Flower cuttings - Home and Garden Style.

Rose by Nick Knight

A client has asked us to design and install a cutting garden in their backyard. This is very exciting and something we’ve been interested in incorporating into a landscape design. Even though our gardens always include plenty of perennials and annuals which can provide beautiful flowers for arrangements, having a dedicated area just for creatively useful flowers and vegetables is a lovely feature.

It's also a great opportunity to explore the craft of flower arranging!

Flower Decorator Constance Spry

As with most forms of arts and crafts, the degree of skill and mastery of floral arrangement varies from the casual hobbyist to the legendary artists. This, together with the natural beauty of even a single bloom, makes the genre interesting. You don’t have to be a professional to stroll into your yard and snip some ephemeral decor for your home.

Constance Spry did what she preferred to call ‘flower decorating’ for Britain’s Prince George and his mother Queen Mary. Spry was known for using unusual ‘flowers’ and containers. When her royal clients were not looking, she would raid the palace gardens for anything from vegetables such as kale to grasses and berries to combine with an array of flowers. The containers she used were also likely to have been pilfered from the kitchen.

New York Times Design recently did an article on Spry and her pioneering anything-goes style.

According to a New York Times Home and Garden article, fresh flower arranging is trendy today with young homeowners and part of a growing interest in all things handmade.

Classes are being offered all over the country with an emphasis on the free-form aesthetic sometimes with the use of wild flowers. In Britain, even weeds don't get overlooked when it comes to flower arranging. Vogue did a post on England's New Floral Revolution.

We love cutting flowers for the house but as garden designers don’t usually have much spare time in the spring and summer to fiddle around. This does not matter because many flower varieties from native perennials to flowering shrubs are fair game and make perfect quick pieces to throw in a container.

A few of our favorites include Echinops (pictured above top) which makes a wonderful textural contrast with other flowers, Phlox 'David' (above center) and Lily Stargazer (above bottom).

The image at the beginning of this post is by legendary photographer Nick Knight. It was part of a recent exhibition at SHOWstudio.com called Florist. The theme set out to show just how powerful the natural grace of a simple flower can be.

We plan more posts on cutting flowers from the garden as they come into bloom this year. In the meantime we are looking for talented florists in our local area we could include in this journal. Do you know of any? If so please leave us a comment so we can possibly include them in a future post.