How to grow native plants in your yard and also get fragrant bouquets
LOS ANGELES — Attention, anyone who thinks native blooms are brilliant in the wild — or our yards — but don’t work in bouquets.
Boy, are we wrong.
This isn’t an invitation to trample wildflower fields to pick bouquets — our precious wildflowers need to stay unpicked so their seeds will produce blooms in the future — but it is notice that native plant gardeners don’t have to rely on grocery-store bouquets to grace our tables.
With the right preparation and care, you can grow and assemble stunning, long-lasting bouquets for your home while building habitat in your yard or patio, said Linda Prendergast, crew chief and lead designer for the California Botanic Garden’ s floral volunteer group known as Native Designs.
Prendergast had a career working in flower shops and then wholesale nurseries when she was younger, and she still appreciates traditional ornamental bouquets, but over the years her environmental awareness has cooled her delight in traditional ornamentals.
Grocery store bouquets “are lovely and I buy them. But they have also been grown with lots of fertilizer and imported from South America. They’re flown in using lots of jet fuel that’s bad for our air,” she wrote in a text message.
“By contrast, native flowers are lovely in your garden or flower beds; they generally use less water than other varieties and most importantly, they are food sources for pollinators. Our precious bees and butterflies rely on natives as a food source.”
So these days, Prendergast and her group of about 32 merry volunteers put their floral design skills to work arranging flowers cut from and for events at California Botanic Garden, the state’s largest botanic garden devoted to native plants.
After an afternoon watching Prendergast, Susan Spradley and Carol Petty create cheerfully gorgeous arrangements, I can personally vouch for the variety and beauty of their bouquets, as well as their longevity. Petty’s graceful arrangement of coral bells (Heuchera sanguinea ‘Coral Bells’), white sage (Salvia apiana), fragrant pitcher sage (Lepechinia fragrans), hollyleaf cherry (Prunus ilicifolia) and sugar bush (Rhus ovata) still looked fresh and lovely on my dining room table a week after it was made.
There are a few important tricks for creating native bouquets, Prendergast said.
Cut your flowers and foliage early in the day, and immediately plunge the cuttings into warm — not hot — water.
Look for interesting branches and berries as well as flowers to add color and fullness to your display.
Don’t snip helter skelter. Make sure you cut your branches near the base of the plant to maintain its shape and integrity.
Leave the cut flowers and foliage in warm water mixed with a floral food (Prendergast uses a product called Floralife Crystal Clear available in packets or bulk) for at least 12 to 24 hours.
If you use white sage foliage, hydrate it in a separate bucket since the plant gives off an oil that is unpleasant for the other flowers.
Most native plants are heavy drinkers once they’re cut, so they’ll do better in a vase instead of floral foam. And some don’t have stems hard enough to push into foam and get the hydration they need, she said.
If you must use a shallow container to arrange your flowers, try using a crumpled ball of chicken wire to hold the stems instead of foam blocks. Those foam blocks grow fungus so they shouldn’t get reused and they can’t be recycled, Prendergast said, so they just add to landfill waste. Chicken wire, however, can be washed and reused. Just be sure your foliage covers the base so it doesn’t show.
Prendergast also recommends using waterproof floral tape in green or clear to create a grid over the top of your container to further support your flowers and foliage and ensure your design stays in place.
Snip the ends of your stems as you add them to your container to improve water absorption.
Some branches are heavy, so make sure you have enough weight in your container, like pebbles or glass rocks, to keep it from tipping over.
Start with the largest or showiest flowers first and add from there. Keep turning the container to make sure you’re filling in gaps.
Change the water in your display daily to keep the flowers fresh.
Not all native flowers and foliage are great in bouquets, Prendergast said. The silvery green foliage of white sage makes for great accents in bouquets during cooler winter months, but come spring, when the plant is starting to bloom, the leaves tend to soften up and go limp, she said, making them sad choices for arrangements.
But there are lots of other choices for flowers, foliage, berries and sculptural stems in a huge number of colors and shapes.