together some special wedding bouquets for a bride who wanted deep red. It's not every day a bride asks for such a rich colour palette so I wanted to find a real showstopper of a flower for her. 'Red Charm' peonies came through for us perfectly! 

A box of bouquets!

Bridesmaid bouquet

Who needs magnolia when we have lilacs?!

The name of the game these days is peonies and lilac. Old fashioned flowers seemingly present in every yard. These peonies actually came from Holland as ours aren't quite out yet and I had a wedding to pull together, but the lilacs are all from the neighbourhood (cut with permission of course!!). The response to these flowers was amazing - people were so excited to see peonies the size of their face and curious about one of the lilac varieties I used called 'Sensation.' I love when my flowers elicit questions - compliments are one thing but curiosity is even better because it means the flowers were worth lingering on. They made people want to reach out and talk to me about them. In case you were wondering, you too can grow 'Coral Charm' peonies in your garden, as well as hundreds of varieties of lilac! 

I'm waiting for photos from the wedding but wanted to put a few up before lilac season is over. If you want to cut lilac from your yard (or from someone else's with permission), I recommend doing so before mid-morning or in the evening. Lilac looks its best if it's given lots of water as soon as possible after you cut it. Simply make a fresh cut with sharp clippers on the diagonal, then one cut straight up into the stem to split it, and then submerge in water. Lilac will last longer if it's kept cool, but like many heavily scented flowers, it usually only lasts a few days once cut. 

Big thanks to everyone who let me cut lilac from their yards!! 

Could barely move as there was lilac hydrating everywhere

Lilac and 'Coral Charm' peonies for the church

Beautiful 'Sensation' - the first bicolour lilac, discovered in the 1930s by a Dutch grower

The morning after I got up early and made this arrangement with the leftovers.