Garden Centre

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Flowers from the January garden

This week’s vase contains hellebores and viburnum tinus. Although it’s a tiny little vase, it works really well because once the tealights are lit in the other holders, the gentle light reflects well off the pale flowers – and because the screen is set up on a mantel, the full effect of the beauty of the hellebores is available because they are slightly above average eye level and the freckled interior of the bell-shaped blooms is revealed.

Of course hellebores aren’t the easiest of flowers to work with: some people have an allergy to their sap and to be on the safe side I always wear gloves when cutting them or dividing the plants. Then they get airlocks very easily, so what I do is cut them as long as possible, then take them in the house, plunge them in cold water up to the blooms and cut them again, using a sharp knife rather than a pair of scissors – that means that water rushes into the hollow stems rather than air so they continue to take up water. To be really on the safe side, I then make pinholes every inch or so up the stem so that the air is forced out when the flowers are arranged in the vase.

Because they, and all other flowers cut from the garden at this time of year, are winter flowering, they don’t appreciate the warmth indoors very much – the best way to keep them going is to put the flower vase on the floor in the coldest room of the house overnight to revive them. If you have a porch and it doesn’t get morning sun, that’s an ideal place as long as it’s frost free.

The best way to display hellebores is always to float them, when they really become show stoppers, but for today I’m happy with my little bud vase of winter colour, and every time I walk into the room I get the light, faintly dusty, scent of the viburnum which is a delicious counterpoint to the gloom of winter.

Labels: cut flowers, garden flowers, hellebores, viburnam

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:52 AM

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