Falling Petals

Last-Minute Bouquet

2010-12-05T13:08:00.001-05:00

Kristin was far from the first bride to change her mind about her flower choices, only the timing made the switch a bit more dramatic. We had worked together over many months and across more miles - she was living and working in Houston while I'm generally found at home in Groton. We met only once, on a rainy April morning at the Taj Hotel in Boston, where she and her fiance would be married the following August. Through the course of innumerable emails and telephone conversations, Kristin remained certain she wanted an all white and ivory bouquet of mini callas and cymbidium orchids for herself, while her bridesmaids, wearing rich burgundy silk dresses, would carry more colorful posies. Less than two weeks before her wedding - her blooms already on order at the Boston Flower Exchange - Kristin decided she wanted a rich compote of color to match the rest of her wedding flowers. We came up with a bouquet of callas - eggplant, pink, and Picasso (a sensual mix of cream and purple), green cymbidium orchids, and lavender lisianthus. For her bridesmaids' bouquets, we added deep pink dendrobium orchids to purple lisianthus and Picasso callas. Nervous about the last-minute nature of things, I changed the flower order (Sometime I want to write about the hidden heroes of these occasions - the flower vendors at the market, so accommodating and informative) and the day before her wedding put everything together. It worked, to everyone's delight. To me, Kristin's bouquet proves flowers reign supreme as the expression of an occasion whose meaning defies logic, definition, and easy choices.

Promiscuous Assemblage - Flowers, shells, insects, and artwork

2010-03-14T18:52:00.000-04:00

The painstaking labor of Victorian artist Mary Delany (British, 1700-1788) boggles the mind. Her artwork -- graceful, detailed, and as fresh and accurate as the more famous French botanical artist Pierre Joseph Redoute (1759 - 1840) -- has moved into the third floor of the Sir John Soane Museum, 13 Lincolon's Inn Field in London. (http://www.soane.org/next.html. Here's a wonderful place to pass a few hours enveloped by another era entirely. Soane designed the British Houses of Parliament, amassing a treasury of objects and artwork that fills every wall and corner and surface of his townhouse. Adding to the charms of his home, Delany's artwork, recently returned from several months at the Yale Center for British Art, offers a visual treat on top of a treat. If you like flowers and men and women of genius, you'll find happiness in excess right here.

Living amongst such a collection must have been a feat. It is difficult to imagine how Soane's wife, two sons, servants, and pets, not to mention guests, managed to reach across the breakfast table, let alone change their clothes. For Soane was an inveterate collector, like so many educated people of wealth and prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries when, as Kipling wrote, "The sun never set on the British Empire." Vast the scope, and utterly without scruples the reach of archeologists, scholars, and amateur enthusiasts alike who plundered Greece, Rome, and Egypt for relics. The Elgin Marbles at the British Museum are a perfect example. Thus, Sir John Soane's home is itself a "promiscuous assemblage," as the Duchess of Portland's famous museum collection was called, of Greek and Roman terracotta, Medieval objects, artwork by Hogarth, Reynolds, Canaletto, and others, as well as classical and Egyptian antiquities, to summarize briefly. Among Soane's many possessions is a dazzling signet ring belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he much admired.

But Mary Delany's work is the subject here. She had a passion for natural history (Linnaean's system of categorizing plant and animal species had just come into vogue) and the decorative arts, a love of flowers, shells, and china -- shared by her friend the Duchess of Portland. Her botanical collages made from tiny bits of painted paper, are only a part of this exhibition, but they reveal her extraordinary eye and hand, as well as her vast knowledge of botany. So do her journals of plant illustrations, her embroidery - more flowers exquisitely stitched on large panels of black velvet. The exhibition includes her intimate oil portraits and landscapes. Clearly, Delany was a cultivated woman of genius, character, and rare accomplishment, equipped with a gift for friendships, too. Much of her shell collection, also on display at the Soane Museum, belonged to the Portland Museum, whose contents was auctioned off in April 1786. The cabinets of tiny drawers filled with shells will delight the miniaturist. Indeed, like the 21st-century Maine artist, Brian White, whose shell-flower-embellished wedding dresses have appeared at the Peabody Essex Museum and the Portland Museum of Art, Delany spent her spare hours making shell flowers to cover a chapel ceiling and a chandelier.

The Sir John Soane Museum offers an intimate glimpse of minds drawn to the world of beauty in art and nature. If you find yourself in London, take in this amazing show.

Transcendental Blooms

2010-03-08T14:57:00.001-05:00

Five o’clock Friday morning, speeding down Route 2 on a mission to pick up blooms for the Fruitlands Museuma' Open House this Saturday. What’s needed: 10 or 11 arrangements – seven cocktails, four centerpieces for 60-inch round tables – one raised piece among them, and one long and low arrangement for a rectangular table.

The setting: A rural venue with a Transcendental - Shaker - American Indian legacy. A red farmhouse of simple antique Colonial rooms has been turned into the Alcott Restaurant and Tea Room. Sunlight brings delicious notes of spring through the old windows, and beyond – a stunning view over the Nashoba River Valley to Mount Monadnock, a view that resonates with at least four centuries of recorded history, a view that drew Bronson Alcott and other aspirants to this very spot in 1843, when the Transcendentalists set up their (alas, short-lived) Utopian experiment known as Fruitlands.

The flowers must be romantic, rustic, elegant, pretty. It's a treat to rely on whim and inspiration at the flower market. This is seldom possible in the busy wedding season when I order blooms ahead for arrangements long discussed and visualized. A rare opportunity, a time to learn new things. And I do. I discover a new (to me) dendrobium orchid with slender twisting petals in a subtle pink and white stripe. It looks far more exotic than the usual rounded-petaled dendrobium, and is irresistible. My only rationale - compared to Marie Antoinette's extravagances, this is tiddly winks.

Soon the car is filled with brown paper sleeves of creamy freesia, blue delphinium, burgundy ranunculus, purple genestra, white and purple stock, pink dendrobium orchids, seeded eucalyptus, steel grass, white lisianthus, sweet pea of a dangerous pink, pussy willow, and curly willow. More than I need? Invariably. And yet it always turns out every stem finds a place, and I couldn’t have done with less.

Here are two arrangements I came up with for the open house – a long-and-low for the reception table; it has a traditional look, except for a few details - steel grass cut short in a sort of Japanese-like fan, and an asymmetry that gives it new life, and a cocktail vase of those new dendrobium orchids.

Simple flowers adorn the moment in an ancient stone chapel

2010-02-25T17:17:00.000-05:00

A February day like any other – overcast, drizzly, and cold – only this is England not Massachusetts; the light is soft and spring imminent. The pansies bloom in London’s window boxes, and in the countryside, where we stay for two nights, drifts of snowdrops splash the green grass. It was an embarrassingly short trip with reverberations that went back decades. We had gathered to celebrate the life (and honor the death) of my children's 97-year-old Granny, and we managed to take it all in with a mixture of sadness at the swift passage of even such a long life, and awe at the beauty and history of the visible world around us, a sense of the sacred augmented by flowers, as well as by friends and family; a sense of the past, and the rituals of mourning.

The ceremony took place in a tiny 13th century chapel… tiny and yet, like the proverbial Volkswagen Beetle out of which dance a dozen circus clowns, some 90 guests find comfort and peace on wooden pews inside the ancient stone walls. Little décor is needed in such a setting. Rather the gift of a sensitive hand and eye – a long-and-low arrangement of miniature yellow daffodils with moss and ivy sits on a window ledge in the apse. So natural, so pure; these flowers possess all the virtues of simplicity. The designer has clearly drawn on the promise of spring to sanctify and adorn the moment.

In London neighborhoods dense with boutiques and restaurants the predominant colors are gray and white interrupted by green parks and peaceful squares. Yet wee occasionally spy a flower stall (reminiscent of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady?) nestled against a church wall, filled with sheaths of bright blooming lilies, roses, and the like, along with piquant bouquets set into niches in the stone facade. No one is minding the stall; perhaps the flower seller has nipped into the next door cafe for a cappuccino; and we all remark on these blooms that offer such delight to passersby.

And now I must admit we lost our digital camera at the British Museum, and all the shots of flowers in the museum and on the street vanished with it.

Dahlias Open the Mind's Eye

2009-09-08T10:41:00.000-04:00

For dahlia lovers everywhere and in particular for anyone planning late summer nuptials on the east coast, this engaging and informative article in September’s Down East Magazine about Endless Summer Flower Farm in Camden, Maine, will spark keen interest. Even if you never gave dahlias more than a half glance before now, writer Rebecca Martin Evarts’s descriptions of dahlias, with their ancient Aztec origins (as a wanton weed) and saucy contemporary presence will surely enchant and tempt. Here’s a glimpse into dahlia Eden, the lovely people who make it happen year after year, and the surest and best source of fresh, local dahlias Down East.

I first met the Clarks and walked around Endless Summer Flower Farm early last summer, when we stopped by to see what they could promise us in the way of white dahlias for a mid-September wedding at the Camden Yacht Club. We found, among other charming sights, their granddaughter waltzing down the aisles between nodding stems just coming into blossom. We found, too, that given advance warning, the Clarks deliver beautifully on their promises. They keep careful track of their orders and are wonderful to deal with… forthright about the vagaries of the weather, and utterly reliable. It’s always inspiring to visit people so engaged, if not obsessed, in creative endeavors.

And then, the way the Clarks talk about the blooms, it’s as if Karma Carona and Bodacious belonged in the family. The fact that they have to dig up the tubers before winter, store in their basement, and replant every spring makes the garden seem that much more theatrical (with stage hands at work shifting the scene with the turning of the seasons). Here surely is a late summer idyll to prize, even if dahlias sit low on your list of favorite flowers. It’s refreshing, too, to open a window on stale preconceptions, proving once again Emerson’s famous line about consistency being “the hobgoblin of little minds.” I’ve never been crazy for dahlias, nor given them much thought before I got into flower design, but to see their jubilant heads dancing in the summer air, and their neatly fluted and folded petals, is to fall in love with this flower of such exquisite texture, color, and variety.

Art in Bloom and Sensibilities Aflame

2009-04-21T21:25:00.000-04:00

The day is nearly upon us. Art in Bloom comes to the MFA this weekend. It starts early Friday morning when designers are given free parking and approximately three hours to put together their arrangements throughout the museum exhibition halls and byways. They will bring vases, blooms, stones, moss, grasses, ferns, leaves, twigs, and branches. They will spread drop cloths under their vases, and set to work rapidly -- composure mingled with suspense -- using scissors, knives, watering jugs, and their hands to turn what may look like a grab bag of random organic things into coherent, imaginative designs that complement the artwork and spaces.

We're talking ephemeral public art, here. It may not last more than a few days, but as surely as the paintings, sculptures, and decorative furnishings bring visual pleasure to all gallery goers, this burst of fresh color, texture, and inspired design will nourish the souls of passers by and offer a sense of hope and joie de vivre -- all the sharper, perhaps, for the accompanying awareness that flowers fade and a wind ruffles the wild grasses in fields and meadow.

It will be a lavish display for sure, and some may decry the expense in hard times. But "reason not the need" as Shakespeare said, and enjoy the riches of a precious moment.

Ambivalence - Hands-on or hands off flower design?

2009-04-21T18:41:00.000-04:00

A friend saved Stemming the cost of wedding flowers (from The Boston Globe, March 26) for me. I have to admit I read it with mixed feelings. First, I am inspired brides and their friends are plunging into the fray to learn how to make bouquets, corsages, and centerpieces. It speaks to the renewal of the hands-on movement sparked by the world's economic gyrations. We all need to think and act differently - to start growing our own veggies, to shop with an eye to local, seasonal flowers as well as food, and to find our own way through the apparent downfall of much of corporate America. But brides designing their wedding flowers on the "day of" just strikes me as a bit precarious.

In the five years since I started Flourish, brides have repeatedly told me (with a mixture of shock and awe in their voices) my prices are reasonable. I didn't mean it that way! I am working for a living, after all. But it seems most flower designers simply charge a lot more. There are good reasons, too, that go beyond the price of blooms. A lot of time, thought, and mileage go into flower shopping, preparation, design, delivery and setup. Add to that the notion that the wedding industry seemed to be on an endlessly spiraling stairway to heaven - not so many years ago, The New York Times reported that the average wedding cost well over $100,000 - and of course it made sense to ride on up the escalator.

When I price out a wedding flower proposal (with everything itemized so a couple can see where their money goes and pick and choose how they want to spend it), I make sure I feel amply rewarded for my work. At the same time, I like to think couples may be getting a (slight) benefit (because I know how the cost goes zinging up for no apparent reason) and with luck having a good time. I know their day will be beautiful, full of fresh flowers imaginatively designed, that the service I offer is uniquely personal and impeccable, and that at the end of that glorious day, they will be well-pleased.

So, yes, I write with a divided heart. Of course I want to democratize the world of flower design. Of courses it's great brides and their friends are learning to shop for flowers, prep, and design them. I'm happy people are applying their hands and brains to this ancient art. What could be more satisfying than designing the flowers for your wedding day? At the same time, I'm feeling a thread of trepidation, and a degree of pride and what to call it? Snobbery? Ownership? It has taken me quite a few years to gain the skills of this particular trade, and I'm still learning. Successful flower design takes time and trial - flowers are high maintenance creatures: fickle, fussy, and fragile. You have to treat them with care, and learn their ways. If a bride can do that, as well as tend to all the details of her day, terrific! If not, please, I'd love to help you out!

Thinking Ahead to Art in Bloom at the MFA

2009-02-20T17:58:00.001-05:00

(Flowers by the MFA staff on a Friday in January.)

Here's the assignment: Design a knockout vase arrangement -- one, two, or three -- to suit the new Sharf Visitor Center at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. What's the occasion? The MFA's Art in Bloom weekend, April 24 to 26, 2009. The space is long, low, and sleek. The colors off whites and greys. The lines boxy and sleek - sans clutter and surface decor, with the addition of massive circular columns behind and in front of the information desk.

Should the design follow the spare, linear qualities of the space, or break out with an organic burst of cherry blossoms, say, or magnolia? Should the vase itself be dark like the ones pictured above, and have intrinsic drama, or should it seem to disappear? Those child-sized vases in John Singer Sargent's painting The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882) came to mind. Would something Asian and ornate add a delicious counterpoint to the clean lines of this 21st century design? It might, but practicality argues against. A tall clear glass cylinder, on the other hand, reasonably priced and elegant, would echo the columns. If filled with river rock, with flower petals scattered against the glass, it might harmonize with the ambiance, and stir thoughts of a peaceful garden.

Perhaps it comes down simply to what does the eye crave and the soul want from flowers? How to make a lasting statement in a space that argues against fuss? Or is that just what's needed? An architect I know says, yes, bring on the color and the intricacy. As yet, I have no solutions, only a vision slowly taking shape.

Learning to Love Glads

2009-01-17T17:12:00.000-05:00

I hate to say it but gladiolas just did not cut it with me until recently. They reminded me of funerals – not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with such occasions; we’ll all have one – but they cast a slur on gladiolas which made the flower seem dower and unapproachable. Such a long term association comes from my childhood exposure to glads (as my mother called them), when in dusty salmon or dirty white, only, they were to be seen lolling about in the background of the florists’ display windows on Madison Avenue, hovering like an uninvited guest.

But recently, my heart turned a corner with respect to gladiolas. I started to notice their dazzling colors (and sometimes duotones) at the Boston Flower Exchange. . No other flower outside of the rose comes in as many shades and hues: from soft mauve and scarlet to rust and claret to pale pink to dark pink to a pink-fringed white, to juicy orange, lemon, and lime. Clear, vivid, and seductive Given their palette and glorious stature, I started using gladiolas in designs destined for anything but a funeral parlor.

No longer merely the foil for other flowers, the gladiola is a stunner in its own right. You can use individual blossoms in low centerpieces, boutonnières, or corsages, or cut the stalks shorter to give the gladiolas more heft and presence in a contemporary glass or ceramic vase. A tall vase filled with gladiolas can look downright contemporary.

What changed my mind? A with-it young woman from Los Angeles who called to ask for seventy bright red gladiolas for her mother’s seventieth birthday, delivered in style. What fun I had that otherwise dreary mid-winter afternoon tying up long handsome bundles of gladiolas in cello with chartreuse ribbon.

So now I have a different take on that quintessentially 1950s flower. Let me tell you why: They have drama, they have scale; they have longevity and affordability on their side. Two dozen glads fanning out horizontally and in an upward spread can transform a space.

Nesmith House in Lowell - An Historic and Intimate Venue

2008-07-03T17:02:00.000-04:00

Just perfect for a small wedding, bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, or party

I visited the historic, 22-room Nesmith House in Lowell for the first time this spring. What a splendid place it is. Like all old homes, it has its stories, and an irresistible sense of romance and mystery.

This Greek Revival 1850’s mansion sits atop a hill in the Bellevidere district overlooking downtown Lowell and the Lowell Mills. What more fitting vista for its original owner, the industrialist and politically engaged John Nesmith.

The house, long neglected, was restored to vivid life in the mid 1990s when interior designers redid it, room by room – each to his or her own taste. If it’s a bit of a mélange of styles –ranging from period pieces, a few ornate ones original to the house, to art deco, with a lot of Victoriana along the way, somehow it all flows. In short, the house, like any beauty with good bones, wears its plumage well. From its graceful winding staircase and stained glass dome, to its overstuffed sofas and chairs, ornate rugs, wallpapers, paintings, and endless smaller treasures– the details and opulence beckon and delight. In addition, they urge: sit down, stay a while, have a sip of something cool or hot, depending on the weather, and enjoy the company.

The Nesmith House definitely deserves a visit and more than a passing thought as a venue for intimate occasions. Fifty guests can sit in comfort and style at small tables in the charming round dining room; for stand up affairs, the house can handle eighty. It has a large contemporary kitchen, incidentally – a caterer’s dream; and a way of making things look grand. While old-fashioned flowers like hydrangea and lilies, delphinium, stock, snapdragons, and roses fit right in, a clean arrangement of callas in dashing yellow, for example, or a sheaf of white gladiolas would make an attention-grabbing counterpoint. The flowers should simply make a statement in themselves.

What brought me to the Nesmith House? A late April shower for a June bride. The bride’s colors were pink and white with a soupcon of lime green; the look, to go with the house (and the bride’s favorite flowers): feminine and romantic.

For the entrance hall I used approximately two dozen pink Canterbury bells mingled with lime green viburnum and narrow ferns in a clear glass cylinder. The hall is elegant but not overpowering, and although Canterbury bells are delicate, en masse they stood up to some background busyness

For the bride’s table, a low arrangement of massive white hydrangea, a dozen light Orlando (pale pink) roses, French tulips (white with dark pink edges) and more viburnum created a cool, frothy focus. The colors echoed those of the room. Ferns lined the vase, a six-inch cylinder, to hide the flower stems and add another, watery texture. And for the buffet table, stargazer lilies, the bride’s favorite, along with roses and tulips in another tall cylinder.

What will bring me back for a second look? – Oh, the sheer pleasure of stepping across the threshold into another age. And a happy feeling about the place. The staff at Nesmith House appear to love this glorious building, the caterers that day, Two Chefs Are Better Than One, seemed at home, and the house, owned and used for visitors’ accommodations (it has some 11 bedrooms) by Middlesex Community College Foundation, had the well-kept feeling of a living museum.

Spring Beauties

2008-04-29T18:41:00.000-04:00

Flowers Redolent of Romance and Charm

No wonder, brides opt for spring nuptials! The season packs its own velvet-gloved punch. In the fleeting beauty of the next few weeks, we will see a plethora of sweet-scented flowers redolent of romance. The parade includes peonies, Canterbury bells, lily-of-the-valley, lilac, blossoming apple, cherry, peach, pear, quince, and plum, grape hyacinth, sweetpea, mock orange, daffodil, lilac, tulips, iris, and more wild flowers than space allows to name.

It’s that time of year the medieval Unicorn Tapestries (www.metmuseum.org/explore/unicorn/unicorn_splash.htm)

celebrate – that season of rich abundance, of nature naturing (Lat: natura naturans)

Colors, too, take on new allure. Only with great rigor can one escape the seductive pinks, lavenders, whites, and infinite shades of green. Not to mention the yellows and piquant oranges of daffodils, narcissus, and tulips springing up in gardens and lawns. Add ferns and pussy willow to a cluster of daffodils, and a touch of blue scilla, grape hyacinth, or iris to complement the sunny colors.

Twist of Lime

Speaking of making things pop - try mixing lime green hydrangea or viburnum, or delicate frothy lady’s mantle with a range of pinks and whites. Silvery seeded eucalyptus whose tiny berry clusters have a pink blush add a softer note. And just a week or two from now, use plump green amaranthus spilling from tall vases and urns to evoke Italy’s hanging gardens – a look that goes well in an outdoor weddng venue such as Fruitlands in Harvard, with its stone fountain and statuary, or the courtyard of the Fogg Museum in Cambridge. Green puts a jazzy spin on blue and white arrangements, too. A spiral or twist or several mesh balls of thin silver wire steps up the tempo.

Chocolate

A dash of chocolate or espresso, if you prefer, lends depth to pinks, lavenders, whites, and greens. Where to find such notes in nature? Look to fiddlehead fern, which resembles a monkey’s tail (only ask for the brown as opposed to the green fiddle), and has a charm and wit all its own. Or be literal: One bride asked me to stand the votive candles knee deep in coffee beans.

Just a reminder to have fun with flowers and flower décor, to take things a step further, and to remember the playful nature of art. Or do I mean playful art of nature?

Seeing Red - Flowers of Late Winter

2008-02-01T17:39:00.000-05:00

As the New England landscape grows monotonously drab in mid-winter, it’s only in the Boston Flower Exchange and floral shops that we find good clear reds and tangerines and pinks in living vibrancy, not to mention blue delphiniums, yellow tulips, purple and lime orchids while amaryllis, in softer, paler shades, lingers on. Hunger for color this season makes me think big and bold. I find myself gazing at interior design books and magazines, as much for the flowers arrangements on desk, table, and kitchen counter as for the furnishings and artwork. I have a yearning for warmth and beauty.

For bold statements, it’s good to think mono-floral in February, to consider amaryllis, gerbera daisies, orchids, lilies, and less expensive gladiolas and tulips. Roses, of course, are always with us, particularly as Valentine’s Day approaches. But miracle of miracles, while the world is still swathed in white, or bringing sleet and high winds, tulips, pussy willows, daffodils, and pale pink quince blossoms are making their first appearance at the Boston Flower Exchange.

Just today, I watched a sheaf of red hypericum berries, silvery green seeded eucalyptus, and pinky brown pepper berries being wrapped and readied for a foray out into the cold.

Yes, the season has definitely turned away from the reds and greens and whites of December, and yet Valentine’s Day presses upon us. I urge you to consider flowers other than red roses, whose price zings up with the demand. A bunch of red tulips even – who can resist their sleek heads? (Cut them extra short to start with, as the tulip, like one's nose, keeps growing. ) Delphinium in seriously delicious shades of blue (from pale to midnight) are regal and long lasting. There are two kinds to consider, the hybrid with their dense flowers, and the Belladona delphs with their dancing airier blooms. The former really can stand alone; the latter goes well with pussy willow, or green amaranthus spilling over the side of the vase. Or consider lime green cymbidium orchids in a low square Asian vase, with jade roses. Now there's a Valentine vase your beloved will remember.

Pass the (organic) roses please

2008-01-16T20:48:00.000-05:00

Borage for courage, a friend once said, handing me an iced tea into which she slipped a silvery-green leaved sprig of the herb, its blue flower balanced on the rim of the glass. Now that particular friendship has melted away, but the memory of a warm June afternoon spent overlooking White Pond, in Concord, MA, will remain, I suspect, forever.

If you’ve caught scent of the happy fusion of flowers and food lately, in restaurants, upscale markets, and organic farm stands, you are clearly on the path to all that’s current, chic, and aesthetically pleasing about the food revolution. Flowers have regained their place at table, and I don't mean as centerpieces to admire, but as integral ingredients in soups, rice and pasta dishes, salads, omelets, and desserts. Petals not only look pretty, they taste good – crunchy, peppery, sweet, fresh, redolent of field and forest.

In truth, food and flowers have long kept company. Only, now, as the boundaries blur between so many things formerly thought opposing (fiction and nonfiction for example), imaginative chefs and organic gardeners unite old world practices with new world taste buds and aesthetics to bring flowers to meals in novel ways. (Yes, flowers as decorative and tasty curatives have been around forever. Indeed, there are certain ancient cures we may not care to try. Who will rise to the challenge of a 16th-century cure for insanity involving daisies steeped in wine with sage and southernwood, for example?)

Chosen well -- use organic only, please! and when added to simple dishes that will not overwhelm their delicacy, flower petals bring elegance, color, flavor, texture, wit, and famed curative powers to many a dish.

Try It
We’ve all put nasturtium leaves (for their peppery flavor) and flowers (for their vibrant red-orange-yellow dash of color) in salads, but what about rose or peony petals, violets, violas, and gladiolas tossed between the radicchio and endive? Or tulip petals with the crunch of cucumbers? Or tender white sweet pea blossoms? Apple blossoms (in moderation, please, they are cyanide precursors ) add flavor to fruit compotes, as do garlic flowers to salad dressing, marigold petals (known as Poor Man’s Saffron) to soups, pasta, rice dishes, herb butters, and salads. Carnation petals steeped in wine or other drinks add a faint sweetness and are said to be calming, chrysanthemum petals have a slight peppery taste, bee balm tastes like oregano, and daylilies (cut away from the bitter white base) make marvelous desserts, I hear.

In Mexico, hibiscus flowers are used in jamaico, a cool drink infusion, as well for making ice cream and sorbet. In Asia and North Africa, a cup of mint or jasmine tea may reach your hand afloat with orange blossoms. In Asia, too, daylilies find their way into salads and hot and sour soup.

Five marigold petals floating in a bowl of pale green spinach soup, just seems timeless, does it not? Like goldfish in a Zen water garden.

The Peony Plays Hard to Get

2008-01-06T18:56:00.000-05:00

Common Name: Peony
Botanical Name: Paeonia

A few weeks ago, I was aghast to see peonies beside the amaryllis and snow berry at the Boston Flower Exchange. Irony of ironies! The one flower in the Chinese Empress’s palace garden that refused to bloom on command one winter night, and honored forever by the Chinese for its unyielding nature; that very peony or its South American cousin suddenly available year round? Go see for yourself.

The peony blooms in New England from late May to late June. Sought after by brides and designers for its luxuriant large blossom and divine scent, it has a short, charmed life.

Emerson may have said, Beauty is its own excuse for being, but take note, the peony has more than looks to recommend it. Its ancient history, mythic origins, variety, longevity, luscious fragrance, and curative powers, account for its magnetism. (Even ants find the bud’s nectar irresistible; they crawl all over it, some say helping it unfurl its dense confection of petals.)

Growers across the country have caught the peony fever. “We’re just mad about peonies,” writes Kasha Furman, owner of Cricket Hill Garden, in Thomaston, CT. Other cultivators from New Hampshire to Washington State sound equally enthralled.

Like most goddesses, the peony appears in many narratives world wide. A constant muse, it has inspired Chinese painting, poetry, and legend. Its name Sho Yo means most beautiful and it is considered the flower of prosperity. The symbol of healing in ancient Greece, the peony takes its Latinate name from the physician Paeon. In 77 AD, the Greek naturalist Pliny the Elder first described the peony’s rare medicinal gifts – it is said the root cures convulsions and high blood pressure. Charlemagne called the spring flower “the friend of physicians and the praise of cooks.”

What more to recommend it?

In Japan the peony promises a happy marriage and virility. In Germany it is known as the Pfingstrose, or Spirit Rose, as it blooms at the time of Pentecost.

Superstition follows the peony. It is said that under a full moon peony petals possess a soft radiance, that a woodpecker will peck out the eyes of anyone who disturbs its roots (As gardeners know, the peony plant, famous for lasting a century or more, likes to stay put.) According to Feng Shui, the red peony symbolizes good fortune associated with women and romance. It is believed to keep passion and love alive; and evil from the door.

Several years ago, I was booked to design flowers for a late June wedding. The bride, just out of law school, wanted among other flowers, pale pink peonies. I cheered her on. But when three weeks before her wedding, she opted for the more vibrant and dashing burgundy peony, I started to quake. A promise-her-anything-but give-her-Arpege tactic kicked in. But of course, I said, and suffered several sleepless nights full of courtroom dramas related to flowers.

Why? Because, dear reader, late June is pushing it for peonies, especially the darker ones. I needed a sure source of crimson peonies at a time when peonies play hard to get.
None of the vendors at the Boston Flower Exchange could promise dark peonies for June 25. Local gardeners said the same thing. Everything depends on the weather. A cool June would keep the peonies blooming; a hot month would hasten their demise. The days were heating up, and so was my anxiety.

It all came together in the end: I found armfuls of burgundy peonies, quite enough for every vase and bouquet, in exactly the proportion the bride wanted. I didn’t learn until much later, a chemist named Saunders developed a hardy hybrid crimson peony in the 1920s.

So where are autumn and winter peonies coming from? South America, my friends, like so many cultivated flowers these days. It’s just a shock, that’s all - a pale face in autumn’s panoply of apricots, sages, and rusts. I’m going to pretend it’s not there, and hold out for peonies in season and true to nature.

The pedigree of a classical beauty:

Peonies are among the oldest plants cultivated for their flowers and the healing properties of their tuberous roots and shiny dark seeds. In China, where records mentioning peonies date back to 600 B.C., it was known as "the King of Flowers," and often portrayed with the phoenix, a symbol of life arising triumphant from the ashes. The genus includes about 30 species, but the two chief divisions are the herbaceous peonies, those soft-stemmed plants that die back in winter, and "tree" peonies, shrubs that have a persistent woody framework.

Peonies range in color from white to lemon white to white with splashes of pink, from pale to rich pink to burgundy to salmon to lime; from single- to multi-petaled. Their blooms can grow up to 8 inches across, and their names, particularly those of the Chinese tree peonies, read like the names of Bodhisattvas from an ancient Buddhist sutra: Taoist Stove Filled with the Pills of Immortality, Necklace with Precious Pearls, Palace Dress, Compassionate, and so on.

Known and valued in Europe since the middle ages, the heavy-headed lush lactiflora hybrid peony first appeared in America on the cut flower market in 1884. Beginning in the 1920s the chemist A.P. Saunders, started on his thirty-year quest to develop a hybrid peony by crossing the Chinese peony (lactiflora) with the European P. officinalis. He succeeded.
Working in his lab in Clinton, NY, Saunders created a lighter-headed peony that flourished in the garden, where the old world top heavy peony had a habit of falling on its face. Among Saunders’s hybrids are Athena, a creamy pink centered flower, White Innocence, a tall late-blooming single, Echo, a pale single-petal lavender, and the burgundy Early Bird.

The Pre-Raphaelite William Morris said things should be either beautiful or useful; the peony succeeds in both.

Peony growers in New England:
· Cricket Hill Garden, in Thomaston, CT (1-860-283-1042
· Maple Ridge Peony Farm in Conway, MA 01341.