Tips on Prepping Bouquets That Will Last
For me, April and May are times to enjoy the garden, not work in it. So much is in bloom and everything is as fresh as, well, spring. Of course, I water and keep after the weeds, and I must finish planting the summer vegetables, but I make sure I take time to sit on the garden bench and enjoy the beauty before me and pick a few bouquets for the house.
My favorite arrangements are wild, frothy mixes of things from the garden, so varied it’s almost like being in the garden. I stuff the vase with delphiniums, pink alstroemerias, campanulas, purple penstemon, agapanthus, diathus, lavender scabiosa and, of course, roses. Drapy plants such as abutilons or a big tree-like fuchsia called F. arborescens, with its clusters of small orchid flowers, hang almost to the table. I use the wiry branches of westringea with its gray leaves and flowering stems from the leptospermums.
In short, I use whatever’s blooming, and it doesn’t matter if it’s an annual flower or a shrub--in it goes to this gardener’s brew.
I usually don’t worry about how long the arrangement will last because there are always more flowers outside, but this spring my daughter, who has just moved into her first apartment in the center of Hollywood, has been asking for bouquets from the garden. These will have to last more than a few days.
For help, I asked Joan Banning, who knows a thing or two about cutting flowers from the garden, how to make arrangements last. She keeps her house filled with flowers from a spectacular garden (it’s on the cover of my second book, “Planning and Planting the Garden”). She even has bouquets outside, to greet you on the front porch of her gracious old Pasadena home.
She’s also done this commercially and knows all the secrets and tricks--things like searing the ends of Iceland poppy stems over a gas burner or poking holes through the necks of ranunculus--to make flowers last a long time.
There are books devoted to the subject, but I wanted just some basics that would work for almost any flower so I could pick a big bouquet from the garden and bring it to my daughter.
The Basics
Banning told me to cut the flowers first thing in the morning and immediately plunge them into a deep bucket of warm water. Carry the bucket with you (that’s what those deep, galvanized French florist buckets are for) and submerge everything but the flowers in water, leaves and all. She says that slightly warm water seems to work best.
Let them sit in the bucket, out of the sun and wind, for several hours. “It gives them a nice big drink,” she said, before putting them into the vase.
Add about a teaspoon of household chlorine to each quart of water that goes into the vase, to help keep it clear and prevent rots that shorten the life of cut flowers. You can also use any of the preservatives sold at florists and nurseries, but that’s optional. Some people add a little sugar or 7-Up to the water instead.
If you want to help the flowers stand up, or arrange them in an artful way, don’t use the foam or sponge-like material frequently used by florists. Use an old-fashioned metal frog, the kind with short spikes to hold the flower stalks, instead.
Strip off all the leaves that will end up under water in the vase, because these will decay, muddy the water and shorten the life of the cut flowers.
If you include roses, cut them a second time while holding the stems under water. This prevents the new cut (just above the old) from being blocked by a bubble of air.
Keep the bouquet out of the sun and away from heating and air-conditioning ducts that can dry it out. With any luck, the bouquet should last a week (a few flowers, such as alstroemerias and lisianthus will last 10 days or more). That should be long enough to bring a bouquet to someone who can’t be with you in the garden this spring.
