Pruning & Bouquets

One of the things I’ve been learning lately on youtube garden university is when to prune different perennial plants & shrubs. Apparently (according to Floret Farm on Youtube) the best time to cut lilacs for a bouquet is when the blooms are about 50% open, and the best time to prune a lilac is when they finish blooming. They start setting buds for the following year after blooming, so it’s important to time it right or you won’t have any flowers the following year. I have two varieties of lilac, a reddish coloured blooming Miss Canada, and a purple coloured blooming Monge Lilac. They are both in the sunniest part of my garden on either end of a dry hedge fence, and my hope is they will be one day be much taller than the hedge and you will see glorious blooms as you approach our house from the road, but will also be visible from our house above.

Last weekend we had to move a couple of our blue bearded irises that were too close to my baby camellia tree because the slugs were using them as a way to climb up and eat the camellia leaves. The irises already had buds ready to open, so not an ideal time to move them, but necessary, so I wanted to cut them for a bouquet, so the plant can focus on rooting into their new location. When I went to cut them, I noticed there was one that was already open, and a few more that were close, so I looked up a Schreiner’s Garden youtube video about how to care for bearded irises, and made this bouquet today. I had some meadow buttercups and alliums that were still looking fresh from a recent bouquet, added the blue bearded iris, some fresh new ferns, some lemon balm (to give the bouquet some structure and scent), and a couple sprigs of the Miss Canada lilac. Xena cat gave it a very good sniff of approval as I was placing it in my window ledge (excuse the bad lighting inside, it’s a dark overcast day today – they are very pretty in person!). Cut flowers is quickly becoming my favourite thing in the world. I love rambling through my gardens looking for interesting plants and flowers to combine in unexpected ways.

A couple of the blue bearded irises were very small, and so were the Monge lilac stems (it’s a very young plant), so I used those, along with some tiny curly fern fiddleheads, and some purple ajuga, to make a little posy for our table in an old glass salt shaker. I absolutely love how it turned out.