Flower Club - Narcissi Paper Whites

This week’s Friday flower club are from the Isles of Scilly.  Warmed by the gulf stream this archipelago just 20 or so miles from Lands End has such a mild climate it’s flower season begins early.  Tiny fields filled with narcissi in the winter and spring moving on to delicious pinks in the summer months.

Narcissi – paper whites have a sap which can be an irritant so wash your hands after cutting or wear gloves.  After trimming the ends put into one large vase and arrange en masse, or you could cut some of them a bit shorter and put into lots of bud vases and dot along a table, or you could do a bit of both.  These are not great bedfellows with other flowers (due to aforementioned sap).  They need at least a day on their own in their own water after being cut to share a vase with another and for the other flowers to be unaffected.  Don’t recut as you will have to start the process again….

This week’s floristry top tip

Embrace the imperfect.  There is a joy to appreciating flowers and foliage in all their different stages and seeing their imperfections as part of their beauty.  As flowers ripen and go over there is still much to be enjoyed from them.  A nibbled leaf or petal is just as lovely as a perfect show-ready bloom.  Bringing nature inside with all the imperfections is a leap but I now love these as much as the perfect blooms.  Often with my regular clients I will squirrel in extra blooms that may only last another day or two as extras (for free) but can still be enjoyed before putting on the compost.

Pick your own…

catching my eye this week

berried ivy, bronze dried bracken, crab apple branches, verbena, hydrangea, ivy,

(Be sure to get permission if it isn’t your land.  Before using, condition the stems by recutting the stem, sitting them in plenty of clean water and keeping in a cool dark place overnight.)

Happy arranging!