esperanza

Easy beautiful flower bouquets from your own garden

If Covid-19 is keeping you at home, why not bring your garden in with you? Even if you only have a small yard, chances are you have everything you need to bring a beautiful, garden-fresh bouquet into your home.

You may think you need daisies or roses or other traditional cutting flowers to create a floral arrangement.  You don’t.  Have you thought about adding in lantana or salvia or branches from your shrubs?  Landscape shrubs with beautiful stems – whether they bloom or not – can stand alone or provide structure, color, and texture to a vase full of flowers.

I used to have a very small bed that I called the cutting garden.  In the spring it was full of bluebonnets, larkspur, gladiolas, clematis and roses.  Later, it was overflowing with orange cosmos, lion’s tail and zinnias.  But you don’t have to have a special cutting garden to cut flowers to bring inside.

When I wander outside to cut flowers for a vase, I walk through the entire garden. Nothing is off limits as I add pretty blooms to my bucket.  One of my favorite additions, the perennial, Esperanza, also commonly known as Yellow Bells, (Tecoma stans) adds a hot pop of color with an arching form and soft foliage in any kind of vase.  Since they bloom from late spring into fall, I always have something yellow with which to make an arrangement.  I also have several colors of lantana throughout the garden, so I never have a shortage of filler.

Don’t forget about your vegetable or herb garden plants, either.  Rosemary, parsley, sage and basil are regular additions to my vases.  They add beautiful foliage and make the house smell wonderful.  You might even forego a fruit or vegetable in favor of the beautiful bloom it produces.  I always let my artichokes bloom because I’m smitten with the flowers.  I just buy my artichokes at the grocery store.  Consider using the lovely blooms of okra or onions the next time you create a bouquet.

Landscape plants for floral arrangements

Indigo spires salvia
Yellow bells
Lion’s Tail
Mexican oregano
Salvia Greggii
Verbena
Pride of Barbados
Crape Myrtle
Lantana
Rosemary
Loropetalum
Japanese Quince
Abelia
Bi-color iris
Native grasses
Pentas
Ferns
Artemsia
Oleander

Almost anything in your garden can be worked into a bouquet.  Now that you’ve identified some of your own pretty garden flowers that you’d like to put into a vase, how do you start?

First, cut your flowers and foliage early or late in the day, when it’s cooler and their stems are firm and full of water.  In the heat of the day, flowers become dehydrated.  Take a bucket of water out into the garden with you, so you can drop them straight into the water after you’ve cut them.

Plants with multiple buds or bloom spikes, like Indigo or mystic spires salvias or larkspur, should have at least one bud open when you cut to ensure that the remainder will open once in your vase.  Flowers that grow on individual stems should be cut when fully open.

Use clean, sharp tools like a small kitchen knife or floral snips to cut delicate stems and pruners to cut woodier stalks. Don’t use scissors – they will crush the stem and prevent proper water intake.  Cut stems as long as possible to give yourself more options when putting together the arrangement.  You can always make them shorter later.  Make cuts at a 45-degree angle to allow as much space on the stem to drink in the water.  For woody stems, you can also split the bottom inch of the stem with a knife to increase their ability to take in more water.

Removing most of the leaves from the stems, particularly below the water level, encourages water absorption and keeps the vase from being too crowded.  It also helps retard bacterial growth that shortens the life of the flowers and makes the water smelly and cloudy.

Now it’s time to decide how you want to arrange the flowers and in which container they’ll look best.

Any water-tight vessel will work.  Small cream pitchers or mason jars work well with small, posy-style bouquets.  Tall, columnar vases look best with a few long stems or flowers or branches.  Galvanized buckets or ornamental watering cans pair nicely with a wild arrangement of more rustic flowers.  A vase that flares out at the top will allow arching stems to droop gracefully from the bouquet.  I sometimes tie raffia or other ribbon around the vase, and I’ve also added sliced lemons to line the inside of a glass vase.

Just as with planters, for most floral arrangements, you’ll want to include thrillers, spillers and fillers.  The height of your flowers should equal about one and a half times the height of the container.  Start by adding some stems of your filler – these could be foliage or more delicate or smaller-sized blooms.  Then add your focal point.  This could be a single bloom or 3 to 5 blooms, depending on the size of your vase.  (Using odd numbers of blooms will be most visually appealing.) These might be the largest or most unique blooms in your arrangement, and should be taller than the filler.  Then add your accents – smaller than your showstopper, in complementary colors and textures.  You can choose to go with a monochromatic collection of blooms, or vivid, contrasting colors.

I sometimes find it’s easier for me to “build” my arrangement in my hand, starting with the focal point and turning the collection with each addition and lowering the height of the stems as I work my way around.  There’s no right or wrong way; these are just tips to help you create a beautiful balanced arrangement.  You can also make dramatic, exotic asymmetrical bouquets, tightly combined cube or fishbowl vases, or floral foam arrangements for shorter centerpieces.

The best way to ensure you get the longest life out of your arrangement is to add a ready-made preservative like Floral Life.  These contain the right amounts of nutrition, cleanser and citric acid.  Change the water daily and remove spent blooms.  You can also cut the stems again to help lengthen bloom life.

Bringing in cut flowers for indoor sunshine, but leaving the heat outdoors

You wouldn’t believe it’s fall here in Central Texas.  The temperature today is supposed to be a whopping 95 degrees.  They keep promising us a cool front this weekend.  I’m not holding my breath!

Since I’m so busy with work and procrastinating on two designs, I decided to venture into the garden and see how I could waste some more time.  Ah ha!  I’ll pick some of these lovely flowers to bring inside to enjoy while I am chained to my desk.

Many things that I cut back in early August are blooming again, but most of these have bloomed all summer long.  This bouquet has echinacea, duranta, esperanza, some flowering basil and some Klondike cosmos.  The cosmos were all ripped out mid-summer and the remaining seeds have germinated and given me a brand new, monstrous crop.  They are very unruly, but I like them anyway.  I think of them like popsicle sunshine on a stick!

I was inspired to do this after reading Late to the Garden Party’s post for In a Vase on Monday, a meme started by Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.  I’m late to the meme, but I still wanted some flowers for my desk.  Better late than never, right?

Have you been bringing in any flowers from your garden?  Don’t you want to pop out there with the scissors and bring something beautiful from your garden indoors?

May showers also bring May flowers…

I know why Carol of May Dreams Gardens dreams of May.  We’ve had just that kind of May this year.  Full of sunshine AND rain – giving all our parched gardens a good long drink before the relentless summer takes its toll. Garden bloggers around the globe join Carol on the 15th of each month to share what’s blooming in their gardens.  Come take a stroll with me and see what catches my eye in the garden today.

This beautiful ditch lily, a passalong from Lori, of Gardener of Good and Evil, who literally dug it up from a ditch in Wisconsin and brought it back to me in a bucket in the back seat of her car.  That’s true gardening friendship!

Some short little zinnias that are filling in small spaces in my cottage-style front path bed.

Wine cups in full force in my rock path-thats-no-longer-a-path because of the wine cup!

I’m not wild about the pineapple guava tree itself – rather boring foliage.  But these little blooms are to die for.

I’m always in awe of lamb’s ears blooms – they are so low and so understated and then their blooms shoot straight into the sky and make the boldest of statements.

One of my absolute favorite salvias, indigo spires, reaches out it’s long, lanky plumes.

If you think I’m in love with the pineapple guava blooms – this one knocks my socks off.  It’s a Mexican Bird of Paradise, and loves our heat and drought here.  Tough and wispy at the same time, one of my favorite combos.

And I couldn’t leave out the esperanza, or yellow bells, that grow all over Central Texas.  They, too, are native to Mexico.

Daylilies I just can’t get rid of!  I’ve dug them up twice and they keep coming back, so now they get to stay.  They don’t fit in and clash in the bed they’re in, but they bloom for such a short time that I just pretend it’s part of the plan!

And finally, these gray santolina make the most beautiful button blooms – tiny little golden globes.

What’s blooming in your garden today?

Drought tolerant plants for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day


I had pictures on Bloom Day (on the 15th!) and I had most of the post done, but then … life happened. So, whether it’s the 15th or the 23rd, I still want to write about my garden and share it with you. Besides, things are still the same – no water, that’s for sure. But this morning it was a blissful 66, so hope is on the way.

We’ve had more than 86 days over 100 degrees here in Central Texas this summer. And we hit an all-time high of 112.

Our gardens are crispy and our arms are tired from dragging around hoses to hand water while we’re under water restrictions.

Only allowed to use irrigation systems for 1 day a week, before 10 am and after 7 pm, gardening has been more of a challenge than usual.

I’ve spent a lot of my time hand watering all summer long, so I have more blooms than some gardeners. I feel lucky to have had the time to devote to it.

But we do still have blooms and we’re learning more than we ever wanted to know about the true meaning of drought tolerant and xeric.

These Blackfoot Daisies are tough as nails and seem quite content in the heat.

Crape Myrtles are doing ok when they get a little water. Those with American Indian names are the most adapted to our climate.
This Katy Road/Carefree Beauty rose doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about the heat – and she’s providing some shade for the small cutting garden flowers around her.
Lord Baltimore hibiscus really came into his own this year with a profusion of blooms.
Mexican Oregano is thriving in this heat. In fact, I spent an hour cutting this one back as it completely outgrew its space and tried to take over the Sago and the nearby lavendar trailing Lantana.
Can’t kill this Datura either. Tough as nails and out of control.
Another Mexican native, Esperanza (also known as Yellow Bells) is a strong bloomer all summer long. It is outshining the variegated shell ginger interplanted with it.
Well, these Homestead Verbenas are happy, but I have also lost many of them this summer. I planted some in 3 different places at 3 different times since the spring and 6 of them bit the dust. These are well-established and have been in the crushed granite path for at least 3 years. Guess that made all the difference.
Some of the Lantana looked drought tolerant this year and some doesn’t. A few of them never really recovered from last winter’s 19 degrees. They grew some foliage but then just stopped. No more growth and no blooms all summer. Not a one. This “Bandana Cherry Sunrise” is full of blooms.
My photography skills were challenged on this photo — this is Pitcher Sage — a native plant that I got two years ago at the annual Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center sale. It is a stunning shade of blue and blooming its head off! In the same bed as the Lantana shown above and the Liatris below, also from the Wildflower Center sale. They share the bed with two salvia greggii. All of these plants are natives, they are in a space where they get less water than most of my other beds, and look great. There’s a lesson there — hope I’m paying attention!

Hope you have lots of blooms in your garden on this Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, hosted each month by Carol of May Dreams Gardens. Happy Bloom Day!

Landscape drought damage requires long lens on camera…

With the worst drought in Texas history and 80 days with temperatures over 100, plants and people and pets are struggling this summer.

It’s 10 degrees cooler here today — 92 instead of 102 — and we have gusting wind cooling things down as well. Sadly, there are a half dozen wildfires in the Central Teas area around us. We’re safe for now, but 500+ people have lost their homes — burned down to the ground, 2 people have died, and today’s winds are spreading the fires ever further. 25,000 acres have burned. This is the back side of Katia. Instead of the rain we so desperately need that is flooding thousands of other people, we got wildfires. We’re praying for everyone in the path of these terrible fires.

While we are safe from the fires, we are at the mercy of the drought. But with a LOT of hand watering to supplement because we are under water restrictions, the garden looks o.k. overall. The secret? The long shot!

My mother-in-law was visiting two weeks ago and wanted some photos of our house and the gardens. I took lots of long shots, and realized as I looked at them that I rarely post photos like that. And it’s one of my great disappointments when reading other garden blogs — I really want to check out the big picture.

So here are photos of everything in the garden — showing of the bright and colorful and much too far away to see the dead and dying plants.

Come take a stroll around the garden with me…



These plants in the front bed are highly xeric and doing pretty well considering they were planted this spring and have endured this drought while trying to get established. There are dying narrow leafed Zinnias and Euryops and adwarf yaupon holly, but you can’t see them from here.

Yellow Esperanza (Yellow Bells) on the right are native to Mexico and very hardy. They are used to the heat.

The veggie garden needs protection from bunnies and our dogs, hence the fence INSIDE the other fence that keeps the deer out!


This is along the path in our woods that leads to the fenced back yard. This is where we feed birds and water the deer, squirrels, foxes, bunnies and mice! With this drought, we have 3 birdbaths and countless little bowls scattered around to provide constant drinking water for anything that needs it. With less blooms, hummingbirds really need our feeders this year, too.

The play scape, the cutting garden, the greenhouse and the xeric rock path.

The back corner of the yard got a few new plants this summer along with an old, worn out bistro table and chairs and a stunning Filamentosa yucca for a focal point. Even rusty metal furniture looks good from far enough away!


I see Dead things!

Some things are just … DEAD.

They might come back, mind you. But for now, they are D-E-A-D!
The gingers always die and come back, but not with these frigid temps. Guess we will have to cross our fingers. The Esperanza behind them sometimes don’t make it back, even in just a cool year, so I expect to lose some of them. But I have to say, the Ginger smells amazing outside – something about the freeze and thaw that is working on their roots and the best smell is wafting up from them. Interesting, you’d think a freeze would generate no smell. That was one of my complaints about living in Minnesota for a few years – grey, no-smells of outdoors winters.
The onion tops cratered — wonder if the 1015s in the ground will still form. I pulled a test one and they are only about the thickness of a double-wide green onion so far. I’ll cross my toes!
The big ol’ 8-ft tall Duranta Erecta succumbed last night. May not get that tall next year. It never froze back or went dorman last fall, so it might take it awhile to get that big again. I’ll cross my arms!
Same with the giant Cassias. The Candlestick trees grew for 2 years straight and never stopped. I suspect they will top out at 6 feet next year, instead of 12 feet! I’ll cross my legs!

Guess it’s gonna be a “short” Spring! (And I don’t think I have anything left to cross)

Go to Top