One of the best things about camellias is just how good their flowers look fallen on the ground. Entirely intact with not a petal out of place, these dropped blooms are as fat and frothy as the ones strewn over the tree. Look around now, and you can see plush camellia carpets building up all over town.
Flowers have never had to be attached to a plant to look good. Their beauty and radiance lives on even when they are no longer actually growing. That’s why cut flowers are so enchanting. Their heady scents, vivacious colours and unruly textures have the power to change how we feel.
They evoke the dynamism of a garden and the reality of the seasons, even when you buy them in a shop. But raise them yourself and the rewards only grow.
In her new book, The Picking Garden: Grow and gather cut flowers for homegrown arrangements all year round, Jo Turner lays out how those with even only small outdoor spaces can grow blooms to enjoy inside.
These flowers will have all the wondrous imperfections that come from being ruffled in the wind and battered by rain. They will be wild and seasonal and all the more satisfying for the fact that you have known them since they were bare buds.
But, as with all aspects of gardening, there are few shortcuts and lots of planning.
Turner says the quantity and quality of homegrown flowers is tightly bound up with soil health. Rich soils that are teeming with microbial life will ply plants with more minerals and nutrients and thereby pave the way for more vigorous and prolific blooming.
Homemade compost, manures, fertilisers and mulch can all help improve your soil. Choose plants that suit the orientation of your patch because different flowers will have different sunlight requirements. Also grow your flowers in a place where there is easy access to water – especially if you are growing in containers, which dry out quickly in the warmer months.
As for the colder months, Turner says that, while they don’t present as many picking options as others seasons, there are still a host of flowers from which to choose.
She says camellias are among the most reliable winter bloomers and also nominates marigolds, hellebores, Geraldton wax, wallflowers, fritillaria, snowdrops, nigella and snowball trees as being good for cutting now. But she agrees there is much else besides, and in my own garden plump wattles, delicate correas, fiery aloes, gum blossoms, sages and snowflakes are among the flowers currently ripe for the picking.
To get the most out of your blooms, Turner does not advocate just heading outside with any old pair of scissors. Instead, be strategic. Arm yourself with a sharp pair of secateurs rubbed with bleach to eliminate the risk of spreading disease and take a container of water, into which you can immediately plunge cut stems, to maintain the flowers’ hydration and help extend their life.
Once back inside, re-trim the stems at a 45-degree angle to increase the surface area available to take up water and then how you proceed will depend on what you have cut and how you wish to display it.
With camellias, Turner says to make a vertical split at the base of each woody stem and soak them in warm water for at least an hour to ensure the flowers become properly hydrated. Something as delicate as a hellebore, however, requires a softer touch.
Hellebores should only be cut after the flowers’ seeds begin to develop to ensure they are strong enough to survive without wilting. Turner then recommends dipping their fine stems in recently boiled water for 30 seconds to extend their life in the vase, which should be filled with “cool, not cold” water.
Snowdrops, however, prefer their water on the decidedly cold side, while fritillaria lives longest in a vase if, every two to three days, the stems are re-trimmed and re-scalded in boiling water.
Different flowers have different idiosyncrasies – in terms of the growing conditions that suit them best, the stage of development at which they should be cut and how their life can be most extended in the vase.
As to the vase itself, Turner says don’t restrict yourself to a single one: “Play around with groupings of different containers that place your cut blooms at varying heights, highlighting different aspects of the flowers.”
You might feel it’s too cold to garden outside right now, but you can still have the joy of creating flower arrangements.
The Picking Garden: Grow and gather cut flowers for homegrown arrangements all year round (Thames & Hudson) by Jo Turner with illustrations by Rachel Russell is out now.
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