Gone to seed in a good way
Next time you’re wandering through your garden with the secateurs, look closer at what it might offer in the way of continued visual enjoyment once brought indoors, says Julia Atkinson-Dunn.
Last week, I scavenged hard around the autumnal edges of my garden, and those of my mum and sister, hunting out vaseworthy creatures from among the lateseason fade, seed heads, rust, and powdery mildew. My sister couldn’t believe it when, an hour after leaving her house with a haul that included pumpkin flowers, bedraggled roses, and branches of lemon tree and hops, I sent her a picture of the resulting big, ramshackle arrangement. She replied with, ‘‘and I was thinking my garden had nothing left to offer this season’’.
At the recent Grow O¯ tautahi – Christchurch Garden Festival, where I was a Beginner Gardener Ambassador, as well as manning a small tent with my garden-inspired art and recently released book Petal Power ,Iwas interested to see so many people stopping to ask what the delicate green flowers in one of my arrangements were.
I almost felt smug revealing that they were simply parsley flowers from my unkempt vegetable patch.
One person gasped in despair, remarking that they had just pulled out a huge bed of rampaging, gone-to-seed parsley and hadn’t thought for a second about popping some in a vase. I felt bad for her, knowing that they last a record time as a picked flower.
I am hugely inspired by the world of commercial floristry but there are certain creative benefits from being a home arranger, being forced to look at all that is growing in your garden as potential pickings, as opposed to only the pristine with long straight stems and perfectly-timed blooms.
As I’ve written before about my inability to even let late-season rose prunings skip their turn in the vase on their way to the green bin, I equally can’t deny the beauty in a big, bold clover leaf in a posy, despite the constant-spreading hell it gives me in my garden.
I will readily sacrifice a long limb of a fruiting raspberry cane and runners of strawberries to add some fun and whimsy to a seasonal posy. Sometimes I feel like I only grow leeks for their outlandish spherical blooms, and the defeat of my coriander bolting once again is always softened by being able to harvest its delicate white flowers.
Even as my dahlias struggle on, I find myself enjoying the weird form of their seed heads so much that I often bring them indoors, too.
And my roving Japanese anemones, their gorgeous smiling blooms dropped to reveal the cute, pale-green bobble heads that simply look fantastic, weave through the tops of a kitchen table bunch.
Even spiky tendrils from my potted rosemary are a fantastic structural and fragrant addition to arrangements.
In lockdown last year, I made little vignettes of autumnal offerings, including short branches of crab apples, pears, acorns and chestnuts.
I made sure I carefully trimmed from out-of-theway areas of the trees and always included some autumn colour, when possible.
I love fennel as a picking flower but I have found late-season pleasure when its flowers finish and present a beautiful, muted green display of smooth seeds. It is a strangely architectural look for a plant, and it seems to last forever in arrangements.
This year, poppy seed heads proved to be more fun in a vase than their quickly collapsing blooms, and nigella seed heads are equally cool to look at. Both types dry easily to be used over winter.
But, if I’m honest, this end of the year is made better for me with the imminent arrival of rose hips. There is some kind of magical nostalgia wound up in rose fruit that gets me all whimsical and romantic. I marvel at the huge variety of sizes and colours that emerge, itching to pick them to bring them inside to trigger some seasonal nesting.
There are no assurances that your experimental pickings will all do well in a vase – as I was reminded by the pumpkin flowers, which were done when I woke up the next morning – but the hops are doing incredibly well. For a short-lived, cheap creative distraction, it’s worth a play.
So next time you are trigger-happy with your secateurs, look a little closer at what your garden might offer you to enjoy for your own visual benefits.