Easton - Petal & twig : seasonal bouquets with blossoms, branches, and grasses from your garden

Copyright 2011 by Valerie Easton
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Sasquatch Books

Front cover photographs: Kathryn Barnard
Cover and interior design: Anna Goldstein
Interior photographs: Valerie Easton (except , copyright Katie Easton)
Interior map by Katie Easton
Interior composition: Anna Goldstein

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Easton, Valerie.
Petal and twig : seasonal bouquets with blossoms, branches, and grasses from your garden / Valerie Easton.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-57061-798-0
1. Bouquets. 2. Gardening. I. Title.
SB449.5.B65E27 2012
745.92dc23

2011026020

Sasquatch Books
119 South Main Street, Suite 400
Seattle, WA 98104
(206) 467-4300
www.sasquatchbooks.com

v3.1

To my family, for their encouragement and support,
especially my daughter, Katie, who had a hand in this book. And to my
dog, Bridget, who keeps me company while I write and garden.

Hardy fuchsias, and mophead and Annabelle hydrangeas, ready to be picked by mid-August in my garden on Whidbey Island.

If we could see the miracle of a single flower,
our whole life would change.

THE BUDDHA

Simple bouquets are all about the joy of cutting flowers and foliage from our gardens and bringing them inside, not about decorating or accessorizing the house.

Most books on flower arranging have oddly little to do with gardens. Their elaborate floral constructions have even less to do with our busy and informal lives. Im always amazed at how designers and florists manage to take the nature out of nature.

Sometimes its easiest to define something by what it is not. This little book isnt about wiring or manipulating plant materials, interior decorating, or impressing guests. Its simply about taking a delight in flowers, leaves, and what nature offers up.

If were intimidated by the grandiosity of flower arranging, all that fragrant, soul-stirring beauty will stay outdoors, rather than grace our indoor lives as well as our gardens.

For most gardeners, the simple act of cutting what they find beautiful or interesting in their gardens and bringing it into their houses is all about their love of plant life. What chance do we have of realizing the Buddhas miracle of a single flower if we distort or manipulate plants so that they no longer express their own essence?

This book is all about how easy, fun, and creatively satisfying flower arranging can be. Id even suggest that the simpler and more spontaneous you keep the process of cutting and arranging, the more happiness youll find in it. All you need do is go outdoors with an open mind, a pair of sharp clippers, and the willingness to look closely. Arrange as much as youd like, or better yet, plop your bouquet, handheld and fresh from the garden, into a vase and call it good.

Organic gardeners have peace of mind setting a bouquet of sweet peas freshly cut from the backyard on the counter where their children eat breakfast. Nothing is more local and seasonal than flowers and foliage grown right outside your own back door. Who wants to worry about flowers doused in chemicals or the environmental cost of raising flowers in hothouses and shipping them across countries, oceans, and continents? Consider this crazy number80 percent of the cut flowers sold in the United States are imported. Its time we extend our thinking about safety, organic practices, and localism to the flowers we bring into our homes, put on our tables, and set by our bedsides.

Although hothouse flowers can certainly be showier, theres great gratification in growing each bloom yourself. Youve watered your flowers roots and watched your plants stretch toward the sun. Youve known each blossom since it was a seed or a start just pushing out of the soil. You live the history of bouquets from your own garden, which makes arranging them a focused act of intimacy.

Admiring small, handmade bouquets and catching a whiff of their fresh or perfumed scent as you go about cooking, eating, reading, and working are such pleasures. The silkiness of their petals, the exuberance of leaves and stamen, all tell the story of tending the soil, of what the weather has been like over the last weeks, of dewy mornings, chilly evenings, warm afternoons.

If flowers are distilled emotion, then gathering and combining them into a single arrangement is surely the most expressive of arts. Choosing which ones to bring indoors and cutting and combining them in various patterns and colors is one more expression of our love for our gardens and what we grow there. We live with our plants when were outside; why not when were inside, where we can enjoy them many more hours of the day and into the evenings? Raising vegetables and fruit offers many of the same pleasures, with the additional satisfaction of cooking and eating, but then theyre gone. Cut early in the morning and arranged gently, flowers will usually last a week in the house.

Then theres the zen of flower arranging, which can be a sweet little oasis of beauty and calm in the midst of a hectic day. Working with flowers is thoroughly absorbing once you find the pace of it. A little music and a cup of tea help slow you down to closely consider the possibilities. Whether youre gathering a simple nosegay of pansies and plunking it into a tin or working with a larger mixed bunch, take your time. After all, youre crafting performance art that changes hour by hour, day by day, as buds open, petals drop, and flowers droop. Imperfection engages us in the creative process. The ephemeral nature of bouquets makes them even more precious. Soon enough, theyll be wilted flowers in stinky water, ready to be tossed into the compost.

Which brings us back to the garden, where it all starts. A big part of a gardens enduring fascination is how it expresses the seasons. I look forward all year to certain plants leafing out and others blooming. A white jug filled with deep-purple lilacs, forsythia forced into bright flower in darkest winter, or a basket overflowing with moss and French pink pussy willows, are events that mark the seasons in a more heartfelt, sensory way than the calendar can.

Which is why arranging materials from the garden, rather than buying out-of-season flowers, is so satisfying. We can celebrate and even exaggerate the seasons indoors. Spring flowers are so stunning and often so exquisitely fragrant that a bouquet of lilacs or mock orange is perfection. In summer, youre inundated with happy choices. A mass of blooms in a single color can look brilliant, or the overwhelming bounty of the summer garden can be gathered into lush, scented bouquets of lilies and roses. The mellow colors of autumn, with berries and vegetables mixed in, can be an expression of both the harvest and the days growing shorter and colder. Winter bouquets are more about shape and line of bare branches or the endurance of evergreens. Its a time to celebrate the somber colors and remember that brown, gray, and green are magnificent in their own earthy way, especially when viewed in their textural splendor close up in a vase.