Text and photographs are © by Ellen Spector Platt & Ellen Zachos, all rights reserved.


Saturday, March 16, 2013

WHAT GOES AROUND...

photograph by ©Alan& Linda Detrick, all rights reserved.
Pussy willow, my favorite for spring arrangements. Wind stems inside a glass container, no water; this only works when stems are fresh-cut. Add mimosa at the base of the pitcher. It will dry in place. That's it; a no brain arrangement.
When I had my farm, I had a shrub big enough to prune and fill every vase. Here in Manhattan, I bought a bunch 5 years ago and rooted them for a month in water.
They were ready to plant when leaves started to push forth and roots looked like this...
I stuck a few in the soil of various containers on my roof garden and promptly forgot about them.
When I bought new containers and transplanted almost everything, these sticks got dumped, except one planted in an old teak container that I kept.
This March, five years later my New York born and bred pussy willow shrub looks like this...


and some new branches are ready to grace my living room.
Whether you buy them at a flower show or the Boston wholesale flower market as did my friend, floral designer, writer, and herbalist Betsy Williams, you can make something wonderful.
Here I made a table wreath of fresh pussy willow and  mimosa and filled the center with egg shells.
 photo © Alan & Linda Detrick, all rights reserved.





3 comments:

BFF Nana said...

I will have to try that. The pussy willows in the glass container I mean. I love the literal "touch" of spring that pussy willows bring. Thanks for the ideas and lovely photos.

Lola Horwitz said...

Your arrangements of pussy willows are lovely. I'm glad to see others finding the ease with which willows set roots and their long period of beauty. My property upstate (up for sale) has many willow species from the time when I wanted to grow them all (well, not the 40 to 100 ft trees but all the shrubs with showy catkins).
Salix irrorata, S. melanostachys and S. 'Mt. Aso' are special. Forestfarm (www.forestfarm.com has a huge offering of Salix. LLH flowers

Ellen Spector Platt said...

Betsy wrote"What a wonderful way to start a new week! I couldn't believe my eyes when I came across me in Garden Bytes.My first thought was, "Who's that?" Then the realization dawned--it's me!What fun!...I never thought of bending the pussy willows like that. Very nice....A great column as usual!"


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