This week we have a touch of blue from the baby muscari bulbs (grape hyacinth) tucked into the posies. These are a new trial from one of our Lincolnshire growers and have been grown hydroponically on spiked trays with water. We haven't used muscari this way before. They will keep growing whilst in the arrangement and can be cared for by spraying the bulb with water from time to time, if you get the chance. After enjoying them indoors, you could also plant the bulb out in the garden and it should come up again next year and start to form a clump. I think the yellow varigated euonymus and touch of mimosa is a nice contrast to the blue and and...
This week includes homegrown forsythia. It has been picked in bud and should open up nicely indoors. It has a short flowering season and adds a welcome splash of yellow to a winter garden. Surprisingly, forsythia is part of the olive family, and it is named after William Forsyth, a Scottish botanist and founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society, established in 1804. Purple and lilac are less common tulip colours but we’ve gone for them this week to compliment the British blue hyacinths which are also from the far end of the spectrum. These will also open up and flourish indoors. These hyacinths have been grown hydroponically in Lincolnshire and arrive to me still on the bulb so...
I hope you can smell the sarcococca in this week’s posy. An ‘unremarkable’ flower except that it flowers in winter (hooray!) and has a beautiful scent. It’s a useful shrub for the garden as it doesn’t mind growing in shady, dry places and if you plant it by the front door you can enjoy the fragrance as you walk in. It’s part of the box family but, happily, the box moth caterpillar seems to leave it well alone.
We’ve finally made it to February! I don’t know about you, but it has felt like a long winter to me and I’m looking forward to the prospect of spring sunshine sometime soon!
Happy New Year! I hope you had a restful Christmas and a great start to 2024. This posy includes homegrown ‘snowflakes’, Leucojum aestivum. These are a bigger relation of the snowdrop, a beloved little flower that represents January and new beginnings. It is also a symbol of purity and hope for the Spring to come. I like to use white flowers for the first posy of the year if I can get my hands on them. It feels like a calm and peaceful way to welcome in the New Year after all the noise and colour of Christmas. We’ve also included the first of the season’s pussy willow, which adds a fluffy texture and might be something you can spot...
The odds on us having a white Christmas are sadly not very high, but we can 100% offer you these wonderful ‘snowball’ chrysanthemums instead. These ‘exhibition’ mums have been expertly grown in Suffolk by a family-run nursery and they are the showiest of the flowerhead forms. Chrysanthemums are a very popular cut flower and were first cultivated in China 1500 years BC. By the 1630s, 500 different cultivars were recorded. Nowadays, there’s more than 20,000 cultivars.
As this is our last arrangement of 2023, we hope you enjoy it. We wish you a lovely Christmas and we look forward to seeing you again in the New Year.
