DIY Backyard Bouquets and the Garden Appreciation Society

– Posted in: Flowers on the Brain
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Learn how to make bouquets from flowers in your backyard!

Yes, you can! Make pretty arrangements for your house with flowers from your backyard.

Many gardeners don’t cut flowers from their own gardens. I know some feel it will ruin the look or design of their garden to have pieces missing from it, but I think a lot of gardeners just haven’t given themselves permission. Or, like me, after they cut the stems they wonder, “Now what?”

I have attempted to arrange flowers from my garden into a bouquet many times, and I have often been less than satisfied with the results. After reading Debra Prinzing’s book Slow Flowers (read my review), I was inspired to try again. My first attempt was in early June. I had brought back peonies and dame’s rocket from my previous garden. I remembered to cut peony buds that showed color and a few petals opening, instead of fully opened flowers, so that they would last longer in the vase. I found the longest stemmed peony leaves from those I had trimmed and lined the arrangement with them in a vase I had purchased at the grocery store. Then I placed the peonies equidistant around the perimeter of the opening, and filled in with dame’s rocket.

bouquet of peonies and Dames rocket

After reading Slow Flowers, I thought this bouquet could be improved upon.

It was okay, but it didn’t wow me. So I asked myself,

What would Debra do?

Debra would add something that poked out from the roundness, preferably in a contrasting color. Lady’s mantle came to mind, but that was growing at my former garden, and I wasn’t even sure it was blooming yet. What did I have growing here with long stiff stems and smallish flowers at the end? Well, that describes garden heliotrope, but it wasn’t blooming yet. Oh, wait…it doesn’t have to be blooming. It just has to work in the arrangement. And I think it does:

bouquet of peonies, dame's rocket, and valerian

Do you think the garden heliotrope improves this bouquet?

After a couple of days, the dame’s rocket looked kind of sad, but some of the peonies that had been in bud were now open, so I got rid of everything shabby and rearranged the remainder in a different vase:
Peonies and garden valerian in a pleasing bouquet

This arrangement is more open, but still pleasing. The vase was a gift from my mother-in-law.

As each bouquet faded, I went out to the garden for more flowers to try my skill.
Siberian iris and peonies make a pleasing backyard bouquet

The peonies are from the former garden, the Siberian irises are from my current garden. The vase was a garage sale find.

I learned to look for newly opened flowers or almost open buds, so that they would last longer in the vase.
Three short stemmed roses make a sweet bouquet.

These roses were charming while they lasted, which wasn’t long. Vase purchased from a seed company no longer in existence.

My roses are just getting started here, so there weren’t many blooms, and I certainly didn’t want to sacrifice much of the stem. I cut them short, in full bud, but they didn’t seem to last as long as the peonies.

My Daughter Takes A Turn

We hosted a family reunion on the July 4th weekend. I went out to the garden and cut one stem of everything I thought I could spare. (My garden is still getting established, and I really don’t have big clumps of anything.) Then I offered them to my daughter Talitha to arrange. I’ve always felt she does a better of arranging flowers than me, and I know she enjoys it. But she hasn’t read Slow Flowers, and I was curious to see what she would come up with. She made two bouquets.

My daughter arranged these flowers from our backyard.

Spirea, hydrangea, and bellflower provide the rosy pinks in this arrangement, contrasted with white ‘Lichfield Angel’ roses and spotted foxgloves.

My daughter arranged these hot-colored flowers from out backyard into a pleasing bouquet.

One of the last peonies combines with yarrow, sundrops, butterfly weed, rose campion and daylilies to make floral fireworks for Independence Day weekend.

“Wow,” I said to her, “you’re going to add that pink peony to the hot-colored combo and not the white-and-pink arrangement?” “Yep,” she replied. “It will make the other colors pop.” And pop they did. I took these pictures above the day after the bouquets were assembled, and the elderberry flower had already wilted. Its creamy whiteness had helped offset the riot of other colors.

Now It’s My Turn: One of Everything

Yesterday was a birthday celebration. Again, I went out and cut one of everything, except I cut two stems of ditch lilies. This time I decided to try to put together a one-of-everything bouquet myself. This is what I started with:

Make a bouquet out of backyard flowers

It was challenging to make this motley assemblage of flowers into a pleasing arrangement.

Ulp. Where to begin? Once again I asked myself,

What would Debra do?

Nothing came to me. In her arrangements, Debra always has at least three stems of something. Or, if there is only one, it is what she calls a diva blossom, one that has a lot of impact. This just looked like mish-mash. I had cut everything as long as possible to give myself as many arranging options as possible, but even still the stems were all different sizes. So, just to help me think, I sorted them by size:

I sorted these backyard blooms by size.

After sorting the stems by length, I started to figure out how to arrange them.

What had I gotten myself into? I had an urge to combine them all in one arrangement, so even though I felt I was slightly mad for doing so, I went with it. Looking at my sorting containers, I realized most of my vases had too small of a mouth for all those flowers. They would just look constricted and unnatural. The square one holding the shorter stems might have had a big enough opening, but I thought it was too short.

What would Debra do?

Debra would look for a container that wasn’t meant to be a vase, but could hold water. I remembered seeing a cache pot when I hunted up the sorting containers. A cache pot is a pretty plant container with no hole in it. You slip a plant in a plain plastic container (that does have drainage holes) into the cache pot to dress it up.

But how would I keep the flowers from flopping around? I didn’t have a flower frog, which Debra often uses to stabilize her flowers. I didn’t have excelsior–wooden shavings used as a packing material. I did have chicken wire (also called poultry netting) but it was in the barn waiting to be used as fencing. (I will probably save the scraps from that project for future flower arranging.) Oh! I can use these:

Marbles from the dollar store can be used to hold floral arrangements in place.

These marbles from the dollar store can stabilize my arrangement inside the cache pot.

I poured a couple of inches into the bottom of the cache pot and started inserting the tallest stems. But they were still falling out of position, so I filled that pot to the brim with marbles. It was heavy!

Beginning with the tallest flowers, I tried to get the shapes and colors to play off of each other, turning the cache pot around as I worked, looking for gaps in the arrangement. The marbles worked almost too well: sometimes it was so hard to push them in that the stem bent, and then I would have to trim it at that point. About halfway through this project my company arrived, and I started to feel a bit rushed. When I was done, the design didn’t seem very cohesive to me. Here’s the final bouquet:

I created this bouquet with flowers from my backyard.

This is the final result of attempting to arrange a bunch of disparate flowers.

There were two things that really bothered me. One, I couldn’t get the stem of butterfly weed to behave. True, I had cut from the plant the one stem that had flopped and grown twisted, but instead of adding interest to the arrangement, it just looked awkward. Two, the head of deep red bolted lettuce, which I was so proud of myself for thinking to cut, wilted almost immediately. Instead of becoming a dramatic element in the arrangement, it just looked sad.
My latest backyard bouquet looking at a different side.

Does it look better from this angle?

Harvesting Strategies

Perhaps cutting one of everything is not the best strategy, but after the peonies were done, I certainly didn’t have bunches of anything. So, let’s learn from my mistake here. What could I have done differently? I could have harvested stems to complement the container I wanted to use. Or I could have just cut stems that seemed to harmonize with each other. Or I could have made more than one arrangement, as Talitha did. As it was, I kind of overwhelmed myself with the possibilities. Since I made it, it’s started to grow on me, but it’s not my favorite arrangement. But my mother liked it.

I’ve been a little bit silly asking what would Debra do every time I got stuck. Of course it’s not about copying Debra’s style of flower arranging, but about trying to remember the tips I picked up from her book.

The Garden Appreciation Society

Shortly after I read Debra’s book, I stumbled upon the Garden Appreciation Society. (Thank you, Jayne!) Started by Erin of The Impatient Gardener, this is a garden blog meme intended to encourage gardeners to bring a little bit of the beauty of their garden inside as a floral arrangement. ” Every week (or so) you are going to go out in the garden and cut a few flowers or interesting foliage and bring it in your house to display. It might be an extravagant bouquet, but it could just as easily be a single bloom, or even a lone hosta leaf. And then you’re going to take a photo of it and link it up here.” This is a further incentive for me to practice my floral arranging skills, so starting this week, I’m going to join in, and I hope you do, too. Reading Slow Flowers will help you improve your flower arranging, but nothing takes the place of practice.

Disclosure: I have an affiliate relationship with Amazon.com. If you buy anything from them after following one of the links in this post to their site, I earn a small commission, which I use to offset the cost of running Cold Climate Gardening.

About the Author

Kathy Purdy is a colchicum evangelist, converting unsuspecting gardeners into colchicophiles. She gardens in rural upstate NY, which used to be USDA Hardiness Zone 4 but is now Zone 5. Kathy’s been writing since 4th grade, gardening since high school, and blogging since 2002. Find her on Instagram as kopurdy.

Now, the digging and dividing of perennials, the general autumn cleanup and the planting of spring bulbs are all an act of faith. One carries on before the altar of delayed gratification, until the ground freezes and you can’t do any more other than refill the bird feeder and gaze through the window, waiting for the snow. . . . Meanwhile, it helps to think of yourself as a pear tree or a tulip. You will blossom spectacularly in the spring, but only after the required period of chilling.

~Adrian Higgins in The Washington Post, November 6, 2013

Comments on this entry are closed.

Erin @ The Impatient Gardener July 19, 2013, 11:27 am

So glad you joined in, Kathy. I’m really no good at floral arranging myself but I find myself loving whatever I bring inside, even if it’s not exactly wedding-party worthy.

Linnae July 16, 2013, 12:51 am

Hi Kathy,
I quite enjoyed reading about your process for making a flower arrangement. I’m still learning, as well, and I often find myself having similar dilemmas. It has been interesting finding out what will last in a bouquet and what fades very quickly, for instance. I also do the same thing you do: when half the bouquet is done, I just pull out the dead stuff, reshuffle it, and keep it going as long as I can!
I didn’t make it for Erin’s Garden Appreciation Society last week, but I’m hoping to this week. I’ll be looking for you there!

Deborah B July 15, 2013, 11:14 am

I enjoyed reading about the process you went thru in making the bouquets, and your struggles. It helps the rest of us learn along with you.

Lydia Plunk July 15, 2013, 10:40 am

This blog is a nice morning pick me up. Thank YOU for publishing.

Betsy July 15, 2013, 8:47 am

I enjoyed this! Hosta leaves always come in handy, especially when you have a shady garden that doesn’t produce many flowers like mine and I can’t bear to cut the ones that finally bloom.

Gail July 15, 2013, 6:43 am

Lovely bouquets and the process and suggestions are excellent. Regarding Talithia’s arrangement, I saw a planting of deep pink phlox and orange lilies that was spectacular and am planning on adding an orange flower near my phlox. gail

Jenny July 15, 2013, 4:16 am

Love love love these flowers – really makes me appreciate the summer months 🙂

Flâneur Gardener July 14, 2013, 11:36 pm

When I just have one stem each of flowers that don’t seem to want to go together, I either add lots and lots of tall grasses to create a meadow-feel to the arrangement or put each stem in a separate vase and arrange the vases randomly on the dining table or in a window.

Kathy Purdy July 15, 2013, 9:07 am

Those are two good ideas! Thanks for commenting, Flaneur Gardener.

Flâneur Gardener July 17, 2013, 4:37 pm

I did quite a nice arrangement with a bunch of random flowers I picked on a walk by the fjord the other day; wild angelica, yarrow, purple thistles, sea artimisia, chamomile, Joe Pye weed and wild alium with some feathery purple grasses to pull together the different colours (purple, white, yellow, green, chartreuse and silvery green).

The ears of grass sort of served as a veil around the bouquet, making the colour contrasts less prominent and serving as an intermediary between the purple shades and the other colours. And they made the whole thing scream to high heavens of summer, walks in the countryside and dips in the sea that is only a little too cold. (And thanks to the chamomile and the artemisia it also had the smell of a sea meadow!)

Kathy Purdy July 17, 2013, 6:20 pm

That sounds really pretty. Do you have a picture of it on your blog?

Flâneur Gardener July 17, 2013, 10:07 pm

No; I forgot all about taking a picture of it, and today I’m back in town for a day in the office, so I’ll see if it’s still alive tomorrow when I re-join my husband in the holiday home.

Talitha Purdy July 22, 2013, 6:27 pm

I was going to suggest something similar. . .when you have a lot of flowers, you need more neutral. If I’m going to try to go with a “wildflower” type feel of mixing everything, I try to put in more foliage. In this case, I would use something like hosta leaves or other strong foliage. It gives the eye a place to rest instead of always dashing from bloom to bloom.