Bouquets from your garden bring the beauty inside

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower, our whole life would change." The Buddha

IT'S ODD that flower-arranging books have so little to do with gardens, and even less to do with our busy lives. What's with all the ornate urns overflowing with elaborately wired flower constructions? I'm amazed at how celebrity flower designers manage to take the nature out of nature.

If we're intimidated by such grandiosity, all that fragrant, soul-stirring beauty will stay outdoors, rather than grace our indoor lives as well as our gardens.

Simple bouquets are all about the joy of living with flowers, not about decorating, impressing guests or accessorizing the house. All you have to do is go outdoors with an open mind and the willingness to look closely. And don't confine yourself to your own garden. Carrying home finds from walks and trading blooms with neighbors adds to the bounty and the fun.

Look at your entire property as a cutting garden, from ground covers to trees, from grasses to annuals. If you don't limit your perspective, even the tiniest garden supplies plenty of material to cut for the house. Hellebores, poppies, sweet peas, clematis, euphorbia and little shrubs like daphnes and colorful spireas are my go-tos for vase fodder many months of the year. And don't forget fruit, vegetables and herbs; bronze fennel plumps out a bouquet, and blueberry branches add autumnal color.

There's so much gratification in flower arranging when you've grown each bloom yourself, watered their roots and watched them stretch toward the sun. Admiring your bouquets as you go about cooking, eating, reading and working is an act of intimacy. The silkiness of their petals, the exuberance of their leaves and stamen, all tell the story of tending the soil, of what the weather has been like in past weeks, of dewy mornings, chilly evenings, warm afternoons.

If flowers are distilled emotion, then gathering and combining them into a single arrangement is surely the most expressive of arts. Then there's how thoroughly absorbing it is once you get going. All you need is sharp shears, a fresh bucket of cool water to plunge the stems into as soon as you cut them, and a quiet place to work with what you've cut. A little music and a cup of tea wouldn't hurt to slow you down.

With smaller bouquets, try arranging the flowers loosely in your hand before plunking them into the vase. With larger arrangements, try establishing a framework of branches and leaves in the vase, then tucking the flowers in between. Take your time. After all, you're crafting performance art that changes hour by hour, day by day, as buds open, petals drop and flowers droop. This imperfection engages us in the creative process. The ephemeral nature of bouquets makes them even more precious. Soon enough they'll be wilted flowers in stinky water, ready to be tossed into the compost.

As with earrings and shoes, you can never have quite enough vases. Collect finishes and shapes you love enough that you'll enjoy your vases even when they're sitting around empty. Stock up on smaller, narrower shapes in which a few twigs or blossoms look their best. Old tins and jars, water jugs and baskets with a glass tucked inside them all work well. I especially love vases made of rough textures, dull metal or colored glass.

You can learn so much about how to design your garden by arranging and rearranging flowers through the seasons. I can't tell you how many times I've moved plants around in the garden based on some pleasing combination or another I've discovered in the vase but never noticed out there in the dirt. Bringing the garden indoors distills its essence so we can better appreciate and play around with all the possibilities.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "The New Low-Maintenance Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com.