Walk Through the Garden Bouquet

Hey, Mom! Look at These Flowers. Spending a morning walking through the flower fields to harvest a garden bouquet with every flower I find. Before I ever sold flowers, I was growing them for pure enjoyment of being with flowers and then making bouquets to give to my mom and my grandmother. As I like to say, loving flowers is in my genetics. It runs in my family through at least our three generations.

With living an hour and some away from my flower loving mom, most visits I make her a bouquet so that I can show her all that I grew, and for her to enjoy. With this bouquet, Labor Day weekend offered us one more swimming weekend. I actually wasn’t stopping at her farm first with the flowers. I took them first to a park we were picnicking at.

All day long, I kept them in our car, but with windows down a bit, the sunroof opened, and making sure I moved my car to a shaded parking spot. I was dedicated in making sure the flowers survived, while also not interfering with our swimming schedule.

Relating to Customers

The two neatest things I hear from flower customers is how they plan to give a bouquet away to a friend, their mom, or a loved one in a hospital and asking if flowers will survive their long journey.

From experiences of transporting these flowers for an hour or two, yes, fresh, local flowers will survive the journey. This bouquet was in a car on a warm sunny day, but remember with air flow, to a whole late summer day. It was also in water the whole day, which is essential. The flowers were a bit wilty, but nothing they wouldn’t perk up from once in a home away from the sun.

I’ve transported flowers “dry,” without being in water, for over an hour before. The flowers are fine, and just need be given a good drink upon arrival.

Garden Arranged Bouquet

With this arrangement for my mom, I didn’t harvest the flowers and then take the time to rearrange. I wanted every flower I had available included, but I didn’t bother trying to make it structurally pleasing. The cool thing about walking through the garden to add blooms to an existing bundle is that it creates a natural feel within the bouquet. Sometimes doing this is a miss, but I found that with this bouquet it worked out perfectly.

During the first days of the last month of summer, I harvested and tucked into a garden arranged bouquet lemonade, Sonja, buttercream and Henry Wilde sunflowers, blue delphinium, double Dutch rose cosmos, Queeny Lime Red, Benary’s Giant Pink and Yellow, Polar Bear, and Candy Stripe zinnias, Voyage blue and arena apricot lisianthus, Johnny’s Potomac and Madame Butterfly snapdragons, a whimsical grass, eucalyptus, scabiosa in shades of periwinkle and dark burgundy, Tetra White feverfew, double gloriosa rudbeckia, green gold Buplerum, dahlia, and fresh strawflower.

Complementary Garden Bouquet

Although this arrangement has a different stem in each location, it works together as a whole for bringing in bright summer colors together. Golden yellows mixed with light blues, whites with gold, pinks with greenery, and touches of color throughout.

Sunflower & Delphinium

Lemonade sunflowers are the pinnacle of sunnies. They do have a longer time to maturity, but are worth the wait. They have layers upon layers of petals of the brightest yellow in any flower that I grow.

Next to this yellow glory is a blue delphinium of the lightest shade. Think of how sunflowers match to the sunniest day with the bluest sky. That’s the illustrious color scheme between these two flowers being next to each other in a bouquet.

Rudbeckia and Feverfew

Come September, Rudbeckia have begun to rebloom. Double gloriosa rudbeckias have the same coloring as the Indiana Summer with the black centered eyes and the petals of gold. Double gloriosas have double the amount of petals. Some can be almost all petals in the same shape of peonies with multiple layers of petals.

Tetra White Feverfew exemplifies the gold of the rudbeckia. This variety of feverfew has yellow centers that expand to white petals. Every bloom is dainty in the spray, but can thus envelope the rudbeckia flower.

Eucalyptus and Snapdragon

Eucalyptus and Snapdragon both emit a perfume from their blooms, snapdragons being very less compared to eucalyptus. Not only do they work well with their fragrances, but the shades of bluish green of the eucalyptus stem complements that of the pink and orange hues of the snapdragon next to it. Pink works well with green, but the two tone adds an additional illusion to the flowers and greenery.

Misty Weed

I know, I technically didn’t start or intend to grow this misty grass for cut flower arrangements. While harvesting flowers this September morning, I noticed the long stem length of this grassy weed in the walk way I neglected during the season. It’s nothing as grande as frosted explosion ornamental grass, but it added a little bit of whimsical air to the bouquet.

En clave of Zinnias

I started this bouquet with the zinnias. My mom loves all the different colors that they come in, so I harvested all the different colors I had. Dark pinks, light pinks, candy stripe, polar bear. These took up the one side of the bouquet. When arranging zinnias, it is so important to give them all different heights in a garden harvested bouquet. I’m not trained in harvesting all flowers at the exact same height. I just find a good spot above a node to harvest that will encourage growth of new stems. Some are shorter; some are longer. It works great when creating a bouquet that is to resemble a walk through the garden bouquet.

Walk Through the Garden Bouquet

I don’t offer a You-Pick flower field in my small garden space, but I know why flower customers want it. The experience of walking through a flower garden to see all the beauty the flowers show along with harvesting flowers for somebody you care about.

I have a tendency to over pick for these garden bouquets. It starts with picking just a few flowers for a simple bouquet, but then I keep on walking. I leave the main garden to check the cool flowers that I think are done in the second garden. I harvest stems from the second garden to add to the already expanded bouquet in my hand, filling over and cramping my muscles.

I love growing flowers to give my family and friends a touch of the beauty I grew in my garden.