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Bring It In!

Stash the garden's beauteous bounty in a vase and find inspiration

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ALLAN MANDELL / "GARDEN TO VASE: GROWING AND USING YOUR OWN CUT FLOWERS" A mid-summer nosegay is a classic floral arrangement built in the hand, wrapped and tied, then settled into a vase. ALLAN MANDELL / "GARDEN TO VASE: GROWING AND USING YOUR OWN CUT FLOWERS"

A few that still can make the cut


Linda Beutler says there's still time to plant a flower arranger's garden that will yield flower and foliage through October. Here's what she recommends:

Rudbeckia triloba, the brown-eyed Susan of the prairie, has loads of little flowers summer and autumn.

Sow a late crop of Dolichos lablab, the purple hyacinth bean, from seed.

Swiss chard is fabulous in arrangements; plant the Bright Lights strain for multicolored stems.

Everyone who likes roses should grow 'Jacques Cartier' (aka 'Marchessa Boccella'), a repeat bloomer with long-lasting, fully double pink flowers.

Clematis (yes, clematis!) x durandii has lovely purple/blue flowers.

Last is Miscanthus 'Gold Bar,' a stout and boldly striped grass that will not take over the garden or flop.

"People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us." — Iris Murdoch, "A Fairly Honourable Defeat"

When we bought our first little house in Maple Leaf more than three decades ago, I rarely ventured out into the garden except to pick flowers. The need to have flowers close by, to arrange and decorate the house with them, was the first step of my descent to gardening obsession.

Pretty soon I was paying keen attention to what bulb bloomed first, which flowers lasted longest, what colors and textures complement each other. Once you start seeing myriad possibilities in every leaf, pod and petal, you're hooked on gardening.

I was reminded of this early, intense flower fascination last month when I watched the new Nova show called "First Flower" (see www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/flower/). I tuned in to see Dan Hinkley exploring the wilds of China, but loved every bit of the program's history and science. One of the paleobotanists interviewed on the show really got into explaining how flowers are the sexual parts of plants. We humans respond nearly as helplessly to a lily's charms as do the birds, bees and butterflies lured to its pollen.

So don't just leave all those gorgeous flowers out there in the garden. Fashioning a bouquet can be utterly absorbing, a few Zen-like moments of repose in the midst of a busy morning. Bringing flowers into the house not only allows you to get close to beauty but also inspires your gardening. There's many a time I've arranged a specific flower with foliage from a different plant, then saw such possibilities in the combination that I was out the door to move plants around in the garden.

A few that still can make the cut


Linda Beutler says there's still time to plant a flower arranger's garden that will yield flower and foliage through October. Here's what she recommends:

Rudbeckia triloba, the brown-eyed Susan of the prairie, has loads of little flowers summer and autumn.

Sow a late crop of Dolichos lablab, the purple hyacinth bean, from seed.

Swiss chard is fabulous in arrangements; plant the Bright Lights strain for multicolored stems.

Everyone who likes roses should grow 'Jacques Cartier' (aka 'Marchessa Boccella'), a repeat bloomer with long-lasting, fully double pink flowers.

Clematis (yes, clematis!) x durandii has lovely purple/blue flowers.

Last is Miscanthus 'Gold Bar,' a stout and boldly striped grass that will not take over the garden or flop.

Which leads me to a new book from Portland florist and clematis fancier Linda Beutler. "Garden to Vase: Growing and Using Your Own Cut Flowers" (Timber Press, $29.95) will encourage even the most reluctant flower arranger to wield a pair of clippers. Linda's a gardener to her soul, so this book isn't about long-stemmed hothouse flowers from Holland. Nor is it about overblown, wired stiff arrangements for special occasions, the kind that give no sense of a flower's nature or personality. Linda writes about tulips and grasses and roses and berries and how to arrange them loosely and naturally.

Here are a few tips from the book:

• Raid the herb garden for bouquet fodder: Lavender flowers dry beautifully, oregano drapes down the side of a vase, and rosemary has fragrant foliage year-round.

• Cutting stems at an angle is the single most important technique for cut-flower longevity.

• Mophead hydrangeas, Japanese or semi-double peonies and parrot tulips are the longest-lasting flowers of their kind.

• Lilacs and sunflowers stay fresh longer if every bit of their foliage is stripped off before putting them in the vase.

• Tulips, unlike most flowers, continue to grow after they're cut.

Beutler fills us in on a florist's tricks of the trade, including what tools work best and how to use floral foam. She tackles artistic considerations like proportion, and harmonizing flora with vase. An encyclopedic section lists flowers, foliage and fruit to grow for plunder. Mostly she helps us find our own flower arranger's eye, so that when we step outside we'll be inspired to create highly perishable works of art from what we're already growing in our gardens.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "A Pattern Garden." Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net.