MY FAVE FLORAL DESIGN....

of the year, maybe the decade, had three elements; chive flowers just beginning to open, blue star amsonia (Amsonia tabernaemontana) in that ethereal color so hard to find in a garden, and chartreuse new foliage of spirea. The trio came from daughter Jen's garden in Canterbury NH, and welcomed us to the guest room on our Memorial Day sleep-over. All are stuffed casually in a bud vase from the swap shed at the town dump.

The amsonia grows casually in Jen's garden, befitting a native wildflower.  I've never grown it, but now I have to. On sale from many sites on line.

WINTER MOSS IN NYC

 

For my January birthday every year, my very frugal Mother always splurged on a bunch of daffodils from a real florist. The sunny color was the perfect antidote for the short frigid days of a Philadelphia winter, and made me feel special.

This year for $8 I bought 10 fresh tulips from my corner grocer and plunked them in a glass jar with water, inside a birch basket I've had for years. Somewhere in my many moves the basket had lost its clusters of green moss and appeared rather grim.

My niece from Philadelphia made a quick visit after her day at the annual knitting expo in New York, surprise gift in hand: a small bag of dyed wool locks. What's a collage artist to do when confronted with the perfect substitute, when its so hard to gather moss in January in NYC?

She gets out her glue of course and glues wool locks on the birch, where it should look fine for many more years. Thank you Ruth. You must have gotten my unconscious ESP message.

SLOW FLOWERS IN NYC

Author/Photog Debra Prinzing invites us to slow down and use the flowers, foliage and branches we have on hand to create fabulous indoor arrangements. In her charming new book Slow Flowers  she creates 52 arrangements in season, using her own flowers and those she begs, borrows and.... buys from local growers.

Debra is a dear friend, so when she came to NYC with her son for a few days to enjoy all the city has to offer, I invited her to try her slow hand on my roof garden. Long ago she was a student here at FIT so she understands what New York is about, knows that garden space is scarce and we have to make do with what we have.

I have nothing of my own but since I tend the 18th story roof garden for my building, I need to cut back rampant herbs when they threaten to take over a mixed container, prune a barberry branch when it reaches out to grab a passing child, remove stems of caladium foliage that are drowning the coleus in the treewell.
 Debra was game to try anything I could throw at her. She selected the celadon glass vase from my container collection. Note that the only flowers I could justify picking were some black-eyed Susans which popped up as volunteers in my garden one year and which bloom happily in over-abundance all summer, threatening to become invasive. Other materials are stems of bi-colored sage, coleus, caladeum,  sumac 'Tiger Eye', basil going to seed. Deb writes that the "rosy barberry sprigs repeated the green and dark pink caladium colors."

 We are kindred spirits in floral design. Grab what you have in every season; love what's around you; spend little money; use branches and foliage; edit carefully; throw it all in the perfect vase; enjoy your garden indoors every time you walk by your arrangement. Groom your arrangement so it will last longest. Here the black-eyed Susans were the first to be discarded.
All photos © Debra Prinzing except the two just below in my living room.

 Eventually you'll pare it down to it's most long-lasting element, the caladium leaves. Since at the end you'll have relatively few stems looking good, select a new, smaller container like a bud vase or as here, a pair of green glass candle sticks.

See the other fabulous 51 arrangements in Slow Flowers by Debra Prinzing, (St. Lynn's Press, 2013).

Here Debra uses just three elements, hydrangeas, dusty miller, and sea oats to great effect. Lucky for me another garden writer friend and two-blocks-away-neighbor  Linda Yang had to dig and divide hers at the end of last summer and I was the proud recipient. I'll surely be copying Debra's arrangement this autumn.

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.

WINTER BOUQUET, NYC STYLE

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

It was a small party Chez Moi following the artist reception for a group collage show "Pasted". I had entered three pieces and my friends who were eating my food and drinking my wine all loved my work. Any surprises here?

It was also Other Ellen's birthday and I had promised to make her my best orange/sour cream bundt cake with orange/Grand Marnier glaze and a fresh strawberry sauce to spoon over ad lib. Too cheap to buy a pack of official birthday candles I raided my closet for three votive candles used in another photo shoot and three small clay flower pots. The center of the cake screamed for a fresh flower arrangement.
Three floors up in the roof garden I tend for my building, I pruned rose hips from the climber 'New Dawn', a few stems of lavender foliage still in perfect shape, (unheard of for NYC in January) and three stems of an unknown Euphorbia. I placed the stems in water in a porcelain egg cup I keep for miniature arrangements.
Five days later, the euphorbia BLOOMED, and no, I hadn't singed the bottom of the stems, just allowed them to seep milky sap into the water.In summer it's easy to decorate cakes like this from what I grow on the roof; though decidedly less showy, I was even more pleased with my winter bouquet.
(photo ©Alan& Linda Detrick, Ellen Spector Platt design)

BITTERSWEET INVASION

Our family tradition when I was little was to take a Sunday drive in the country, leaving West Philadelphia for the rural atmosphere of Rosemont Pa, hunting for 'The Bittersweet Man'. He stood by the big curve on Montgomery Avenue, arriving in late September, selling bunches of bittersweet and Japanese lanterns. He'd remain for a few week's then disappear until the following year.
My Mother had a pottery pitcher with a shiny brown glaze that was the only container she'd ever use for the orange berries. Now I insist on cutting my own bittersweet every fall, from the roadsides in PA, NJ, NY or my favorite place, a certain backyard in Ipswich MA. Yes I know it's an invasive scourge to many people, but I'm actually doing a community service when I cut stems when the shells are bright yellow, just before the berries, open to bring indoors.
These days I often make
a simple wreath with the
stems. Here's how.
1.Cut stems in full berry,
three to four feet long.
2.Take one stem and
wrap it around itself,
tucking in the end. Now
you have the base of
the wreath. Even a six
year-old can do it with-
out help.
3.Take another stem and
weave it in and out
around the circle. Tuck
in any small branches
that jut out.
4.The trick is to harvest
the stems just before
the berries open, mid
September around New
York City, second week in October around Ipswich, and make the wreath the same day you pick the stems. That way you'll have almost no droppage of berries. Hang the wreath indoors in a spot that doesn't get brushed against, or on a door that doesn't get slammed. Prop on a shelf, or lay flat on a coffee table out of reach of the dog's tail. Lucy is very proud of her wreath, and I'm proud of mine.

I'll keep it until just after Thanksgiving on my coffee table (top of the post) then replace it with something else; but my little yellow pitcher with extra stems, sitting on a shelf in the bathroom, will stay until spring.

NYC GARDENER ON SUMMER VACATION

Jen in her NH garden. (Double click any image to enlarge.)
When I lived and worked in the country, in a town of three thousand souls, I craved a city vacation: all noise and tumult, music and museums: Philadelphia, San Francisco, D.C., Boston, Barcelona, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, it didn’t matter. Since I’ve been living and working in a great city, I crave the country and, of course, the gardens.

Every summer, Daughter Jen generously allows me to weed her vast New Hampshire vegetable and cutting garden, pull the garlic, pick the beans, and encourages
me to cut armfuls of her
flowers and herbs for
arrangements. She
sends me home with
samples of her blue-
ribbon garlic, dried
goldenrod and nigella
pods among my dirty
laundry.

right, flowers & herbs from
Jen's cutting garden, in-
cluding dill seed heads and
anise hyssop flowers.I love
the way the bright orange
of the cosmos flowers
transforms a traditional
pink/blue color scheme.


Jen serves us beets picked ten minutes before roasting, Yukon Gold new potatoes, green and yellow beans, heirloom tomatoes, sweet tender carrots, patty pan squash. Her garden, fenced against deer, racoons, and to keep out her own playful dogs, was roto-tilled 8 years ago, and formed into raised beds, but never re-tilled. She top-dresses with compost, adds a couple inches of new wood chips to refresh the paths, and hand-weeds her pesticide free garden.(above, early broccoli a few weeds and spirea, coexisting happily together.)
Vegetables are interspersed with annual and perennial flowers available for cutting all growing season, so there's always great a great play of sight, smell and taste. It's plain fun to walk in this garden.(above, cactus flowering zinnias, my favorite for cutting and showing off, no arranging skills necessary)

Once upon a time Jen bought garlic to plant, and received seed garlic from friend Mary just down the dirt road, but over a few years saved her own best heads, and now plants only her own 'seed garlic', the biggest and best of her unblemished stock. Garlic adds fabulous flavor to almost any main course, but the stiff-neck species is also great in kitchen or dining room as a swag decoration with other dried flowers and herbs, here, chive flowers, orange calendula and sumac seed heads. Who's to stop you stealing a stalk when you need it and retying the swag to take up the slack?She's a consistent blue ribbon winner at the New Hampshire State Fair as she, like other garlic growers works her own survival of the fittest experiment, with garlic adapted to her own soil and climate conditions. My stash to take home to the City includes as many garlic heads as she allots me, and always a new treat like Red Chinese red noodle beans that she grew for the first time.

FAVORITE SIGNS OF EARLY SPRING

All photos except second from top ©Alan & Linda Detrick, Ellen Spector Platt design.
I saw pansy flats for sale at my corner store last week. Tulip bulbs peek up through the snow in my tree pits. Hellebores in my roof garden display full bud. The Philadelphia Flower show is in glorious bloom, an easy Amtrak ride from New York City through Sunday 3/8/09.

Since 1829, now the larg-
est indoor flower show on
the planet, over 250,000
people walk their feet off
through the 33 acres of
concrete flooring admir-
ing all manner of gar-
dens, arrangements,
plant competitions and
educational exhibits.
There is some immutable
law that every visitor
must go home with a
plant, pack of seeds,
book, vase, tool or shed.
Nothing seems as popular
as pussy willow. Visitors
to the show create pedestrian hazards as they manipulate long bunches through the crowded aisles of the Market Place.


I’ve often been poked by someone
else's pussy willow, and may have
done some inadvertent poking of
my own, until one year I rooted
the fresh stems and grew three
of my own shrubs, then had
enough to cut and sell at my
booth in the Market Place along
with my dried flowers and herbs.

Here are some other things you
can do with the pussy willow you
buy fresh at NYC greenmarkets.



When stems are very fresh
coil each one and lay it inside
a glass pitcher, building up
the construction. Three or four
stems will probably fill the
container and the willow will
dry in place. Buds of yellow
mimosa just starting open
will also dry as they lay.





Find a group of similar bottles in different sizes and put one stem of either regular or contorted pussy willow in each bottle without water. (below) The display will last until you get bored by it.













Make a pussy willow wreath on a metal wreath frame, cutting larger stems into pieces about eight inches in length. Use the finished wreath as part of a table centerpiece with sprigs of mimosa which will dry in place and various size eggs, both dyed and natural.

FOUND ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK

I’m a woman of a certain age, a grandma, dignified, polite, law-abiding. You wouldn’t think I’d go dumpster diving. You’d be wrong.
Stepping off the number 10 bus on Central Park West, minding my own business, I spied a woman throwing a large flower arrangement in the corner trashcan. It had probably once decorated the lobby of a grand apartment building. Like catnip to a cat, it lured me. There among the browning Star-gazer lilies, the limp roses and the curling callas, were five gorgeous stems of blue hydrangea, mature and crisp and just ready to complete their drying in my warm livingroom. For the result, see above.

©Alan & Linda Detrick

Piled in front of a neigh-
borhood grocery store
were crates and baskets
ready for the trash man.
I retrieved this mush-
room basket, sprayed it
with yellow paint and
made a grand container
for pansies. No need to
cut drainage holes be-
cause water seeps
through the cracks.





























©Alan & Linda Detrick, Ellen Spector Platt design

Philadelphia where I grew up, was a proper city with alleyways behind
houses. Residents put out their garbage cans in the back, and trucks
could drive down, grab the garbage, all properly hidden from street life.
New York isn’t so dignified and mountains of plastic bags with both
garbage and recycling form on front curbs several times a week.
The great part of this system is that people display their larger items
and reusables for all to see. No need for FreeCycle.com. Two years ago
I snagged a fabulous green metal chair sans seat, to serve both as plant
stand and trellis for a climbing Hoya in a containerized succulent garden.
It’s still serving with honor on my rooftop. (above, center)

Last spring a storm pruned large limbs of a flowering pear on Second Ave.
Rushing to make a meeting, I had enough time to snap off some pieces
and stuff them
in my ever-
present canvas
bag. Later at
home I clipped
the stems and
watched the
buds bloom in
tepid water.





My New Years Eve gift below. See the explanation in my comment to Judy Lowe, at the bottom of the post SHOWOFF on 12/29/08.

SHOWOFF

A few amaryllis bulbs transform my living room into a plant conservatory for at least six weeks in winter. I buy and plant them in mid-November, leaving their shoulders and necks exposed. When they hit daylight and drink some water the flower buds shoot up.
It’s not too late to get amaryllis started in January. Those you buy now have gone through a dormancy period at the bulb company and are ready to spring into flower.
Since flower stalks usually appear before foliage, I sometimes display amaryllis with houseplants and other winter experiments. Here from left , pineapple top rooting in a dish, hyacinth bulbs forcing in water, my aged
succulent carrion flower
(Stapelia gigantea)
in bud, and a cutting
from Ming Aralia rooting
in a vase.

The Stapelia bud soon
blooms like a giant
starfish, and
compliments the
amaryllis flower.

For the coffee table,
I stake the bare
amaryllis stems
with a few branches
trimmed from my
rooftop bayberry bush .
The branches help
support the green
stems, smell delicious,
and add visual interest.
Or I place an amaryllis
next to a few paper-
whites that have foliage
to spare.




If I’m fed up with an ungainly amaryllis that shoots too tall, I whack off the stem and treat it as a short cut flower. In water it will last at least two weeks.







When I lived in my
1850’s farmhouse,
the kitchen had a
walk-in fireplace
with no damper
on the flue. Cool
air poured down
in fall and winter.
Original pine folding
doors cut off the draft
from the rest of the
house. It was the per-
fect place to give
amaryllis bulbs the
cool, dark, and dry
they need to go
dormant before they
could re-bloom.In my
NYC condo it’s always
hot, with storage
space more precious
than diamonds. In a
gesture of extrava-
gance I consign bulbs
to the compost bin
after they finish
showing off each
winter. So sue me!