Carnation: the flower for January

After making my peace with chrysanthemums in November, I thought now would be the time to make my peace with carnations. Petrol station flowers in the same shade of pink that last for three weeks but turn a ghostly white by the end, beloved flower of many mothers (including my own), it is a flower I have been given several times but never been excited about. Time to change that.

I bought three wraps of carnations in different colours: yellow, orange and green. I thought they looked like Opal Fruits (or Starburst for those of you born after the 1990s), and the citrus colours would make a change from the carnations I'm used to seeing in pink, red or white. I didn't want these to be filler flowers, or a bunch that seemed wanting of something. I wanted these juicy fruit flowers to stand out on their own.

As well as using them for posies for January birthdays, I thought I would use some in the Garden Museum as they're so long-lasting and it was the last chance to use them in January.

Why January? Carnations are the birth flower for January. In the Victorian language of flowers, they symbolise pride and beauty. But specific colours mean different things. Pink carnations are a sign of female love. Which kind of explains why they are a beloved flower of mothers and grandmothers. I'll challenge myself to use pink next time, and I'll be good and buy British ones, which will hopefully have that lovely clove scent of the dianthus family (regular, wholesale carnations are sadly bred for longevity, losing their scent).

Red carnations say "Alas for my poor heart!", so they are a huge sign of love! White means sweet and lovely, striped carnations symbolise refusal, while yellow is, as ever, a negative-sounding meaning. In this case, disdain. I think most people agree that yellow flowers are a sign of joy and friendship, so I'm totally ignoring the Victorians in this case, and the only disdain I have here is disdain for this particular symbolism!

Mandy Kirkby describes in The Language of Flowers how Oscar Wilde wore a green carnation to the opening night of Lady Windermere's Fan in 1892. He told those who asked that the green carnation meant "Nothing whatever, but that is just what nobody will guess."

(Mostly) British Grown with Love

At the beginning of December, a group of British flower farmers and florists were on a mission. The mission was to find an alternative to the imported red rose for Valentine's Day.

#Britishflowers hour is a community that shares ideas on Twitter about British flowers most Mondays from 8pm until 9pm. There is usually an agenda for each week, which has included suggestions for plant suppliers, Christmas flowers, and dealing with unseasonable weather (which is, sadly, particularly problematic for growers now). The next one will be on 24th February, so do join in if you like the sound of it! The title of the post was the result of a British flowers hour discussion about a slogan to use for Valentine's Day.

Back on Monday 9th December, there was a flurry of Valentine's Day talk, which may have confused some people, barely able to focus on Christmas! There were discussions about what would be available on British flower farms in early February, the symbolism of the alternatives to the red rose, and which colours represent love. It was a great way to plan ahead for growers and florists.

The suggestions included bulbs such as anemones, tulips, narcissi, hyacinths and snowdrops, pussy willow, viburnum, hellebores, blackthorn and myrtle, and planted gifts such as rose plants and planted bulbs. Purple was a popular colour as an alternative to red, and I think purple anemones, hyacinths and tulips would make a passionate and enchanting bouquet of British flowers!

This year, I decided to take the challenge, and told my customers I wouldn't be using imported roses for Valentine's Day...as much as I love them. Fortunately, they trusted me, and I even had a few orders for 'platonic' Valentine's bouquets and posies for customers' friends. I used delicate, creamy-yellow, scented Cornish narcissi for everything, except for one posy of tulips.

The romantic bouquets and posies had red Lincolnshire tulips, and Japanese quince blossom and flowering viburnum from the garden. They also had asparagus fern, blue flowering rosemary (I don't know where this was from, and the men at the wholesaler were rushed off their feet, so I didn't bother to ask), white bouvardia and hot pink veronica.

The platonic bouquets and posies had pink Lincolnshire tulips and South London viburnum, and the bouquets had 'Penny's Pink' hellebores that I've been sheltering in the greenhouse (scared that the wind will damage the beautiful flowers), while the posies had a few stems of lily of the valley. I attempted to grow lily of the valley from scratch a few years ago to no avail, so this winter I cheated and bought some plants. I got quite a rush when I put those famous, tiny, precious flowers in my basket and took them to the counter...other women might get a similar rush from diamonds or expensive shoes! I was sad to cut both the hellebores and the lilies of the valley...but they look wonderful in the arrangements and of course lily of the valley smells exquisite.

I had thought about the symbolism of the flowers when the subject came up for discussion in December. I decided against anemones and snowdrops, despite their seasonality and their beauty - anemones mean 'forsaken' and although snowdrops represent hope, it was considered a bad omen to bring them indoors as the white flowers resemble a shroud.

But tulips are a declaration of love - as with roses, red denotes passion, and pink is a more graceful love. They were brought to the rest of Europe from Turkey at the end of the 16th century, the name taken from the Turkish word for turban which the flowers were thought to resemble. The popularity, especially in Holland, resulted in a tulip market crash in 1637! The north of England and the Midlands particularly took to growing tulips - in fact, The Garden magazine for April 2013 had a feature on the Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society.

"Here tulips bloom as they are told;

Unkempt about those hedges blows

An English unofficial rose."

Rupert Brooke, The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

Narcissi represent new beginnings for me, but on this occasion that other meaning, 'self-love', doesn't sound so bad. Personally, I think it sounds rather unbalanced to have loads of love for someone else but none for yourself, so narcissi are a nice way of balancing out the tulips, and representing the give and take of a relationship (whether that's a romantic one or a friendly one).

Fern is a sign of sincerity, and although I bought the delicate, wispy foliage on a whim when I saw it at the wholesaler, remembering the flower meaning from when I had planned to use it for my wedding, I read more about it last night in Mandy Kirkby's wonderful book, The Language of Flowers. Apparently it was used in Victorian Valentine's posies to show that one's love was true - hurray! I used viburnum as it is one of the few things flowering and glossy in the garden at the moment; I can't find the meaning in any of my books. Rosemary is for remembrance (just think of Hamlet's Ophelia), and the tiny blue flowers at this time of year are pretty.

Bouvardia stands for enthusiasm, so I used it for most of the flowers. Looking at the photos now, that's one thing I might have changed - I think red bouvadia for the romantic flowers and pink for the platonic ones would add a bit more colour.

Quince symbolises temptation, so I used it in the romantic flowers! The quince blossom didn't flower this early last year, but this photo was taken a couple of weeks ago. I also used hot pink veronica for fidelity.

Hellebores stand for different things, as many flowers do, but I like the meaning 'ease my anxiety'. It's what friends do. And lily of the valley, which usually flowers in May, means the 'return of happiness'. There is a legend connecting lily of the valley to St Leonard's Forest in Sussex many centuries ago, where the flowers are said to grow wherever St Leonard spilled his blood while fighting a dragon.

As Mandy Kirkby says, the Victorians "would be aghast if only red roses were sent on Valentine's Day, and quite horrifed at the modern belief that the showier and more expensive the flower, the stronger the feeling conveyed." Hopefully, some of these posies would be more pleasing to them?!

I had a Tiptree Lincolnshire blossom honey jar, which I couldn't resist using for the posy of Lincolnshire tulips. Other Tiptree jars were used for the platonic posies, and dramatic red Tate and Lyle treacle tins were used for romantic ones. One golden syrup tin was used for a simple posy of narcissi, and I think the colours tied in nicely.

I did receive one unexpected surprise yesterday. The postman brought me an envelope, with writing I recognised, which made me smile. My friend Grace had sent me a card. As she said, Valentine's Day is a load of nonsense, but it is big enough to include the love of close friends. The card she gave, with colourful irises, reminded me of the book she bought me for my birthday when were out charity shopping. It's a sweet RHS book called The Lore and Language of Flowers by Anna Trenter, with flower fairy drawings by Cicely Mary Barker, an early 20th century artist from Croydon in South London. I left the price on...it's a habit I have with books and CDs! I looked up the meaning for iris in the book, which is helpfully arranged by season. It means 'I have a message for you'.

The book and the card are wonderful reminders of a friendship I am lucky to have. When my bulbs and seeds flower, I'll be able to deliver some kindness back to Grace. And they will be entirely British Grown with Love!

A tale of two symbols

The day my cousin and her family visited, I cut a few bluebells and Yellow Cheerfulness narcissi and put them in my little bottle set. My cousin also has a baby boy, and there is something about the gentle blue and yellow colours and the sweet, small flowers that makes me think that a bunch of these would be lovely to welcome a new baby.

Bluebells represent constancy, which is a great sentiment for a baby starting out in life. To me, narcissi represent new beginnings, although when I first looked them up I could see that there were different meanings. There’s an interesting article specifically about the different meanings for narcissi by The Daffodil Society.

I avoid using flowers or herbs in floristry that only seem to have a negative meaning, such as basil which means hate. Having said that, if someone especially wanted basil in their flowers, then I would use it. I remember using this ethereal-looking photoshoot in lavender fields on the Ruffled blog as inspiration when I was doing my floristry diploma; lavender symbolises mistrust, but it's hard to care when it creates such a dreamy blue backdrop. Scabious doesn't exactly have a pleasant flower meaning, but I find the flower far too pretty for me to care. I enjoyed picking them at Blooming Green near Maidstone and they added to the cottage garden feel of the wedding flowers I was doing, and I saw rows of them when I visited Green and Gorgeous near Oxford. I'm growing some pink and red scabious now and I can't wait to mix them up with other flowers that I'm growing. These are my 'Pink Mist' scabious.

Generally, when there are contradictory flower meanings (e.g. hydrangea, which can mean heartfelt emotion and gratitude at being understood, or heartlessness), I choose the positive sentiment, which is the sentiment that I wish to convey. And I think that personal sentiment, ultimately, decides what flowers symbolise when they are given or used for an occasion. This is especially the case when it comes to using seasonal flowers – I think it’s great if people decide to use peonies for early summer weddings or cherry blossom for spring ones, rather than relying solely on air-freighted flowers.

This is a big bouquet I did for my friend Jo's grandparents, who were celebrating their anniversary on the same autumn day that Jo got married. Hydrangea symbolised heartfelt emotion, the snowberries fate, and the lilac 'Memory Lane' roses, apart from their appropriate name, stood for enchantment and love at first sight. Definitely no heartlessness here!

I've mentioned this before, but Mandy Kirkby's book, The Language of Flowers, is a wonderful introduction to the symbolism of flowers. She has a lovely writing style and the cover and illustrations by Katie Tooke are beautiful. This book, along with the RHS Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants, has been my dusk and dawn reading for a few years.

Flowers; putting Prozac in the shade!

I had a birthday recently and got some lovely presents. This two-tier cake stand was a surprise from my friend in Jersey, who I’ve been out with for afternoon tea a few times. I love it! It didn’t take me long to test it out – cucumber sandwiches, mini scones, Welsh cakes, and birthday cake on the stand, and Ceylon tea in my Alice in Wonderland cup and saucer. I can’t wait to do a vintage wedding with flowers on cake stands and teapots – I know it’s a popular theme right now, but it’s so pretty and charming, who cares how many other people are doing the same theme?

Speaking of vintage weddings, here are a couple of table arrangements I did during my work experience. The background isn’t all that attractive (the floor of the warehouse), but I’m pretty pleased with the flowers.

I also got some lovely flower books and rose and ‘gardener’ hand cream for my birthday! Flower Shop Messages has some beautiful photos, and is full of messages which people have enclosed with the flowers they’ve sent. Some are touching, some are funny, and some are just curious. I particularly like this one: ‘Dear Granny, we’re glad to hear you are feeling better. Please don’t go up any more ladders.’ The friend who gave me the book is a dancer, and as we looked through it together while we waited in the queue for the Degas dancers exhibition, we were both amused by this message: ‘When we said ‘break a leg’, we didn’t really mean it!’ The title of this post is also a message from the book – I do agree that flowers are a wonderful mood-lifter.

And Mandy Kirkby's The Language of Flowers is a gorgeous book – I love the design of it as well as the fascinating text. It has entries on fifty flowers, from cherry blossom to wallflower. The entry for daisy starts off with this quote by John Clare: ‘Daisies, ye flowers of lowly birth/ Embroiderers of the carpet earth.’

Before I hid the books away on my shelf, I wanted to sit them next to flowers...seeing as they're all about flowers and they have such pretty covers. This is a little posy I made from worse-for-wear waxflowers and germini while I was clearing out my flower bucket at college.