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Consider color, scale, texture & scent

Take the time to enjoy the process of choosing your blooms, foliage, and fillers – it’s a chance to put together your version of the most perfect flower shop in the world, right in your own back garden. What makes a flower appealing is very personal: it could be a particular color you are drawn to again and again, or a beautifully intoxicating scent that beguiles you, or perhaps you fall for the strokable lush texture of velvety petals. Whatever your floral passion, indulge yourself and follow your heart.

COLOR

Color is so subjective; a shade of vivid pink may cheer one person, yet may irritate another. I’m not a huge fan of yellow in the garden or the vase, but you may love it. I’m not going to tell you which colors you shouldn’t plant in your garden nor encourage you toward others because they are on-trend or of the moment. Color works on a subconscious level and is linked closely to emotion, so the best approach is to trust your instinct and go for the colors and combinations that you love.

You’ll be automatically drawn to one color (or colors) over another, probably finding it easiest to decide first on your “hero” flowers (see page 14) – the ones that will become the focal point of an arrangement: such as roses, peonies, or tulips. You then need to pull together a color palette of supporting flowers (see page 14), fillers, and foliage that will work with these to form your arrangement or bouquet.

LET NATURE INSPIRE

It’s helpful to look to the seasons for inspiration; each one has a personality and a color scheme of its own – an instant, perfectly formed color palette right there outside your window.

SPRING This season is full of optimism and has a freshness that other seasons can lack. The vivid acidic greens of the flush of new growth are a welcome sight after winter. Spring combinations have a lightness and a vibrancy to them and might include lime-greens, primrose-yellow, and hyacinth-blue as well as the soft blush of spring blossom.

Color studies for ‘Hot Chocolate’, ‘Abraham Darby’, and ‘Koko Loko’ roses.

A moody ruby-red palette of ‘Red Charm’ peony, chocolate cosmos, ‘Darcey Bussell’ and ‘Burgundy Ice’ roses, and ‘Sooty’ sweet william mixed with copper beech leaves and ‘Purple Kisses’ wild carrot.

Harmonious pastels of ‘Koko Loko’ rose, larkspur, and delphinium with white perennial phlox and bishop’s flower create a muted palette for this arrangement.

SUMMER This season has two faces – the rich, jewellike colors of hot pinks, yellows, purples, and ruby-reds while the herbaceous borders reach their prime with spring greens moving to richer hues. The flip side (and my personal favorite) are the colors that have become washed out over time, fading as the season goes on. They have a romantic feel with a muted, pared-back color palette that might include the soft pinks of garden roses, elegant off-whites, and delicate peach and apricot.

AUTUMN The intense colors of autumn provide a perfect combination played out in the canopy of the trees as leaves take on tones of burnt ocher, copper, and red. Celebrate the harvest and its earthy colors of straw, pumpkin-orange, and butternut squash.

WINTER This season offers us the perfect neutral palette of an endless number of muted shades from the murky gray–blues of a winter sky and ghostly whites and silver of birch tree bark to the brooding dark greens of evergreens such as rosemary and yew. Winter is a lesson in using color sparingly – it’s there if you look: the cheery yellows of mahonia, witch hazel, and winter aconite as well as the soft pink of daphne and bold red of dogwood.

A bucket of high-contrast early-summer pickings: rich reds and pinks of ‘Madame Butterfly’ snapdragons and wine-colored dahlias and roses contrast with the violet larkspur and blue-green of honeywort.

WAYS TO USE COLOR IN ARRANGEMENTS

Go for one color: If you want to keep things simple, stick to one color and combine lighter and darker variations. Mixing shades of a single hue will create a more muted monochromatic display. Add interest by varying scale and textures.

Work in harmony: Colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel will always look harmonious in the vase. Blues and purples will feel tranquil, while red and oranges are more energetic.

Use contrast: Contrasting colors that sit directly opposite each other on the color wheel will give your floral arrangement a more energetic feel. Mix red with green, or yellow with purple or blue to create a vibrant display.

A WORD ON “GREENERY”

Foliage doesn’t have to be green – consider it an equal in terms of bringing color to your arrangements. There’s the silvery gray of dusty miller, the deep plum of copper beech, and the warm yellows and oranges of Heuchera ‘Caramel’. Even green foliage plants often have variations of color through the seasons, going from vibrant acidic green in spring to the changing colors of autumn as the leaves take on hues of red, orange, and copper.

‘Kenora macop-B’.

Foraged cherry blossom is a perfect springtime large-scale arrangement.

SCALE

Consider the proportion of your home. If you have tall ceilings, the scale of arrangements needed will be very different to that of a small cottage, where it might take only a few small posies to make the house feel full of flowers. Think about where you want to position your blooms – there’s no point growing masses of towering giants if you’re looking for posies to place beside your bed and to cluster on the coffee table.

TEXTURE

The mood and feel of a flower are greatly influenced by its texture. There are blooms that are reminiscent of luxury fabrics: the deep purple, almost black petals of ‘Black Jack’ dahlia or Salpiglossis sinuata ‘Black Trumpets’ look like satin and silk – their deeper, darker color exaggerating the richness. Icelandic poppies have the crumpled charm of tissue paper as they unfurl, while some parrot tulips have a molded-from-plastic quality that makes you question if they are actually real. Textural blooms allow you to add another layer of interest to an arrangement and help you alter the visual weight of a display: light and airy vs. rich and solid.

SCENT

When selecting which flowers to grow, fragrance comes pretty high on my list. If you choose carefully, you should be able to add scent to pretty much every arrangement you make. We all react differently to fragrance, and it’s entirely personal whether you find the generously scented Lilium regale or Jasminum officinale deliciously exotic or sickly and intoxicating. While planning your cutting garden, try to be more aware of scent – the best way to find out what you like is to take time to smell the roses. Using scented foliage is another way of bolstering the scent content of your cutting garden – the scented Pelargonium ‘Attar of Roses’ has a wonderful, rose-like fragrance.

ARTISTIC FLAIR

Splodges and splatters, freckles and spots and painterly-like strokes are some of my favorite features to look for when selecting plant varieties. They add a beauty and interest that is so rare in store-bought flowers and are always a talking point in an arrangement.

The wax-like sculptural flower heads of ‘Purple Parrot’ tulips with scented lilac.

Artistic splodges and painterly marks on ‘Rosetta’ cosmos with ‘Burgundy Ice’ rose, ‘Marble Ball’, and ‘Edge of Joy’ and ‘Lankon’ lily dahlias.

Roses, peonies, and lupins in the perennial border in early summer.