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It's high summer, the time of year when Martha Stewart and her gardening ilk are gathering hydrangeas and dahlias to create flower arrangements that transform a ho-hum space into a va-va-room. They always make it look easy to turn cut flowers into stunning bouquets. So why do my own garden arrangements never seem to rise to that level of radiance? I realized I needed some expert guidance and turned to one of the best gardeners I know, Frances Palmer, for tips and advice.
Palmer is a Connecticut-based potter whose ceramics are collected by fans like Aerin Lauder and, yes, the Domestic Diva herself. She is also a photographer who uses her ceramics as the starting point for flower arrangements that look straight out of an Old Master painting. As Palmer explains in her latest book, Life with Flowers: Inspiration and Lessons from the Garden, she created a cutting garden on her property to ensure a constant supply of blooms for her photography.
She started three decades ago with a 50-foot-diameter garden surrounded by a fence to keep out deer. She then converted an old tennis court on her property into a second cutting garden with 30 raised beds and four beehives for pollination purposes. Her most recent addition is a greenhouse to keep plants alive during New England winters.
Palmer's approach to flower arranging is as simple as it is unconventional. Here, she shares some of her tips:
Palmer heads out to the garden early to cut flowers for her arrangements. This is when the stems are most hydrated, especially on a hot summer day, before the sun and heat start to deplete a flower's energy. As a result, the blooms will last longer in a bouquet. "One of the advantages of growing your own flowers is that when you cut them, they're incredibly fresh," she notes.
She makes sure her clippers are sharp and free of rust (see below for her favorite gear), and she cuts stems as long as possible in case she needs an extra-tall bloom to punctuate an arrangement at the finish. She usually brings a bucket of water with her to the garden so stems don't dry out. As a beekeeper, she keeps a careful eye out for insects, checking flowers carefully before bringing them inside. "Bees tend to sleep in the flowers overnight," she warns. "You have to be careful."
A bouquet is only as beautiful as the flowers in your garden. Palmer plants annuals that will span the seasons so she has a good range of blooms of differing colors, shapes, and heights from spring to fall. She is known for her dahlias and plants hundreds of them every year, along with blue asters, Japanese anemones, gladioli, and bearded iris. All of these are what she terms "focal point flowers": blooms that will create spectacular arrangements.
"Late August and September are the crescendo in my garden," she says. "That's when everything I have planted -- the salvias, zinnias, dahlias, and cosmos are blooming. And the roses and even the bearded iris go through a reblooming at summer's end. It's a real cacophony of stuff that is happening."
Once she has a variety of cut greenery and flowers, Palmer chooses a vessel for her bouquet. "Let the intended function of the arrangement guide you," she says in her book. "Will it go on a dinner table or a side table? Would a wide-mouthed vase be best, or something with a narrower opening?"
When making a bouquet, start with the greenery -- not the flowers. Palmer clips branches from shrubs and trees to create the base architecture of an arrangement. She might even use a flowering vine like morning glory, letting it spill out of the vase while the branches hold up showier blooms. Amaranth is another favorite. "I use a lot of leaf material as a kind of support system in a vase," she says.
Palmer doesn't use a lot of what she calls "mechanics" in building a bouquet -- no floral foams, blocks, or tapes. The one exception is a flower "frog": a weighted base with metal needles that hold and keep blooms upright and in place so they don't droop in a vessel with a wide mouth. "I would put one in a footed bowl to hold things like lily stems," she says. "But I tend not to use any mechanics with a vase, because the narrow opening holds everything in."
After the greenery, Palmer builds out the base, adding flowers and other organic elements that contribute interesting colors and textures. From there, she begins to add what she calls the "focal point" flowers, working in descending order from the thickest stems and biggest heads (dahlias, roses, lilies) to smaller and more delicate specimens (salvia, asters, smaller roses). Palmer's flower arrangements tend to be lush; she is not a minimalist. But a bouquet's beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Do what looks good to your eye. Once you're done, step back and assess -- you can move things around and remove a stem or two until you get the desired look.
In her book, Palmer recommends extending the life of flowers by changing the water and cutting off the bottom of the stems every few days. But in reality she admits she keeps things a bit simpler. She might add water to a vase on hot days, but she does little else. "That's the benefit of growing your own," she says. "When the flowers die, you can compost them and go cut some more."