ARRANGEMENTS

pastures once it flowers. I’m doing my bit by grabbing the flowers from my neighbour’s paddock, and spraying them with hairspray so they don’t drop all over the windowsill.

Verbena bonariensis, or purple top, is a tall, slender-stemmed perennial with creeping rhizomes. It has vibrant purple flowers that appear from summer until autumn and looks a bit like the statice we used to use in dried flower bunches. You wouldn’t look twice at it on its own, but stuffed in a vase with a couple of seed heads and some dead foliage I combed out of the carex grass, it makes a rather stylish arrangement if I do say so myself.

I have a few stands of aggies around the place and I always choose the white ones for cutting. However, agapanthus is actually a perennial weed from South

Africa. It’s a prolific seeder, lives a long time, and thrives in nearly any climate. Here in the Far North it is regarded as a cunning, scheming, dangerous weed plotting to obliterate all our native plants.

Happily, though, there are agapanthus hybrids that are either sterile or low fertility that can be planted and enjoyed guilt-free. I love the tall white aggies just on their own in a vase, but you can go for the dwarf varieties (AgaPetit, white, and Baby Pete, brilliant blue) for shorter, denser arrangements.

And even naughtier than agapanthus is pampas grass. It became popular a few years ago for stylish bridal bouquets and for use in floral arrangements and interior design, winning out over our native toetoe because its upright, feathery fronds come in white, cream, pink and purple. But the Ministry for Primary Industries says not only should people be discouraged from using the weed, but that it is actually forbidden under the Biosecurity Act 1993. So if you want feathery fronds for your wedding bouquet — or for anything else — choose toetoe. It’s ours.