There’s something very satisfying about walking out into the garden and cutting flowers for an arrangement. Even in the depths of January winter when “nothing is blooming”, I can still manage to forage a beautiful little collection of stems to fill a vase.
When designing a garden, the first thing I think about is the overall style and big picture of the space. Elements need to be cohesive and the palette needs to work. In design we call this the “concept” and all the smaller details need to fit within the framework of a larger cohesive concept. I also like to call it a “palette” because if you have a beautiful palette of color and texture… putting in a landscape is a lot like painting with plants.
One of the smaller details that often gets overlooked by many is the timing of when plants look their best. Typically I’d want a garden to look pretty darn good all the time so I’ll use a skeleton of plants that look mostly the same throughout the season and then flesh it out with seasonal interest (think flowers, fall foliage, interesting winter bark, fragrance). In my garden, I want some kind of flower blooming every month of the year so I can always have flowers in the house.
This arrangement includes some of my favorite easy to grow, deer resistant, almost zero water favorites: Achillea “terracotta” is my favorite of the Yarrows right now. It needs basically no attention and flowers in a sunny spot in the garden the ENTIRE year. The “terracotta” flower goes with just about everything as it starts off a pale dusty yellow and fades to an earthy terra cotta pink. Next is the Leucodendron family. This is a total must have in any garden. In this arrangement there are two kinds: Leucodendron “sunset” (pinks and reds) and “ebony” (deep dark burgundy red almost black). Leucodendrons don’t flower but instead have brachts that look like flowers year round. Their foliage is an excellent cut flower that lasts longer than most flowers. And of course any arrangement needs interesting filler. The variegated shrub Westringia “morning light” is one of my favorites and grasses like Pennesetum “fairy tails”.
And by the way, I LOVE to bring flowers as host gifts but don’t love always buying vases so I have 3 things to say about that. 1) If you're close enough to the person you can totally ask for your vase back when the lifespan of the arrangement is over. 2) I like to buy interesting but super inexpensive vases as thrift stores (salvation army was my favorite before it closed I could always find cool things there for a couple bucks or less). 3) Old candle jars like the one holding this arrangement make perfect little vessels for gifting - and I especially love the idea of being able to reuse things more than once :)