My pantry staple for a longer vase life

A “woody” stem, such as lilac, can benefit from this trick to extend vase life.

Welcome to the first in a series of tips & tricks I use everyday in my floral design business. The first series I’m calling “pantry staples”.

We all know the feeling of buying beautiful blooms only to get them home, arranged and looking dead within a day’s time (looking at you, hydrangea). It’s frustrating to deal with such finicky stems, but there is a trick that can help extend your flowers’ vase life tremendously, and you might even already have it in your spice pantry. Enter: Alum powder. I recently spoke with Hugh Metcalf with Living Etc magazine about the florists’ staple tool for thirsty stems prone to wilting. To read the entire article, click here. Otherwise, excepts below:

However, speaking to a professional flower grower, I learned a great secret about how to keep these blooms alive. 'As a flower-farmer, I’d love to share a tip that has saved me many finicky cut-hydrangea blooms, in particular,' says Meredith Bishop, founder of Bloom & Beauty, and it involves something you can buy for less than $5 at a grocery store.

'One, always cut in the coolest part of the day (morning or evening) straight into water,' Meredith says — something that applies if you're growing your own hydrangea, not getting them from the store. 'Next, scrape a bit (1/2” or less) of bark off the stem at the cut point. Finally, dip the cut end into alum powder and replace in fresh water,' she says.

So what exactly is alum powder? 'It's a spice in the onion family found in the spice aisle of most grocery stores,' Meredith explains, but why does it help your hydrangeas last longer?

Turns out alum is a pickling spice- the same one you might use to make your freshly canned cucumbers turn into crunchy pickles. Alum acts on the stems ability to take up water and hold onto it, increasing its “crunch”, if you will.

Alum powder isn’t a good idea for hydrangeas only. In fact, one of my favorite times to use it is when I forage branches in the spring or fall. Anything with a woodier stem is prone to dehydration (usually perennials such as viburnum, roses, smokebush, lilac as examples), and alum powder can really make a world of difference in keeping an arrangement in peak form. Give it a try on your next grocery run!

Beauty will save the world

A Cotswold window onto the natural world

Why are we drawn to beautiful things? And why might it matter?

(Note: This post was taken from a local interview I gave in May 2023 in response to the question: “Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?”)

The impetus behind my business is a call to beauty.

I believe Dostoevsky was correct when he famously said "Beauty will save the world."  This isn't cliche, though it can sound cheap and surface.  In fact, it points to a profound reality- the three transcendentals of truth, goodness and beauty are inextricably intertwined, and point us to the highest human good—the infinity of the human soul.  The three only live in their unity- truth taken abstractly is an empty word, goodness a mere feeling, and beauty an idol.  The power lies in their indivisibility.  Truth IS goodness, perceived by the human mind. Beauty is the same goodness and truth, embodied in a solid form.

As an enneagram four (and I get it- it's annoying to talk about the enneagram at this point!) beauty often leads the way for me. But it's a portal, not a destination. A portal to meaning.  The beauty of gardening & creatively arranging the garden's bounty (& ultimately gifting it) is no small thing: the beauty of a sprouted seed points to hope; the beauty of a feeding bumblebee points to the connectedness of humans and nature; the beauty of an arrangement, the stems  dancing in the vase, reaching around a neighbor still searching for the sun, points to the power of life, even when your roots have been cut from under you; the beauty of gifting an arrangement of flowers to a friend in either of the two human poles of need or celebration points to the power of friendship to touch, see and uplift.

So yes, there is a mission driving my creative journey, and it is this: beauty is a “way in” to the things that matter.

Why you should still be forcing Paperwhites…and how to keep them upright

If you’re like me, you love the smell and beauty that the dainty Paperwhite blossom can bring during the drab winter days. Aside from grabbing a boring & odorless grocery store bouquet to attempt to bring spring cheer to my winter table, forcing bulbs is the main way I cultivate indoor beauty during the darker months. Forcing Paperwhite bulbs is incredibly easy, and for very little effort in a matter of weeks you can have containers full of gorgeous blooms that last for over two weeks. I try to keep them on rotation in my home from Thanksgiving until April, as I find that I’m just desperate for beauty during these five months.

But Paperwhites, unlike their winter counterpart the Amaryllis, are notorious for flopping stems once the blossoms open and are at their most beautiful stage. I often stake with curly willow and wrap with a pretty ribbon, but this can be a hassle, and honestly detracts from their natural charm in my opinion.

I’ve experimented with the alcohol method for keeping stems from flopping in the past (if you haven’t heard of it before, read on). It certainly stunted growth, and that helped keep the stems upright. But, I still found that they would flop toward the end of life. After a bit of research, I discovered a second method which purported to solve the problem and I decided to experiment with both methods on a round of bulbs this winter. The methods are:

• alcohol

• complete darkness

First, alcohol. Yes, it really is encouraged to literally give the bulbs a drink. A study by Cornell University demonstrated that Paperwhites (& so far only this variety of flower) have been found to respond to a liquor-water solution with stunted growth by 1/2 to 1/3, with flower size and longevity untouched. And the thought is- shorter stems equal less flopping.

The details for the diluted alcohol solution are pretty specific. As with humans, moderation is key. Too high a concentration of alcohol will be toxic to the plants. Shoot for a 4-6% alcohol concentration by combining 1 part liquor (40% alcohol) to 7 parts water. Avoid beer or wine, as the sugars won’t pair well with the bulbs. I used a cheap vodka, and made a large batch of the solution to keep near the plants until they were ready to bloom. If you prefer not to use liquor, you can substitute rubbing alcohol, but due to its very high alcohol content, you will need to adjust your ratio to 1 part rubbing alcohol to 11 parts water.

Paperwhites can be planted in dirt, gravel, stones, marbles, glass beads, etc. Substitute the alcohol solution for water each time you water the bulbs (and generally I water 1/4 cup about twice a week until blooms open). You should see the effect on the stem length within a week or so.

Method two? A coffin. Weird, I know. Just when you’re trying to bring Paperwhite bulbs out of dormancy, this method suggests you send them into a cocoon of complete darkness for ten days to two weeks. First, you pot them up as you normally would, and “wake them up” by giving them a small drink of plain water. Roots that are dormant are incredibly sensitive to the presence of water, and will go searching (ie: growing) toward even the smallest amount. Then, you find a spot in your home that won’t see any light (under a cabinet, in a rarely used closet, the basement) and you put them back to sleep for ten days.

The idea here is that the roots of the bulbs will reach for the water, but without a light source the plant won’t try to photosynthesize and leaf out. So, for a period of time, you allow the roots to grow strong and robust without the plant putting on any height. Granted, this method does not purport to stunt the growth, but the idea is that more well-developed roots will hold bulbs & stems in place better, leading to less flopping.

Alcohol+darkness on the left; Darkness alone on the right

Combining the two methods? A true winner. To test the hypothesis, potted up two containers of dormant paperwhites. I already knew that the alcohol solution would stunt growth, but it still wasn’t 100% great in the battle against flopping stems. I wanted to see if the darkness method alone (with more robust roots) would hold them up better as they aged.

Here’s what I did: I watered each slightly with plain water, and then put them in a completely dark, cool place for 10 days. After the dark period, I moved them to the brightest spot in my house, and began to water one with the alcohol solution a couple of times per week, while giving the other plain water. After about two weeks, the stems on both were healthy and straight, but the alcohol + darkness pot were considerably shorter.

They both bloomed beautifully. Neither method seemed to inhibit scent (these were Ziva) nor bloom size.

As the flowers fully blossomed, I moved them out of the sunny spot to try to extend bloom time. At this point, the darkness-only planter began to flop considerably. My memory from experimenting with alcohol-only in years’ past was that the stems lost straightness at about this point, also, so I was interested to see what would happen as the blooms began to fade on the planter I had used both methods.

As you can see below, it did beautifully. I really think this is the key to straight stems through the entire blooming life of Paperwhite bulbs. While I ended up trashing the darkness-only planter early, I never had to resort to staking and tying the other. The stems continued to grow slightly, giving the blooms varying heights, and the scent was moderately strong until the blooms became brittle.

We tend to think of Paperwhites as a December-only flower, but a bag of 50 is inexpensive and you can pot them all up in ANYTHING and pull one or two out of darkness every 10 days to have a continuous supply until the daffodils and tulips save the day!

Hope you’ll give this a go!

Welcome, and the Why…

Welcome to the first blog post of Bloom & Bounty!

I hope to use this long-form space to provide detailed tutorials, to answer gardening questions I often receive in a more thorough way than social media can provide, and to show you what’s unfolding in our gardens month by month.

But to begin, I thought I would answer a question that may be on your minds. And trust me, I’m as sick as the next person of the moralizing world we live in, and virtue-signaling isn’t my intent with this post. But in the many years I have been gardening and the five years I have been growing from seed, I have learned just how special- & rare- real flowers really are. My eyes have been opened, and I’d love to share what I’ve learned.

Why buy local flowers?

It's a fair question, and with Americans buying more bouquets than Big Macs annually (true!), it's a question worth thinking about.

While there are numerous books written about the big business of flowers, I'll highlight what I consider to be the top three most compelling reasons to consider buying locally:

Local flowers can be a significantly less expensive alternative to conventionally-grown blooms.

Mass-produced flowers are an enormous industry, generating somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 billion dollars annually, with 80% of the flowers sold in the United States flown in trans-continentally from South America or Europe. As I heard somewhere, flowers today may be better-traveled than the people who buy them!

All of this comes with a hidden cost, of course, and guess who pays? Make no mistake about it- that cost is levied on both the consumer (in terms of outright cost) and the environment (in terms of carbon footprint & use of resources) in substantial ways. Sourcing your flowers locally is a small thing- but a step that will prove a savings for your wallet, and also reduces the amount of money spent on jet fuel, refrigeration costs, chemicals & the like.

It is, quite frankly, a luxury to have red roses on Valentine's Day, or sweet peas in your December bridal bouquet, and the underbelly of this "nature-meets-capitalism" industry is starting to dawn on people when they realize it wasn't always this way, and further, that it doesn't have to be forever.

Local flowers are incomparably fresher.

Flowers, like food, are perishable. So how do they make it through a multi-week holding process from day of harvest to your local grocery store or florist alive? Several ways:

One- for centuries, geneticists and hybridizers have been tinkering with Mother Nature, breeding flower varieties that, for example, don't have scent (an unnecessary expenditure of energy when there are no pollinators to visit) or that grow to unnatural heights (tall event vases call for tall stems). While I can extol the virtues of a pollen-free sunflower along with the next person, it seemsse to me that something real and human is given up when technology oversteps its bounds into the natural world. Should we care that roses have lost their scent? Was that an inherent part of their beauty or a nuisance to be eliminated? To me, the difference in freshness (and dare I say "realness") is analogous to biting into a farm-fresh strawberry in June versus a green-house grown December fruit. One I can live without. The other is pure heaven.

Two- mass-produced flowers are drenched in chemicals & pesticides. Some of these chemicals allow the plant to go days without water, which is convenient when the flower has to go from greenhouse to airplane, from airplane to truck-bed, from truck to cooler, and from cooler to florist...all before gracing your kitchen table. Local flowers, on the other hand, have usually never met a cooler, and were harvested sometimes just a matter of hours prior to purchase, making them the winner of the shelf-life competition.

Local flowers are art.

And like all good art, they rarely behave. Local flowers are not the uniform soldiers of your typical florist's bucket of stems- which are tame, predictable, and uninspiring. Local flowers are whimsical & romantic- bending toward the sun here, or perfuming a room in such a way that you're transported to another time and place.

Local flowers- real flowers, of which no two are the exact same- communicate rarity, uniqueness, a one-of-a-kind experience, which is something that human beings crave and is getting harder to find by the day. Sure, you give some things up when you buy from a local grower, as you can't point to a picture on a screen and order "the Audrey" or "the Rebecca" arrangement. A local grower can work with your color palette, but she can never promise you a certain flower, as she's not ultimately in control of her garden- Mother Nature is. But do we really want that bouquet from a national wire service that is indistinguishable from an arrangement delivered from Boston to Bozeman? I don't. I prefer the fickleness, the seasonality, & the personality found in local flowers, just as I prefer the nutrition found in local food, or the regional identity found in local architecture.

I could go on, but hopefully I've given you something to consider the next time you're tempted to grab that impulse bouquet from Trader Joe's during the growing season. I'm not asking you to stop. I'm just asking you to remember that there are worthy alternatives.

Thanks for reading, and following along!