Bouquets for Monday June 15th

The bouquets were really nice this week, I'm enjoying having the bellflowers which are new this year. The first one is fairly typical of what I do at this time of year - blue with pink and red.

The next is purple delphinium and bell flowers with salmon and scarlet sweet william. There are a few sprigs of coral bells and green lady's mantle to add some airiness.

Last is white, scarlet, orange and yellow. The orange flowers are trollius, the yellow is yarrow, the scarlet is sweet william and the white is a delphinium and white peonies.

Selecting Sweet William Strains

I mentioned last year that I really love Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus). I grow several different seed strains - white, scarlet, "black", salmon as well as a double strain called 'Duplex' and an auricle eyed strain called "Electron".

Last year I noticed a couple of the 'Electron' plants were white with a purple eye. Most of the time they are white with a red eye, or pink with red. I decided to try saving seed from the purple ones and about 50% of the resulting plants bloomed with purple eyes. This is not surprising since they were in with all the other ones and would have crossed with them. I planted the purple eyed plants apart from the others this time and removed all the non-purple ones when they bloomed, so hopefully the seed I save this year will be truer. Here is how the purple eyed ones look. Some are dark purple but one has more like purple brush strokes.

Saving seed and making repeated selections like this is how all heirloom seed strains are created, so this year I'm going to pick out a few more. One is a dark red - not as dark as the 'black' strain, but a deep maroon. The other other is a purple double.

The red eyed flower to the lower right of the dark red gives you an idea of just how purple the purple eyed ones really are. The double purple is not as double as some of them, but the color is fairly unusual.

Bouquets for Friday June 12th

When you grow perennials for cut flowers there is a delay of at least a year from the time you plant the seed to when you actually start harvesting flowers. Last year I mentioned starting peach leaved bell flowers and here they finally are - the white "bell' flowers to the right of the delphinium. The others are the usual flowers for this season - sweet william, peonies, lady's mantle. I really love all of these.

As gorgeous as pink-blue-white bouquets are at this time of year, it gets monotonous if you can't see something else.This next bouquet contains salmon pink 'Newport Pink' dianthus, scarlet dianthus, coral bells, and white lily, peonies and delphinium.

Bouquets for Monday June 1st and Friday June 5th

Delphiniums and peonies are coming in now. The hybrid delphinium 'Aurora' that I've been growing for the past couple years blooms a week or 10 days earlier than 'Clear Springs'. This is nice as long as I remember to keep replanting some 'Clear Springs' to extned the season.

The spikes of 'Aurora' are almost a little too tall for the size of bouquets I make. This bouquet has some of my favorite flowers of the season - delphiniums, peonies, forced lilies and scarlet sweet william.

This second bouquet contains forced lilies, 'Moonshine' yarrow, sweet william and some green lady's mantle. One of my customers mentioned that the lady's mantle, "doesn't smell too great", though I don't really notice it.

Bouquets for Friday May 28th

Have really fallen behind in posting pictures this season. The first bouquet has salmon lily, purple alliums, purple clustered bellflowers, coral bells, shasta daisies and red single peony.

This second bouquet has blue baptisa, shasta daisies, white peonies and a few commercial yellow mums.

Bouquets for Monday May 25th

These bouquets have commercial chrysanthemums and statice but also include the first peonies and forced lilies. The brilliant pink peony is 'Paula Fay'. I don't have any other peonies that are quite that color. the Wild's catalog says somthing like the color, "carries well across the garden" which it certainly does. The big blue and white stippled iris is (I think) 'Stepping Out'.

The orange lily with the black blotches is an asiatic lily called 'Loreto'. I have not grown it before but it is certainly striking.

Bouquets for Friday May 22nd

I've been really bad about taking pictures this year. About half the bouquets last Friday look like this. The chrysanthemums and statice are commercial flowers. The large white flowers on the lower left are double file viburnum. The arching flower with the varigated leaves is varigated solomon's seal. You can also seen allium 'Purple Sensation' and perennial bachelor's button (Centaurea montana).