Where you most appreciate the beauty of plants, think about an area in your garden. Now imagine bringing that favorite piece of your garden inside as a bouquet. You may be amazed to find that the mixtures composed of many of your favorite flowering shrubs, perennials, vines and even trees can be employed to make a beautiful tabletop bouquet — and also inspire the next year’s plantings.
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Creating a bouquet is not difficult. In fact, it can be as easy as filling a vase with the stalks from a single flowering tree. Or try pairing flowering shrubs with vines and perennials. Whether your bouquet is made of a type of plant or several, there are possibilities.
The purple blooms of Texas ranger (Leucophyllum frutescens)make a great pairing with the orange blossoms of orange jubilee (Tecoma x ‘Orange Jubilee’).
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Selecting the Right Plants
you might be amazed to find that many of the existing flowering shrubs, perennials, vines and trees in your garden are acceptable for producing a backyard fragrance.
Revealed: Honeysuckle
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Your garden may be filled with flowering plants, but how do you know whether they’ll hold up in a bouquet without wilting immediately?
The easiest way to learn whether a plant can be utilised in a fragrance would be to cut a stem or two, place them in water and see how they consume. When the flowers wilt or droop straight away, then they won’t make a fantastic bouquet. Ideally they’ll last at least 24 hours.
The red blossoms of Jupiter’s beard (Centranthus ruber)form the perfect background for its purple blossoms of chives (Allium schoenoprasum), each of which can be utilised to make a bouquet.
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Garden bouquets typically don’t last so long as people purchased from a florist, but they’re a creative and unique manifestation of your garden.
Here a small bouquet includes flowering annuals violas and alyssum, paired with the pale pink blossoms of pink bower vine (Pandorea jasminoides).
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Don’t limit yourself to flowering plants. Plants with vibrant foliage or interesting textures and shapes can make fantastic additions to your garden bouquet.
Language ivy (Hedera helix)looks fantastic when inserted into a floral bouquet, since it will drape down the sides of the vase. The large leaves of hosta can be utilised to make a gorgeous backdrop for flowering plants.
As the seasons change, so will your garden bouquets, as distinct plants peak on your garden. When the weather starts to cool and the flowers start to fade, you can create a bouquet without blossoms, using seed pods out of your favorite trees instead. Seed pods from trees such as jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia), screwbean acacia (Prosopis pubescens), sweet chewing (Liquidambar styraciflua)and tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera)can be utilised to make a uniquely lovely and seasonal bouquet.
Revealed: Variegated English ivy
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Organizing Your Garden Bouquet
Look to the garden. You do not need to become a floral designer to figure out how to arrange flowers. For inspiration about what plants to use in your aroma, look at the way the plants are arranged on your garden. Note which plants look great together and try to mirror the identical arrangement in a bouquet.
A simple way to get started is to use a combination of 3 plants: a more slender flowering plant, such as a tree, paired with a medium-height perennial and a low-growing floor cover.
Set the taller branches or stalks toward the trunk or center of your bouquet and add the remaining plants in order of height, ending with all the shortest plant, just like from the landscape.
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Use the color wheel. Look to the garden for notions about which colours look great together. With a color wheel can also help you figure out which colors look great when combined. Group trendy colors, like pink, purple and white, for a beautiful bouquet. Or, if you want darker colours, use plants with red, orange or yellow blossoms. For a dramatic color contrast, pair flowering plants with trendy colours with those who have warm colours.
In the bouquet shown here, the contrasting colours of purple trailing lantana (Lantana montevidensis), yellowish Desert Marigold (Baileya multiradiata)and yellow-orange Cascalote shrub (Caesalpinia cacalaco) blossoms make an attractive mix.
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Bouquets created from the garden tend to be unstructured and loose, appealing in their simplicity.
The pink and white blossoms of globe mallow(Sphaeralcea ambigua) form the perfect background for the lavender blossoms of Goodding’s verbena (Glandularia gooddingii)in front here.
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A single type of flower can make a wonderful arrangement. Bouquets can be large or small depending on which plants and containers you use, by a large vase filled with azaleas to a small glass bottle with a lot of violas.
Revealed: Azaleas
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Planting Your Own Bouquet Garden
What if you do not have a garden filled with flowering plants acceptable for a bouquet? Go ahead and plant your own bouquet garden.
Here are some popular flowering plants which grow in a variety of climates and will enhance your outdoor garden in addition to beautify your home if made into bouquets:
AzaleaBleeding heartBuddleiaClematisConeflowerCoreopsisCrape myrtleForsythiaHoneysuckleLantanaLavenderPincushion flowerRhododendronRudbeckiaSalvia spTrumpet vineOf course, these are simply a couple of plants which can be brought indoors to make garden bouquets. Read the blossoms section for more ideas.
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When deciding which plants to improve your bouquet garden, then pick the ones that will have overlapping bloom periods so you can make bouquets throughout most of the year. Incorporate a mixture of flowering shrubs, perennials and vines. Soon you will have not just a gorgeous garden outside, but one which will allow you to attract the beauty of the garden inside.
More: How to Make Beautifully Untamed Floral Arrangements