With lily season winding down and summer stems starting in their peak season, while I walked the flower garden, I continued to see shades of pinks and hues of purple. I love color combinations, but sometimes it takes a gradient of colors to wow the eyes. For early August in Pennsylvania mountains, I created a shades of berry bouquet.
Lilies in Shades of Berry
I love lilies with their trumpet shapes, and their bold size. I will admit I don’t grow them as a flower farmer, rather a flower gardener. Bulbs can be expensive for a gardener to where we don’t want to be investing in bulbs every year. And it is nice to have things we plant once, and it grows and blooms for years to come.
In flower farming, lilies are grown as annuals. The bulbs are planted, then for long enough stem lengths, the cut is made closer to the bottom of the stem.
In flower gardening, lilies can still be grown as perennials. I leave them to grow their first year. Then in the second year when I harvest, I leave at least 1/3 to ½ of the stem and its leaves to provide energy to the bulbs. After a few years, lilies can be divided and the baby bulbs can be planted in new locations in the garden.
For me growing on a small scale for home and gift bouquets, treating them as perennials in my garden works best. In this bouquet, I harvested three pink lily stems. They don’t have super long stem lengths like what a florist would carry, but every stem worked wonderfully for this home arrangement.
Note that lilies and their pollen is toxic and poisonous to cats. Use caution when harvesting them to bring indoors for an arrangement.
Cosmos
Cosmos are so fun. I love the little bit of whimsical and air they provide bouquets. My absolute favorite varieties are Double Dutch Rose Cosmos from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Double Click Mix from Johnny’s Select Seeds. The double petal ones seem to last longer in a vase than the singles.
The cosmos for this bouquet ranges from the rosy pinks and whites to the cranberries and ruby hues.
Basil
Basil has been my favorite greenery to work with in all summertime bouquets. Cinnamon basil not only has a spicy aroma to it, but it has hints of purples in the stems and tops. In all the foliage I grew this season, this one matched the colors I wanted the best.
Statice
Pacific Mix statice produces filler stems in an array of colors with clusters of tiny, opened papery blooms. The colors I chose to harvest were white, which complemented the yarrow in shades of red.
Yarrow
Flowerburst Red Yarrow was an absolutely gorgeous mix to grow. In the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, we have a perennial, natural yarrow in white with a bit of yellow. Flowerburst Red series offers beautiful stems in the berry shades, which work perfectly for this shades of berry bouquet.
Carnations
Carnations are beautiful, and smell wonderful too. Here I include pale pink and white carnation stems to match the shades of berry for the bouquet.
Snapdragons
I love adding spike flowers to arrangements to take it from a round shaped bouquet to one with rays of beauty. It adds more texture to the bouquet. The snapdragons for this bouquet include both Johnny’s Potomac and Madame Butterfly varieties, featured in all shades of pinks. Appleblossom hues are lovely mixing of whites with pale pinks, which match the other snapdragons in all shades of pink.
Other Shades of Berry Flowers
Not all of the flowers I harvested made it to the shades of berry bouquet; I wish they all could have fit, but that’s not the case.
I left out zinnias. I know! Usually, I incorporate these into every bouquet. The zinnias at this time during this season, were not blooming heavily. I had harvested Queeny Lime Red, a darker pink variety, candy-cane, and pink Oklahoma.
Sweet William is another stem I left out. I love the Amazon series with the longer stem lengths. This shade is Cherry Rose and it was quite the performer in beauty and scent.
With this being the first season I am growing stock, I ended up saving these stems to their own vase. I didn’t have too many stems of this throughout the season because I wanted until mid-May to plant them out. Not only that, I planted them in black landscape fabric that when we had a drought, the plants got roasted. If I would have had more, this Katz stock would have complemented the snapdragons beautifully.
Strawflowers were another one where it was my first season successfully growing. I tried growing it through direct sowing years before at my mom’s farm, but I didn’t have luck with it. Starting these indoors, they were relatively EASY to grow, plant, and harvest. These are some of my husband’s favorites with their papery texture. I like their looks better before they open the whole way.
Lastly, I left out my Balcony Mix Petunias from Baker Creek. I’ve never seen other flower farmers grow petunias, but I absolutely love them. This variety keeps growing taller and taller, giving the right stem length. They have such a faint smell, but the scent is like a small whiff of cherry. Although I love these flowers and they come in all shades of whites, pinks, and purples, there comes a point of creating a bouquet where you say enough. Another stem may overdo it. That’s how I felt with the petunias. The cosmos already created an airy, whimsical appeal, that the petunias were not needed.
How to Create this Bouquet
I usually make my bouquets indoors, but for this one, I used a patio table on our deck. Some flower farmers enjoy making all their bouquets outdoors on a picnic table or an outdoor table. I love the outdoors. I love being in the garden or on walks in the woods with my dogs. But I rarely make bouquets outdoors since mosquitos love me, and I don’t reciprocate that relationship!
The vase I used is a larger vase, which is able to fit more flowers. I thought I would be able to fit all the flowers I harvested, but what I learned was the lilies take up much of the room, and thus I didn’t want to overcrowd them. Make sure that the water has at least two packets of flower preservative to feed the stems.
When making an arrangement, one can either start with the greenery or the focals. I’ve done both ways before, and it really just depends on the stems I’m using. For this shades of berry bouquet, I start with the focals, add the greenery, and continue building it until I add the spike flowers and a few extra touches.
Start with the Focals
To begin this bouquet, I start with the main color and the main flower. The pink lilies are going to be the center point for the hues throughout, and their large, bold blooms will be the center of attention.
The lilies are placed so that the bottom of the bloom lines up with the top of the vase. This allows the bottom petals of the lilies to cascade over the edges of the vase. In a way, it conceals the top of the vase nicely.
Make sure before moving on that on the stamen, you remove the anther and keep the filament. Removing the anther keeps the pollen from forming.
Add the Greenery
With the lilies taking up so much space and needing to be at the right angle to begin with, I saved adding greenery until second. To match the berry color hue, I used Cinnamon basil with its greenery and purple stems. It takes the eye from the pink lilies to the darker purple.
Fillers for the Shades of Berry Bouquet
Taking a look at this bouquet, my favorite two fillers are DEFINITELY statice and yarrow. Both are so easy to grow, and they fit into a bouquet very nicely. With the whites of the statice and the pinks of the yarrow, it balances the pink lilies with the purple stemmed basil. The white takes the balance of colors back from the purples, while the pink yarrow adds to the berry theme.
Small Disk Flowers
This bouquet does not have that many small disk flowers. But the one I did include was the carnations. I love the scent of carnations. Love it! With the other stems already taking up a good portion of the vase, I reserved some of that space for the snapdragons and cosmos.
At this point, the bouquet is coming together, but notice how it is just missing those little extra touches.
Shades of Berry Bouquet Spike Flowers
The wonder of using spike flowers. It takes a bouquet from being a spherical shape, which can be beautiful, to one shaped more like a sun with its rays. Spike flowers add a new layer of dimension to the bouquet.
For my spike flowers, I used snapdragons. I love snapdragons for their ease of growth, but also because they look great in bouquets. The colors I chose for these stems range from appleblossom to darker pinks. So what they do in this bouquet is they transition the eye from the whites, pale pinks, pinks, and transition to the purple stems of the basil.
A Touch of Whimsical
The last touch to the bouquet just makes the bouquet. Lilies are formal flowers, same with carnations. Snapdragons can work in formal work, as well as garden arrangements. Statice and yarrow fill in with the garden-style. But what really makes this arrangement beautiful in a garden theme are the cosmos.
The cosmos are cranberry in color, so it focuses the eye on the darker pinks that align more to the shades of berry.
The style though of the cosmos. Oooh . . . The stems stand up straight, but they’re not super straight. If the wind would blow, they’d travel with the wind. Cosmos are often used in wildflower fields where we can picture the wind flowing through the meadow, and the flowers are waving to us as we watch. That’s what these cosmos add to this bouquet. A touch of meadow and garden to a bouquet for our home.
Shades of Berry Lily Bouquet
The hues of this bouquet are a mix of pinks, purples, and berry colors. Instead of one color, it transitions our eyes from the cranberries and darker pinks, to the pale pinks and whites.
What’s most important is what this bouquet has done to my home for a week. The style is a mix between, formal, garden, and meadow. The bouquet brings in freshness to the dining room that would otherwise be bland. It takes the cut flower garden, and brings it indoors to enjoy on all days from the sunny to the rainy. It creates a touch to making a beautiful home.
