Category Archives: cut flowers

bouquets, color in the garden, cut flowers, flowers, mulching, organic gardening, perennials, plant diseases, pruning roses, roses

About Roses

Roses are the flower of love. Many of us have fond memories of favorites in our mother?s garden or of a beautiful bouquet given or received on Valentine?s Day. It?s dormant season for roses which is good for both pruning and adding a few to the garden.

David Austin rose

As a designer I have clients who have inherited roses and want to keep them as a remembrance. Others want to create a cutting garden filled with roses and other perennials. Don?t feel guilty for growing those beauties in your own garden. They use less resources than you think and there are many ways to grow them sustainably.

Roses, whether bush types, climber or ground cover carpet varieties, use a moderate amount of water in order to thrive according to the latest Water Use Classification of Landscape Species (WUCOLS) list. This amount of summer irrigation is the same as many of the plants on the list of Scotts Valley Water District?s 800 Approved Low Water-Use Plants for lawn replacement. Plants such as Emerald Carpet manzanita, Joyce Coulter ceanothus, Siskiyou Blue fescue grass, Pacific wax myrtle, butterfly bush, yarrow hybrids and Tapien verbena have similar water requirements.

Since now is the time to prune your roses here are a few tips.

Strike it Rich hybrid tea rose

Prune shrubs moderately to keep them compact. The goal is to keep the center of the plant open for good air circulation aiming for a vase-shaped bush with an open center. Cut out canes that cross, appear weak or are diseased, spindly or dead. Healthy canes appear green or reddish while old and dying canes are brown. Cut back the remaining stems by about one third. When pruning, cut canes at a 45-degree angle just above an outward facing leaf bud or a swelling on the cane. Clean pruners after every use to prevent the spread of disease and keep your pruners sharp.

Prune heirlooms roses such as David Austin and other old antique garden roses less because their open look is part of their charm.

Same goes for climbing roses. Cut out extra stems if there are too many and also cut back long established canes to about the place where they are slightly thicker than a pencil. Then cut each side stem down to several inches. This will make the cane flower along its complete length for a beautiful spring display.

Zepherine Drouhin climbing rose

Pluck off and rake away any old leaves. They can spread fungal spores. Consider spraying dormant plants with a combination of organic horticultural oil and copper soap or lime-sulfur. If you usually only have problems with black spot you can use a mixture of 1 teaspoon baking soda with a few drops of light horticultural oil in 1 quart water and spray every 7 to 10 days during the spring.

Prune your roses throughout the growing season, too. Deadheading, or cutting off spent flowers, encourages plants to re-bloom. Mulch around your roses to conserve water and encourage soil microorganisms.

Don’t worry whether you’re pruning job is perfect. Roses are super forgiving and you can always trim them up again later.

bouquets, cut flowers

Mixed Bouquets with Foliage & Flowers

Every year I vow to grow flowers to cut for those fabulous mixed bouquets I see on my friend?s tables and arrive in their arms to grace my own house. But alas, between the lack of enough sun, the soil and those annoying gophers, I have not been very successful in the cut flower department. The secret to a fabulous bouquet is not just the flowers but the interesting foliage and that is something we all have in our gardens. I?m still going to plant more perennial flowers this fall that are good for cutting but I?ll use them as accents in my bouquets and concentrate on more foliage.

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Smoke bush with Franz Shubert phlox paniculata

Great foliage plants come in all shapes and sizes. In shady gardens, fragrant variegated daphne odora is a wonderful small shrub for both flowers and foliage. Sweet olive or osmanthus fragrans is a large evergreen shrub or small tree with blooms that smell like apricots. Pittosporum ?Marjorie Channon? will add white with a hint of lime to your bouquets. Oakleaf hydrangea foliage and flowers look great in bouquets and the leaves turn red in fall which is an added bonus. Our native shrub philadelphus, also called mock orange, has flowers that smell like oranges and it will grow in some shade as well as sun.

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Hydrangea Limelight with Marjorie Channon pittosporum

While just about any plant material that strikes your fancy will work in a mixed bouquet there are four types of plant forms that naturally look good together: Spires for height and architectural properties with flowers like liatris, snapdragon, gladiola, salvia, Bells-of-Ireland as well as the strappy leaves of flax or cordyline. Round for focus such as roses, dahlias, long-stemmed marigolds, peonies. Lacy for fillers- ferns, baby’s breath, dill. Foliage from shrubs such abelia, breath of heaven, Calif. bay, and ornamental grasses. Don’t forget grapes and other vines, herbs, woody trees branches and prunings from smoke tree and Japanese maples which also look handsome in a bouquet.

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Mixed bouquet- Filoli Garden

What can you still plant this time of year for cutting? Some flowers that lend themselves to cutting with long stems and a long vase life are:

Kangaroo paw- Low-water use perennial with unusual fuzzy tubular flowers of pink, orange, red or yellow.
Alstroemeria- showy flowers attract hummers and butterflies.
Penstemon- Tubular flowers attract hummingbirds
Coreopsis- Double yellow flowers attract butterflies.
Gloriosa daisy- Bold gold, orange and mohogany daisies 5-7″ across with a brown center. Pick when center is
just starting to get fuzzy. Double forms have a shorter vase life.
Coneflowers- Pinkish,white, orange or yellow flowers attract butterflies.
Snapdragons, planted now will bloom long into fall and provide spiky accent that attracts butterflies. Pick off lower
blooms as they wilt.
Pink muhly grass- Airy plumes of feathery, deep rosy-pink flowers on tall stems.

I have a great list of California natives that are good for cutting also. Email me if you would like some of these suggestions.

The best time to cut is early in the morning. Cut non-woody stems on a slant for maximum water absorption. Cut woody stems straight across and smash the ends. Plunge immediately in a bucket of tepid water. Indoors, recut each stem under water so an air bubble doesn’t keep the water from being absorbed.Then pull off any foliage or flowers that will be below the water level in the vase. Fill the vase with lukewarm water. You can add cut flower food but I find that changing the water every two days, recutting the stems and making sure no foliage is under water works just as well.

Brook Lomond Iris Farm, color in the garden, colorful foliage, composting, cut flowers, deer resistant bulbs, Deer Resistant Plants, drought tolerant gardens, drought tolerant plants, flowers, fragrant plants, garden design, garden inspiration, gopher resistant plants, low water use plants, organic gardening

A Visit to the Brook Lomond Iris Farm

Aztec Sun
Aztec Sun

What do you get when you combine a world renowned pottery artist with a reformed corn grower? On California Street in Ben Lomond, the result is the Brook Lomond Iris Farm of Rick and Chris Moran. This fun, educational, inspiring couple recently invited me to admire this year?s crop of tall bearded iris grown with certified organic gardening practices as well as to share their organic vegetable garden, cactus and succulent collection and Chris? unique pottery. They are getting ready for this year?s annual iris sale coming up April 30th as well as May 1st and 7th from 9:00-4:00 each day when the iris blooms will be at their peak.

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Coiled pottery by Chris Moran

Upon arriving my eyes were torn between the colorful beds of iris on my left and the blooming cactus and succulent collection displayed on the flagstone entry garden on the right. I later learned Chris cut and laid the flagstone herself. Inside the house Chris?s fabulous coiled pottery vases, urns and jugs in their great room were so amazing I had a hard time tearing myself away to start the tour of the back garden and iris beds in the front. Cody, their new dog, was good company as I learned how the Moran?s came to start an iris farm.

When Rick Moran was 13 years old he worked at LoPresti tomato farm in Connecticut. ?I hated it,? he laughs. Later when he was a student at UCSC he used to pass by the Chadwick garden and says he ?got the gardening bug by osmosis?. After graduation the couple moved to Bar Harbor Maine where they started a community garden. Chris displayed the cactus and succulents she had moved there in a heated porch which was quite the talk of the town for neighbors passing by on a snowy day.

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Organic vegetable garden

When they moved back to this area and found the sunny lot in Ben Lomond, Rick added nine yards of chicken manure mixed with rice hulls and planted corn. He had visions of savoring succulent ears of corn for dinner but quickly realized that the amount of water needed to grow corn was prohibitive. That was after the Chris? succulent failure. He and Chris wanted to come up with a crop they could make a little supplemental income. She used to sell her cactus and succulents when they lived in Capitola at the drive-in in Santa Cruz many years before but after planting fancy succulents in the front yard and seeing them turn to mush in a Ben Lomond freeze they realized succulents weren?t going to work either.

SteppingOut
Stepping Out

Enter ?The Queen of the Garden? as iris are called. The Morans researched these stunning flowers and found them to be drought tolerant and deer and gopher resistant. Having a high water table Iris are the perfect crop. They require no extra water at all with summer being the plant?s dormant season. Chris worked for the City of Santa Cruz for 25 years and started their Home Composing program. They compost all garden waste and kitchen scraps using the compost as the only fertilizer for the iris beds and vegetable garden. They get 15 wheelbarrows of compost a year from their simple bins. Straw is spread as mulch to control weeds between the iris beds?

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Tall bearded iris beds

The iris are starting their blooming cycle now. Some bloom earlier than others. By planting early, mid and late blooming varieties you can extend their colorful show for several months. Iris also make a good cut flower and many are fragrant. Chris told me that you can tell when an iris was hybridized from it?s shape. The early types are not as frilly as modern varieties. She pointed out a bed of Wabash Heritage which was first introduced in the 1920?s- simple with three falls. The lovely sky blue flowers of Striped Zebra iris smelled of Grape Koolaid. Chris explained that the flower scent develops as they sit in the sun. The aroma is not as strong when they first open.

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Bearded iris closeip

The Brook Lomond Iris Farm is located at 10310 California Drive off Highway 9 in Ben Lomond. Just look for the tall flags waving in the breeze and bring your camera. Iris rhizomes for sale are chosen for hardiness in this area and the Morans are always on the lookout and adding the newest varieties available such as the deep purple Dusky Challenger. The Iris Farm is educational as well as beautiful- a place the whole family will enjoy.