Oriental Lily Arrangement

As the Asiatic lily season is winding down, the oriental lilies are starting to bloom full swing. Granted, I don’t have many growing this season, but the scent of them is sweet bliss, the smell so beautiful. What better flower to use as the focal in an arrangement than oriental lily?

The Foliage

Sometimes the best foliage is the greenery that comes from the garden without intention. Think tomato branches, pepper stems, raspberry branches- greenery stems from the garden that can be spared as a food source to add the structural beauty to a bouquet.

Peony Foliage

For this oriental lily arrangement, I snipped some peony foliage. The peony blooms have subsided since early June. With plenty of greenery still left on the peony plant, the plant is able to still gain energy for its root for next season, while taking off a few stems.

With July heat, the leaves have some rust spots on the tips. For a home arrangement, this does not bother me. Some of the worse leaves, I just snip off. When all the other flowers are added it is unnoticeable that those bad leaves were taken off.

I like working in sets of threes for the most part, especially the base. Three stems of peony greenery are cut.

Dusty Miller

With this being the first year I grew Dusty Miller for cut arrangements, I’m finding that I do like it with its silvery color and unique texture. I’m still learning, so I’m hoping that they will have a larger stem length, or maybe it was this year with the early drought that is causing them to be shorter.

I cut these near the bottom of the plant. Other foliage is still on the plants as I took the main stem.

The Focal Flowers

Oriental Lily

Lilies as cut flowers are to be grown as annuals. Oriental lily for a floral arrangement is best when they have a few blooms per stem, rather than 10 or more as the older perennialized lilies do.

I don’t follow this rule. I’m a home gardener and small scale cut flower farmer. I can’t bear to pull a flowering plant that I know will rebloom next year. I don’t mind harvesting bulbs to replant next year, but discarding the bulb. It’s not for me- at least for this season of my gardening- and I’m sure many home gardeners can relate!

When I harvest lilies, I will harvest ones that are at least two years old with decent height. At least 1/3 of stem needs to be left for the leaves to gain energy to provide to the bulb for the bulb to survive until next season. I aim for cutting no more than ½ of the stem.

I was debating whether to follow my original plan in having all white Oriental lily for this arrangement, but I settled on cutting stems that were ultimately taller- choosing the yellow and pink lilies.

Sunflower

My Henry Wilde branching sunflowers from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I tried these my first garden at the farmette. They do tend to leave a lot of pollen, but they are beautiful smaller sunflowers great for arrangements. I don’t mind the pollen, and neither do plenty of customers.

The crazy part with these sunnies is that I didn’t plant any since that first year! When we rototill the garden in the fall, the rototiller pushes the seeds further in the soil, making them survive some harsh, cold winters.

For harvesting, I picked two that were in the process of opening while the third one was closed with some yellow showing in the center. This latter one is what is desired when picking sunflowers, although at times it is nice to include more open ones in a bouquet. The closed ones will just last longer in the vase, but the open ones provide a beautiful and full bouquet from the start.

Rudbeckia

Oh my goodness. I know many people love sunflowers- I do too! But, these double gloriosa daisy rudbeckia are stunning beyond compare. They have double blooms, much like a double bomb peony. Essentially, they are the peony of the rudbeckias. So desirable!

My grandmother loved rudbeckia and even called all of them gloriosa daisies, versus the traditional common name of black-eyed susans.

The Supporting Blooms

Cosmos & Petunia

There is nothing sweeter in a bouquet than adding some stems that add a layer of whimsical. Cosmos and petunias are supporting flowers that add some height to the bouquet, as well as giving it a touch of a wildflower look.

Cosmos are flowers included in wildflower mix. These varieties include the Double Click mix from Johnny’s Select Seed and Double Dutch Rose from Baker Creek. Both are double blooms with multiple layers of petals.

When cutting cosmos, the key is to cut a long stem, but at a set of leaves for more stems to produce. Cosmos are cut and come again flowers. When they are cut correctly, they will continue to grow blooms to be harvested.

Petunias are heirloom and started from seed. Honestly, nobody has written about using petunias as cut flowers in arrangements. I think we have come to a point where petunias are used just as bedding flowers. Any new varieties are grown to be shorter and spread out across a flower bed or in a hanging basket. These traditional petunias are called Balcony Mix, coming in shades of pinks, purples, unique mixes of both. They are from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They are easy to save seeds for coming seasons as well.

The awesome part of these Balcony Mix petunias is how tall their stems actually become throughout the season. Some “cut flowers” are shorter than what these petunias have grown to. It just amazes their growth and life.

Believe me or not, petunias stay blooming in the vase for rather a long time. They out live other cut flowers. The original opened flower may be gone, but it still has other ones opening. I absolutely love using this variety in bouquets.

Sweet William

Although I love the white from the Sweet Series or the more traditional mix like what my mom grows, my absolute favorite are the Amazon Series. This year, I grew the Amazon Cherry Rose variety, which has a strong sweet scent and beautiful disks of a darker peony-like pink blooms. The stem length on these flowers are long! Instead of putting them along the bottom of a bouquet, they can be easily one of the tallest flowers available.

Since I was using large lilies, I chose large versions of this flower to match the size of the bouquet.

Carnation

I’m still working on growing beautiful carnations with great stem length. The ones this year are shorter, but are still long enough to adorn the bottom edges of an arrangement.

Goodness though, their scent is very rosy and sweet. The ones chosen are the Marie Chabaud variety.

The Spike Stems

Snapdragons

I fell in love with snapdragons last year. They are so beautiful. As spike flowers are necessary for arrangements, snapdragons are a larger option with many individual blooms clustered together.

With so many in bloom, I added both varieties of Johnny’s Potomac and Madame Butterfly in shades of pink, rose, and white.

Larkspur

My new favorite spike flower is larkspur. I only bought larkspur in the traditional blue hue, but it has added such a unique color scheme to all of my bouquets. It is really an annual delphinium type- so beautiful.

The Filler

Feverfew

Matricaria, commonly known as feverfew, is one the best fillers for bouquets. It is related to the daisy and chrysanthemum. Cool thing about mums is that its scent will keep bugs away. It is an ingredient in some pesticides. Well, feverfew does the same thing. Nevertheless, flowers do need beneficial insects to visit, so it is good to plant feverfew in a spot not too close to flowers that love the good insects.

Why I love feverfew so much as a filler flower is because it is easy to grow, easy to harvest, and easy to arrange with. However, when harvesting, place in a bucket of water straight away. It does tend to wilt under extreme heat.

Baby’s Breath

My love-hate relationship with baby’s breath. I love it as a filler in bouquets with its dainty white flowers. But growing it is another story for me. Some people just have certain flowers or stems that don’t work for them, but other people have great success. Mine topple over in the rain and start to grow many side branches. Then if not picked when the first blooms are starting, it tends to look terrible in bouquets with some dainty flowers in bloom while others are dried out.

When I picked two stems for this lily arrangement, I found ones that were just beginning to bloom with rather straight stems.

Orlaya

This is a new flower for me. I’ve seen Laura from Garden Answer grow some tall, gorgeous stems of these, so I definitely wanted to give it a try! My stems were shorter, but it may be just early in the season, or be the effects of the early drought we had here in Northwestern PA.

It has dainty white lacy-type of blooms, which are perfect to fill in the spaces of arrangements.

The main downfall is I picked it mid-day (not suppose to do this, but it was calling for rain later). Then on top of this, I didn’t place it in water when harvesting outdoors. Granted, it was inside within a few minutes and in water, but it was droopy. I waited a few hours to let this orlaya and the other flowers rehydrate before arranging them.

Creating the Base with Foliage and Lilies

First, I chose a rather large vase that could hold over 40 some stems easily, without squishing the stems to all fit. I added two packets of flower food, and filled up the vase with some house water.

I added three stems of peony foliage. These needed the stems cut to where the bottom leaves were hanging around the top rim of the vase. Any leaves with rust spots were removed. When placing the three stems, I created a triangular base.

Moving on to the lilies, I pulled off any anthers away from the filaments of the lily’s stamen. Doing this will reduce pollen from producing. I aimed to have the first set of lilies on the stem be along the top rim of the vase. Granted, this does not allow the lilies to be top and center. When working with older lilies, it is easier to do it this way. Each of the three stems of the lilies laid on top of the stems of the peony foliage.

Adding More Stems

For some, filler is next, while for others supporting flowers and spikes are next. I sorta do a mix between them. Just save the taller stems for the top center and the shorter stems for the bottom edges of the bouquet, using a mix between the filler, spike, and supporting stems.

Keep to your shapes. If you have three stems, create a triangle with the flowers; if two, aim for a line; if four, create a square among all those triangles. Essentially, you don’t want the same flowers next to each other. It is a mixed bouquet, so mix it up.

As the bouquet grew larger and the snapdragons, being taller stems, created a great structure in the center of the bouquet, I used the four larkspur in the lower part of the bouquet in a square shape. Notice how it makes the bouquet more defined.

An Oriental Lily Arrangement

I created this to move over a smaller 25-stem arrangement on my dining room table. It just wasn’t doing it for me. I wanted something larger that would just wow me every day. This oriental lily arrangement is doing the job wonderfully.

It is going to be so unique in seeing how the bouquet changes throughout the flowers’ vase lives. Some of the lilies will die off while their closed blooms begin to open. Some flowers will die off, while others will keep pushing through.

Having a large floral arrangement with oriental lily at the dining room table brings in nature and God’s Creation indoors into the home, along with its scents from the sweet William, oriental lilies, and snapdragons.

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