A Cutting Garden To Save My Sanity

 Before the pandemic, before the lockdown, inspired by my friend Jane and her fabulous cutting garden in East Hampton, I planted a modest cutting garden. At the very bottom of our garden, where there used to be a lawn.  With inadequate drip irrigation...there was a lot of cursing and hand watering at first.  

Some things from seed, most from 4 inch pots.

Some left over from last year (the Thomas Edison dahlias), some gifted by friends.

Tall blue salvia uliginosa, light and airy Nepeta six hills giant, a stiff mystery plant from Portugal with hairy lavender flowers, beginning to go to seed.

Fragrant blue sweet peas planted last fall climbed to the top of their trellis and spilled over.  I've been cutting long branches to try to get them back under control.  They have territorial ambitions.

Huge heads of mid pink scabiosa.  I should have cut this back by half when it was only two feet tall.  It's now over six feet and a constant battle to keep it upright.  And to keep it from going to seed.  

I'm not a fan of daisies but these Shasta daisies may change my mind...they don't need staking and they are cheerful.  Even when I am emphatically not.

And the fabulous Thomas Edison dahlias.  Planted in gopher cages, left to winter over in our sticky clay. They are the only dahlias to return year after year.  

Laid out on the outdoor dining table, ready to arrange.  I start with the filler, the smaller plants that will spill over the vase.  Their stems hold the flowers I want more upright... 

...like the pincushion flower (scabiosa is such an ugly word, sounds like a skin disease) and the daisies.  And that lovely blue salvia.

There were enough flowers for two arrangements. Well, almost.  Another trip down the long staircase to cut more sweet peas. 

Dahlias and other large flowers go in last, then into a dark cool room for a few hours.  Then in places where I can see them - rooms where I spend time, pass by often. Maybe something small in the bedroom, but I want to see them, to enjoy them.

So what have I learned?

First, the descriptions on the plants in the nursery (fabulous cut flower! Trouble free! Blooms all summer!) are often written by someone who either has never grown a thing, doesn't own a pair of shears, has never had a flower arrangement last for more than one day, or is on drugs.  Or is paid to exaggerate.  

Those plants that emphatically do not make good cut flowers? Dug up and given away.  So the second lesson?  Be ruthless.

Next: If you're growing it from seed it will likely set seed and expire - here, as the summer heats up.  In your garden, perhaps as fall approaches.  But in the heat of our long summers so many beautiful things - huge blue scabiosa from Annie's Annuals, fragrant sweet peas in rich burgundy, mallows and hollyhocks - all gone to seed.  And yes, I was diligent about dead heading.  It's been over a hundred here for more than a week.  If I could go to seed I would...

Shasta daisies are on hiatus.  Cosmos have mildewed and quit.  Coreopsis soldiers on, but I am not in the mood for school bus yellow flowers.  Not in the heat; not after months of them.

Roses are still going but they do not last nearly as long in a vase as the dahlias.  

Salvias shed.  Inside, it looks like an invasion of blue bugs under the arrangement.  I sweep the spent flowers into the sink a few times a day, and keep food out of their range.  Blue flowers and breadcrumbs? No.

I've learned a lot about cutting and conditioning too.

Leaves get stripped, especially those below the water line.   Stems re-cut and quickly dipped in Quick Dip,  a flower conditioner, then into warm water and placed in a cool dark spot for conditioning.  The laundry room if the dryer isn't going.  The guest closet. A dark bathroom. The wine cellar if my husband isn't looking.

What do you grow for cutting? What's blooming in your garden?  What makes you happy?

David Monn, Paula Pryke, and the Most Beautiful Flowers

We went to see David Monn speak at the De Young last week - he is the uber-talented event planner (and that does not even begin to cover what he can do) and flower arranger, and he brought some photos of his events.  Stunning.  And they will probably never be published; his clients are apparently rich, famous, and very private.  He did not name drop, but some of the parties he did are in someone's book... alas we were not allowed to photograph the power point.  

He made luscious arrangements, moving so fast he was a blur:

and then he set the table.  I think I need...well, everything.  Bolder linens, more dishes, whimsical stemware...and little gold chairs.  

 If he doesn't give you inspiration for your next party, there is no hope for you.

He did one huge all-foliage arrangement on a ladder...

I think I'm gonna need a bigger house...

...and maybe a minion or two.

An East Coast friend tells the story of the most over-the-top wedding ever: "He gave her an unlimited budget...and she exceeded it."  David says his clients tell him the same thing.  I wonder if he did that wedding?

Paula Pryke was there too, and what with her shop, her seventeen books, her international lectures, her collecting honors from the Queen via Prince William (and making him laugh) and her whirlwind arrangements, we all felt we should be doing just a bit more...

Love her style...

And yet right here at Chez Panisse I found flowers just as evocative, just as lovely...

And more my style.  Love the looseness.  We live in such a wonderful part of the world.

What's Happening Now

Many years ago a woman asked me to walk thru her garden with her and consult.  I knew she was tightly wrapped, but I didn't know how bad it was until I saw her hellebores.  Every single one had been stripped of all its leaves, and the flowers looked naked and embarrassed.  I hate people who torture their plants.  And I wonder about people who are that tightly wrapped.

Reminded me of a Beverly Nichols piece on consulting on a garden.  After a very rushed cup of tea the wife walked him around, and shot down every suggestion for improvement (and trust me, there was a lot of room for improvement) with  "Oh no, Mr Gardener (or what ever the hell his name was) would never stand for that.  He is quite attached to his (fill in the blank - fishpond, hideous rock pile, or what ever ugliness was under discussion at the moment).  

As Mr Nichols was leaving, the husband made an appearance and asked about their progress.  

"I gather you have some strong opinions about what is to be done in the garden..." Beverly Nichols said to the husband.

"Who, me?  No, I don't care if she bulldozes or floods the whole damn thing.  What ever makes her happy!"

Truth will out.

The hellebores are saving my garden.  The freeze made straw of the grasses and the geraniums, the forget-me-nots and the Icelandic poppies - thankfully the forget-me-nots and the poppies have recovered.  Mostly.  And the daffodils are starting (and the paperwhites of course) but they are a bit simple.  I have been cutting them for the table - I have resolved to have flowers from the garden on the breakfast table every day we are home.  Check with me in August, but so far so good.

But it is the hellebores that make me smile.

I don't understand them as cut flowers.  Some stems last forever, some wilt immediately.  In the same vase.  From the same plant. At the same stage of growth.  But in the garden, they have won my heart.

They bloom when the weather is bleak (except for this year, when we could use a little bleak weather and none is coming).  They have volunteered in the gravel, where hellebores are not supposed to grow.  Pink and white together.

The whites light up the shade.

The dark pinks charm, shyly nodding their heads.

Their cups are beautiful, pink and green with shaggy stamens.  

Each plant is a mass of flowers, the leaves nearly obscured.

Some hybridizer must be working on getting them to hold their heads up - just like the guy who bred the Stargazer lily, the first lily to face up not down.  But for now, they all nod.

Did you know that before the Stargazer all lilies hung their heads? There is a myth about why lilies do this, something about Christ and being ashamed.  But gardening is full of myths (remember the guy who puts salt on his iceplant?  It's in my book) - and few of them are founded in fact.  

There is a new hellebore this winter, a seedling.  It has appeared in two places, and I hope it will be happy and stay.  It's called picotee when the edges are a different color.  I call it cheerful and am happy it's in my garden.  All by itself.  

What's blooming in your garden?  

 

At the Flower Market

My favorite things about the flower market:

1. The smell. It's not just the heavy sweetness of the tuberoses, or the spicy hyacinths. It's the scent of dampness and the cold and the gentle fragrance of decay that hangs over all. How do you photograph a smell?

2. The flowers, of course.  

and where they end up...

The colors. These are mostly dahlias...or dahlias, mostly.

But there is bittersweet from the east where it is crisply fall...

Peonies from New Zealand where it is spring. Sprays of small green dates from the Middle East where it is always summer. 

And tender-stemmed amaryllis in little coffins.

3. The friends who go with me. Enthusiastically.

4. The time. I leave the house in the middle of the night when even the dogs are sleeping and the newspaper delivery person is not even thinking about getting up. I drive across a deserted bridge (relatively speaking for you sticklers) and turn a lonesome corner in an iffy neighborhood, and there inside the parking gates is a bustling small town. Cars are double parked along Main Street, people are chatting and laughing, criss-crossing between buildings, wheeling flat carts piled high with flowers.

Huge bundles of newspaper-wrapped flowers with legs sticking our below weave their way across the parking lot. No idea how they see where they're going.

Inside the brightly lit warehouses are little stalls, each with a specialty. Orchids in one, branches in another. Chrysanthemums or callas, topiary or tropicals. Roses, ribbons, antlers or amaryllis, candles and cellophane. Flowers from every season, every hemisphere. 

5. The parking - where else can you leave your keys in your car and come back to find it moved but not stolen? You leave your keys so the person you blocked when you double-parked can move your car and get out. Or so you can move the beat-up behemoth someone parked behind you.

6. When I emerge for a last trip to my car, arms full of branches, the sun is just coming up, the parking lot is clearing out (it will fill up again later when the public comes in) and the magic is going. You can feel it fade as the sun rises and the ruts in the parking lot and the flotsam and jetsam on the sidewalk come into view.

But just for a while every weekday morning there is a place in San Francisco that is full of magic. Etherial, ephemeral, magic. And how many magical places are left?

Flower Market

Long before dawn we were at the San Francisco Flower Market, my neighbor Leslie, one of the Pinks (thing one) and I. 

It is one of only 5 grower owned flower markets in the US. It is ginormous. It is fragrant, frenetic, breathtakingly beautiful and occasionally strange. Worth getting up at O-dark-hundred? Leslie probably has something to say about it on her blog, The Three Pinks. Take a look below - you be the judge.

Thing one fell in love with these cockscomb.

We looked at baskets and vases, ribbons and huge packs of tissue - a lifetime supply for any normal person. It feels a bit like being in a kid's storybook. Long musty aisles in dimly lit stores full of antlers and ostrich eggs. Next door are brightly lit cages stuffed with branches and blossoms. 

Thing one was thrilled with her loot.

The gorgeous pink and green bag did not come from the Flower Market, it is from Mixed Bag Designs. The best thing about them? They stay open when they're empty, so you can load them without a fight. If you've ever tried to hold a bag open with one hand while trying to wrestle your purchases into it with the other you know what I'm talking about. I use them at the grocery store, at the farmer's market, at the department stores when I remember. And at the Flower Market.

Wrapped up our treasures... 

Left the weird and wonderful behind...

And came out of the huge warehouses just as the sun was coming. up. I don't know about The Pinks, but I had a blast.