Cut & Dried : Grow Your Own Strawflowers, or Everlastings, for Designer-Inspired Arrangements

If the summer never seems quite long enough, you might consider planting everlastings, which will extend the season indefinitely. Everlastings, often called strawflowers, are quite different from other garden flowers; their colorful petals are not petals at all, but stiff, dry bracts that feel like paper or straw when you touch them. Everlastings don’t wilt after being picked; instead, bouquets continue to look much as they did on the plant, lasting, well, nearly forever. Only an accumulation of household dust will do them in.

Most everlastings must be grown from seed, and many are annuals. You can find the most common, the true strawflower ( Helichrysum bracteatum ), as a small plant at nurseries, but usually only those with gold- or rust-color flowers are available. Seed catalogues also offer soft tones of salmon, pink, rose, purple and white. The best source is Park Seed Co. (write Cokesbury Road, Greenwood, S.C. 29647-0001 for a free catalogue), which carries seeds for all the everlastings named here.

One of nature’s more beautiful oddities, true strawflowers look good in the garden and even better in arrangements. The recurved, papery bracts surround a yellow center, which is the true flower. Properly-grown strawflowers produce as many as 50 everlasting blossoms.

Annual statice ( Statice sinuata )--not to be confused with the perennial sea lavender ( Limonium perezii ) that naturalizes in coastal gardens--is another star among everlastings. The stems of annual statice bear papery bracts that conceal the tiny true flowers inside. The plant is easily grown from seed, or you can plant it from seedlings, which a few nurseries carry at this time. Florists consider it a staple in fresh- and dried-flower arrangements. Blue statice has been popular for some time, but statice also comes in pastel shades, including yellow, pink and rose, as well.

The dainty, fragile-looking Xeranthemum has double daisy blooms that fool even the bees, which in my own garden have learned to land gingerly in the center of the surprisingly stiff, sharp petals. Flowers are rosy-purple, pink or white.

Another delicate everlasting that resembles a daisy is acroclinium ( Helipterum roseum ). Its pink blossoms look deceptively delicate and soft, almost like pink (or white) powder puffs. But, instead of having silky, soft petals, these flowers have dry, stiff bracts like those on the true strawflower.

Daisy-like Ammobium alatum , so unusual that most gardeners won’t recognize even its common name--winged everlasting--bears scores of yellow-centered, one-inch papery blooms on strange, square-sided stems. This robust plant can grow as tall as four feet, producing an overwhelming number of small blooms perfectly suited for nosegays. Pick the blossoms before they open fully and reveal the yellow centers.

The blooms of globe amaranth ( Gomphrena globosa ) look like oversize clover and remain attractive on the plant for a remarkably long time. Tall varieties are grown almost exclusively for drying, but a new dwarf, ‘Buddy,’ pictured above, produces compact, one-foot, mounded plants that are splendid in the garden or in pots. This one is sometimes found at nurseries.

Pearly everlasting ( Anaphalis margaritacea ) is a perennial with woolly, gray leaves and white flower heads that are not only easy to grow but also help add bulk to dried arrangements.

And then there is a scabiosa named Ping Pong that produces insignificant white flowers that are quickly transformed into indestructible seed-carrying spheres. Although they appear to have originated in another galaxy, they are handsome in flower arrangements. The plants grow rapidly and will return year after year from self-sown seeds.

While all of these flowers (or seed pods) will dry on the plants, or are dry to begin with, they are best picked and hung upside down in a dark but airy place; the rafters of a garage is an ideal spot. And, when summer’s other flowers are long gone, you will still have the makings for fall and winter bouquets.