Bouquets for Monday, October 13th

I have missed posting for the past couple weeks. No excuse really, I guess I am just wearing down. This is the last week, though, so I felt I had to post a few pictures.

Most of the flowers are chrysanthemums now. There are also forced lilies, a few snapdragons and even some small sunflowers. There was a hard frost at the farm on October 3rd so all the zinnias and dahlias were killed.

These 3 bouquets all contain about the same materials except for foliage. This first one uses leaves from a Purple Smoke Bush.

This one uses peony foliage. Sometimes peony foliage gets spotted and ratty looking by this time of year but on some plants it stays clean and just changes color to red or orange. This one had turned a really nice deep red.

Lastly, here is a bouquet with some of that eucalyptus that I first wrote about 7 or 8 months ago. It is finally ready! You can see one of the small black centered sunflowers dead center in the bouquet.

Bouquets for Friday Spetember 26th and Monday September 29th

It is hard to believe it is the end of September and I have only 3 more weeks of deliveries. Bouquets for this week contained mainly chrysanthemums and asters. I also have lilies which were started in crates on July 15th, plus some annuals that are still producing like snapdragons, statice, zinnias and sunflowers.

I am both proud and ashamed of using roadside white asters in this yellow and white bouquet. Proud because they look quite nice and I don't have any white aster hybrids, but a bit ashamed because they are, after all. roadside weeds!


I made several burgandy and white bouquets this week just to get away from all the yellow, gold and red that is around in the fall.




I made many bouquets using purple and orange with dashes of gold. The lily here is 'Royal Sunset' and the picture really doesn't do it justice. The red-orange in the picture is actually kind of a deep pink and the yellow throat in the lily is more dark gold than it appears in the picture. The aster is a hybrid called 'Little Carlow'. The pinkish-orange spikes are an Agastache but the name escapes me right now.

I have a few of this wine red aster called 'Crimson Brocade' which is just beautiful. After dividing it again next year I should have plenty. I don't usually combine crimson and orange becqause they usually clash a bit, but it somehow works here, maybe because there is enough purple in the aster to bring out the purple-orange contrast.

Bouquets for Friday September 19th and Monday September 22nd

The flowers for the 19th and 22nd are about the same as for last Monday the 15th except I had more asters available. This first has red aster 'Crimson Brocade' with pink, white and red mums:

Orange lilies, mums and zinnias with purple aster 'Marie Ballard':

This one is red celosia with pink aster 'Patricia Ballard' plus pink and white mums. I guess there is a snapdragon in there, too:

Lastly, here is a yellow lily combined with white and yellow mums, a sunflower and goldenrod.

All in all I thought they were quite nice!

Bouquets for Monday September 15th

After a whole summer of mostly annuals, things are now switching back to perennials with the cooler weather. We have not had a frost but most of the usual annuals like sunflowers and zinnias prefer warmer temperatures and longer days.

Asters have finally started blooming. The purple one below is 'Marie Ballard'. The taller mums are commercial but the shorter ones were grown locally. The feathery spike at the top is celosia.

I was talking to a local mum grower who told me the short stature is probably due to the drought in the summer - I just couldn't keep them wet enough.
I still had a few lisianthus and used them in Monday's bouquets. A new crop is just starting to flower and will be appearing in the next week or so.

Bouquets for Monday September 1st

The lisianthus are starting to run out so I can't be as generous with them as I have been for the past several weeks. I have a third sowing coming along but they won't be ready for a few more weeks. I've been using more foliage to make up for fewer lisianthus. I often use few if any "greens", preferring to use small filler flowers instead, but this week nearly all the bouquets contained either baptisa, silver artemesia or Sweet Annie.

Because the contents of the bouquets has not changed much I have been mostly posting pictures of more unusual color combinations. Most of the bouquets are still in more traditional color combinations like red-yellow-orange, pink-white-purple and so on, but I have already posted so many pictures like that it seems silly to post more.

This one is a combination of silver artemesia, salmon zinnias, light purple lisianthus, gladioli and a few spikes of salmon agastache. The agastache has an aromatic, minty smell.



The next is yellow and white with ferny Sweet Annie as a foliage filler. The other flowers are lisianthus, zinnias, helenium (small gold flowers top left) and solidaster.




This last one contains no foliage and a combination of pink lisianthus, red, green and pink zinnias and white statice.

Bouquets for Friday August 29th

Once again, no new flowers. I don't think anything new will appear until the asters start blooming in a week or so.

As it turned out, none of the sea hollies I planted came up. However, I did have a couple at the house so I made a bouquet using them.



I also did more purple and orange, a combination I never seem to get tired of.

My friend Deb once told me that she only liked red combined with white so I was thinking of her when I made this last one.

Bouquets for Monday August 25th

I used a lot of Baptisa foliage in these bouquets. I also used Sweet Annie (Artemesia annua) in a few of them. Other than that it is still the same flowers just combined in different ways. Here is an example of the Baptisa foliage. It is almost as blue as eucalyptus, and certainly easier to grow but of course does not have that great scent.


I am getting more comfortable using the silver artemesia foliage. It looks really nice with blues and pinks, it might even work with yellow but I have not tried that. Artemesias all have a sharp, herby scent. I find it invigorating but some people might not like it.

I really liked this simple bouquet of white lisianthus and statice with orange zinnias. I keep meaning to do more like this but orange has generally been in short supply this year. Too much cantelope color and not enough orange.

Bouquets for Friday August 22

No new flowers but a few new combinations. This is Rudbeckia lacinata, light purple lisianthus and solidaster.


Pink lisianthus, white lilies, 'Amazon Rose Magic' dianthus, white zinnias and dahlias. People are always asking about the bi-color snapdragon - it is 'Opus Appleblossom'.




This is salmon pinks zinnias and statice with 'Echo Champagne' lisianthus and some orange gomphrena thrown in as accents.


The same salmon statice and zinnias combined with light purple lisianthus and solidaster.


Finally, white lilies, 'Cinderella White' lisianthus, yellow zinnia and rudbeckia, and solidaster.

There were also purple-white, red-yellow-orange, and all purple bouquets but I've posted plenty of pictures of thoser recently.

Bouquets for Friday August 15th and Monday August 18th

I never got around to posting about last Friday so I'm combining it into Monday. There is not much new to say because the flowers I have been using have not been changing much. Lisianthus, sunflowers, statice, zinnias, feverfew, dianthus, lilies, rudbeckia, ageratum - quite a list when it is all strung together but it has not changed much in the past few weeks.


I've been making lots of purple and white bouquets for the past couple weeks. The only thing in this bouquet that hasn't appeared in previous weeks is the big white dahlia.



I made several for Monday with this somewhat unorthodox color combination of "champagne" lisianthus with yellow statice and cherry red zinnias and dianthus. The lisianthus is able to pick up both the yellow and the cherry colors.

I never seem to get tired of combining apricot or orange and purple. I prefer orange but I've got melon colored lilies so this is what I came up with.


Last Friday I made quite a few bouquets with purple and white lisianthus, fuzzy blue ageratum and pale yellow solidaster.

Each week I end up making a few one of a kind bouquets though I usually don't take pictures of them because only one customer will actually receive one. Here is one that is made up entirely of apricot/peach/salmon colors. It is more Martha Stewart-ish than most of the stuff I do but I really liked it.


Last Friday I made one bouquet using silver and pink that was kind of fun. The silver is from artemesia 'Silver King'.

Looking at the bouquets from the past few weeks you can see why I go to so much trouble to grow lisianthus. They are beautiful cut flowers and I like to be able to have enough to use them generously.

Bouquets for Friday, August 4th

Still using about the same flowers as for the last couple weeks. Solidaster, a naturally occurring hybrid of goldenrod and aster that I really like has started to bloom. Solidaster has tiny pale yellow flowers that can be combined with almost anything. Here is a picture of it combined with lily 'Suncrest', lisianthus 'Echo champagne' and dianthus 'Amazon Neon Red'.

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I feel like you can take almost anything and combine it with lisianthus and it looks elegant. The next picture is of white lisianthus with yellow zinnias, statice and yarrow and red gomphrena.

In addition, Friday's bouquets included many pink-white, all purple, and red-yellow-orange bouquets similar tot he ones I've been making for the past week or so.

Bouquets for Monday August 4th

Today's flowers were essentially the same as last Friday's. About half the bouquets were either pink-white or the all purple ones. The purple ones looked a little more elegant because I had a perennial statice as a filler.

The rest of the bouquets were red-yellow-orange, lavender-salmon or one of a kind like blue-white or purple-white.The red-yellow-orange bouquets had a stalk of this cool millet, 'Joker' that kind of looks like a cattail.

Bouquets for Friday, August 1st

Whenever I am able to put the bouquets together quickly they turn out nice, and these went together real quick and easy. Lisianthus appeared in pretty much all the bouquets today. I did several like this with just different shades of purple. The lisianthus are 'Twinkle Deep Blue' and 'Echo Lavender' and they are combined with purple liatris, verbena bonariensis, 'Amazon Neon Purple' dianthus, purple zinnias and phlox 'Nicki'.

I did a number with pink lisianthus, white liatris, 'Amazon Rose Magic' dianthus and a red (deep pink) oriental lily called 'Arabian Night'.

With all the yellow flowers available in late summer I combined 'Cinderella Yellow' lisianthus (really a cream), with sunflowers, yarrow, rudbeckia, statice and zinnias to make a number of yellow and white bouquets.

I also made one that was just purple and white. The lisianthus here is 'Echo Blue Rim', combined with white snapdragons, deep blue statice, ageratum and phlox 'Blue Boy'.

Bouquets for Monday July 28th

Monday's flowers were quite similar to last Friday except I had more lisianthus to work with. I made quite a few combinations with white - purple and white, pink and white, yellow and white. The double lisianthus with the blue edge is 'Echo Blue Rim'. The sweet william is 'Amazon Neon Purple', a first year flowering variety. The spikes are liatris.



The pink and white bouquets contained double lisianthus 'Conderella Pink', pink snapdragons and larkspur, white echinops and white feverfew as filler.

The yellow and white bouquets are about the same as last Friday except these include cream colored lisianthus 'Cinderella Yellow'





This last bouquet contains 'Twinkle Deep Blue' lisianthus combined with liatris, 'Amazon Neon Purple' dianthus. The green flowers are bupleureum. This is the first year I have successfully grown these, they need cold to germinate.

Bouquets for Friday July 25th

The first of the lisianthus I planted last January have started blooming. The ones in the bouquet below are 'Twinkle Blue Blush'. The grass is 'Tapestry' millet, and the sunflowers are 'ProCut Lemon'. There is also a bit of yellow statice and some yellow rudbeckia. This bouquet is 100% annuals.



The next bouquet has pink larkspur, 'Raspberry Wine' mondarda, white statice, red zinnias, 'Natural Feelings' phlox, snapdragons and lily 'Triumphator'. The big lilies are lovely and fragrant but a little hard to incorporate into a bouquet because each flower is held horizontally.

Here is today's version of a red-yellow-orange bouquet. 'Tapestry' millet like in the first one with orange lilies, red snapdragons, and orange and yellow statice. The yellow pom-pom flowers at the top of the bouquet are from plants given to me by a friend. I think they are Rudbeckia laciniata 'Golden Glow'.

Bouquets for Friday July 18th and Monday July 21st

I forgot to take pictures for Friday but the flowers I used were about the same for tomorrow.


Lots of red, yellow and orange bouquets because I had LOTS of red and orange lilies. The first sunflowers have been coming in. I did several sowings of these so they should be appearing regularly for the next couple months.


There were quite a few pink-purple-green bouquets Friday but just a few for Monday. The green spikes are Bells of Ireland. You can also see a couple purple zinnias in there. In the upper center, next to the green spike, is an unusual double phlox called 'Natural Feelings'.



There were also quite a few bouquets that were various combinations of pink, white, blue and purple. I included a picture of this one because it contains white globe thistles (Echinops).


Pink, yellow and white annual statice appeared in most of Monday's bouquets.