An adventure to Huntington Castle and Gardens for a Cut Flower demonstration

Posted on July 24, 2022 by Mominthegarden

Hi there! Welcome to my blog. You might have noticed that I’ve taken a liking to creating flower arrangements, especially if you follow my Instagram – you do follow my Instagram, right? 🙂 So I jumped at the chance to go to a cut flower demonstration with my dear friend, Susan (my gardening adventure friend). The venue was the beautiful Huntington Castle and Gardens, which I’ve never been to before. It is in Clonegal, County Carlow, so of course we made a day trip out of it, stopping off at Avoca in County Wicklow on the way down, for some food and flowers (definitely worth a visit to Avoca).

The demonstration was by Fionnuala Fallon, who spoke about incorporating sustainability into the floral industry. Fionnuala and her husband run a sustainable cut-flower farm, and she gave great tips on plants to use, care, arranging, and helpful information on best resources to get started.

As it turns out, I made another flower arrangement this week! And I’d incorporated a number of the things Fionnuala talked about. Once you learn the tips and tricks, it makes life a little bit easier (like using chicken wire and floral frogs).

While I didn’t exactly make the ‘Saturday’, I’m none-the-less, joining the Propagator’s meme ‘Six on Saturday’.

Enjoy the tour!

At Huntington Castle and Gardens, Clonegal, Co. Carlow

Fionnuala Fallon at flower demonstration

1 & 2 – Cut flower demonstration with Fionnuala Fallon at Huntington Castle and Gardens, Clonegal, County Carlow. This was such a wonderful day out! Fionnuala created this beautiful arrangement in no time flat, from two containers of flowers (that honestly, didn’t look like much on their own). The huge take away for me was to grow dahlias. I kind of knew I wanted to go in this direction, and now I *really* know! They are just spectacular. The main question we all had regarding this was if she dug them up for the winters, and the answer was ‘yes’. It just has to be done. Another favorite take away for me was to use the whole sweet pea vine, not just the stems of the flowers (which is what I would usually use). What a difference it makes to the arrangement! You can see in the arrangement above, the flowing light pink sweet pea, hanging down.

For those who don’t know already, she also mentioned how bad ‘floral foam’ (or oasis) is for the environment. *Really* bad. Chicken wire is an alternative, used with floral frogs (small, heavy circle with pins to stick the flower stems in), and taped in place.

She is a proponent of ‘some-dig’ gardening, as opposed to ‘no-dig’. I’m definitely with her on this one, too. You have to do whatever works for you.

It was a helpful and informative talk, which we really enjoyed, followed by a tour of the gardens. The place is just lovely and certainly worth a visit! Even better to bring along your bestie! 🙂

Line of flowers: dahlia, sunflowers, butterfly bush flowers, Russian sage and sweet pea — Dahlia tam tam, sunflower mix, Buddleis BUZZ ‘Dark Pink’ Butterfly Bush, Russian sage, Sweet pea

sunflower flower arrangement with butterfly bush, Russian sage, sweet pea and dahlia.

Sunflower arrangement with purple butterfly bush flowers, sweet pea, Russian sage and dahlias.

3 & 4 – Sunflower arrangement. This one is definitely worth two slots! This is my first sunflower arrangement of the season! I made this the day before the talk. The sunflower stems are really short as there were lots of blooms still forming on the stems and I didn’t want to cut them off. It worked well with this container, too, to have them short. With all of the work my husband has been doing with building fruit cages, I had already taken and put aside some chicken wire for arranging. This container was perfect for experimenting with. I used two floral frogs to weigh it down (I hadn’t thought of taping it, which would be a helpful solution).

Adding colors to the garden that complement the colors of the sunflowers is what I’m now working on. The dahlia’s I’ve planted are exactly for this. The beautiful reddish colored one (called Tam Tam) is the first to bloom. Hopefully I’ll get to do more arranging with them as the season goes on.

And really, I don’t know why I don’t see more butterfly bush flowers in arrangements, they smell so sweet and are a lovely addition (dwarf varieties)!

5 – Russian Sage – Perovskia atriplicifolia Little Spire. This guy is just showing off at this stage. Beautiful shape and color. I used a few stems for the above arrangement. The bright pink rose next to it is England’s Rose from David Austin.

6 – Coleus. These guys were planted from seed late and then when I transplanted them to these containers, they stopped growing – for weeks! They have finally started to look like decent sized (small) plants. Maybe by the end of the season they will fill the containers. But I love having them, and I love their different color combinations.

I hope you enjoyed the tour! Have a great week!

In Peace,
Dana

An unsettled start to August

Posted on August 7, 2021 by Mominthegarden

Hello and welcome to my blog! Here in Ireland, we have enjoyed some glorious weather this summer. Near the end of July we had two full weeks of sun, heat and stillness with no rain. It was amazing (and unusual)! The garden is now appreciating the long drinks of water it has been getting the past week. There is a distinct change in the air, though, that fall is not too far off. The garden is in a constant state of flux, and it is fun to note it with a simple meme of ‘Six on Saturday’, hosted by The Propagator. Let’s see what’s in store this week!

1 – Blueberries! I planted blueberry shrubs in my garden quite a few years ago. From the beginning, it seemed they didn’t really enjoy our garden. They always seemed to drop their berries before turning blue! But it turns out, the birds had more to do with this than I realized. I didn’t mind too much, since to me the plants were spectacular in the fall with their leaves turning from green to crimson. This year, though, with the garden revamp, we decided to spend some extra time to see if we could get some blueberries for us to eat! We first spread out the older shrubs as they were getting quite cramped. Also this season, we added Sulphate of Iron to the soil. I believe it was Laura, from Garden Answer, who suggested it in one of her videos. The third thing we did differently this year was we added netting. Although it wasn’t the pretties of setups, it did the job, and the blueberries stayed on the shrubs until they were blue! I picked two small bowls of blueberries, and a few times I just went out and ate a handful. They were delicious! We will hopefully figure out a ‘prettier’ way to cover them next year.

2 – Garlic! Last October we planted our over wintering organic garlic Vallelado. It is very easy to plant garlic! They should be planted between the end of October and the end of November, ideally. Plant at a depth of three to five inches (7.6 cm) and six inches apart. I harvested mine the beginning of July and they have been drying out in our shed since. The only other thing I did was weed the bed a few times. We also had a relatively dry spring, so I kept it watered. So easy, and so tasty!

lavender and shaved plant — The lavender plant looks like it got a shave!

Dana with lavender harvest — There’s some lavender left on the plant beside me.

3 – Lavender! I’m a bit late on writing about this one, too. Lavender is usually harvested in July. I managed to still cut some in August this year as our growing season was a bit off due to a strange spring. I love working with lavender! I made a few fresh lavender wreaths this year (as opposed to dried lavender wreaths). I didn’t make any Lavender Wands this year, though. (You can check out how I make them here.) There just wasn’t any time. If you do dry lavender, it is worth noting that the flowers keep their scent for years!

Double lilies in rose bed — Lotus Dream Mix

double lilies on deck — Magic Star lilies in a container on my deck.

4 – Double lilies! New to my garden this season are two groups of lilies: I purchased a Lotus Dream Mix of double oriental lilies and planted them in my rose bed. I also added a Magic Star lily to my container garden, on my back deck. These join my ‘double surprise’ lilies, which live next to my largest lavender plant off of the back deck and are neighbors to a plain white variety of lilies that are always last to bloom later in August. I love scented flowers, and these beauties have a wonderful scent that can be noted without having to bend down to specifically smell them!

Perovskia Russian Sage — Perovskia atriplicifolia Little Spire or Russian Sage

5 – Perovskia atriplicifolia Little Spire! I have to confess that when my friend Susan exclaimed how fabulous my Perovskia looked, it took me a minute to realize she meant the Russian Sage. I’m just not very good at proper names. Hopefully now I’ll remember this one! This plant was purchased as a small plant in 2017 and seems to be quite happy. If you like to dry flowers, this one keeps its purple stems for quite a long time before fading.

Pumpkin arch update 7 Aug 2021 with rainbow — The rainbow is quite faint, but can bee seen right over the pumpkin arch in the above picture!

Back of pumpkin arch 7 Aug 2021 — A view of the back of the arch.

Pumpkin arch update 7 Aug with sun — The blue sky backdrop is harder to come by these days. I captured this in a very short window between heavy rain showers! We’ll see if the vines climb any higher.

6 – Pumpkin Arch update! The arch has two different types of squash growing on it: Jack O’Lantern pumpkins and Red Kuri squash. The pumpkins are growing quite large. I usually grow baking pumpkins which are medium to small size. These guys are getting huge. I’m not exactly worried, but I think it would be better if they didn’t get so big! The Red Kuri squash start out yellow and then change from orange to a reddish color. They are medium sized. Some have started to change color already. You can’t really see any of that just yet since all of the leaves are still in the way! I will have to try and get some close up pictures so you can see the squash and pumpkins. I’m wondering if it won’t grow any higher, either. It doesn’t seem to have grown ‘up’ this past week, although the outside vines of some of the plants are still growing out. We’ll see. It certainly is getting plenty of rain this week.

That’s my garden update! I hope you are enjoying your summer, no matter what the weather is like. 🙂

In Peace,
Dana

A summer flower arrangement

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Mominthegarden

Hello there! We have enjoyed some absolutely beautiful summer days recently. I definitely get more accomplished on sunny days! (Is that the same for you, too?) I hope you have also had good weather, wherever you are in the world. As you may know, I love flowers. I always have in mind, when I’m planting flowers, if I can use them again – either in a live or dried flower arrangement. Last week I had a free morning on a beautiful sunny day and I decided to make a flower arrangement. I should add that just a few months ago I bought myself a book on flower arranging. It is called Floret Farm’s A Year in Flowers, by Erin Benzakein. It is filled with 300 pages all about ‘designing gorgeous arrangements for every season’ and complemented with the most beautiful pictures. It is a fantastic resource for learning everything you need to know about flowers, foliage, containers, flower care and of course, design. The premise is to use as many local flowers as possible, incorporating items that might not have typically been considered for arrangements. Something else that I liked seeing and learning about was creating a loose and airy look. I found it to be the motivation I needed to try something different.

I did not have a visual of the arrangement in my head before I started. I walked through the garden with my clippers and just clipped anything that I thought might work. I noted that in the book, Erin had used clematis, which were lovely additions to arrangements. That is not a plant I would have thought would be usable for arrangements! It’s great to learn new things. 🙂

Post arrangement, I found that my Japanese anemone did not fare well. I possibly should have tried a special method for their hydration (which I would do next time). Also, an obvious note was that the roses that looked ‘perfect’ when picked, were fasted to drop. My David Austin roses tend to have short stems, so I was more concerned with finding flowers with longer stems than with their maturity. But other than that, the flowers all did really well for the week. I was super lazy and didn’t even add water to the container (O.K., so I probably shouldn’t admit that).

As for the container, I’ve had that little gem for nearly 20 years. It was a gifted flower arrangement (I save everything). I think this is definitely my favorite thing I’ve done with it, though! It just seemed to all fit together nicely.

I hope you like my arrangement! I’d love it if you would please leave me a comment below, telling me which is your favorite flower, or if you enjoy flower arranging, or just say hello!

Thanks so much!

In Peace,
Dana

The container has two frogs in the bottom, which I used to secure the roses in place. This probably isn’t recommended, but I also used glass marbles to help to hold the rest of the flowers in place – that’s called ‘making due with what I have’! Most of the roses are David Austin roses, although I still have one rose plant that is not a David Austin rose, and I did use one of those roses.

Above is a closer look at the ceramic container. Also, just a couple highlights of the flowers: the Leycesteria formosa – also known as Himalayan honeysuckle or pheasant berry, is a hanging burgundy color flower with berries and green leaves – it also sometimes has white flowers. The tall yellow flower is fennel. I used it to tie in the yellow centers from the pink Japanese anemone. The spiky purple flower is Russian sage – Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Little Spire’, which also dries really well.

The only other flower to highlight is the clematis, Purpurea Plena Elegans, which is also a burgundy color.

Rose arrangement close up — A close up of what I consider the front of the arrangement.

Rose arrangement full view 3 — Full view of what I consider the back of the arrangement.

Rose arrangement full view 2 — Full view of the front of the arrangement (with ornamental grass behind it).

Rose arrangement in kitchen — Well I had to bring it inside at some stage!

I loved every minute of creating this arrangement! I have to say that I was happy with my end result, even though at the back of my mind I know there were some techniques that might have been ignored. Nothing ventured, nothing gained! 🙂 Take care!

A summer garden tour

Posted on July 28, 2020 by Mominthegarden

Hello! Welcome to my blog, where I find peace and happiness through gardening and flowers. Anyone else need some of that? 🙂 This week I’m going to give a view of what is happening all around the garden. We’ve had a strange summer, weather-wise: a very dry spring followed by a very wet early summer. Our summer so far has been cooler than normal with lots of rain. Thankfully, the sun has not been a complete stranger!

Helenium and bee — Bees love Helenium, too!

I really like the contrast with this combination of Helenium and Daisies. I’ve propped up both plants this year as they get really floppy. The Shasta Daisy have spread, and spread, and spread!

View of the Ditch Wall Garden July — Our ditch wall garden with daisies, helenium, and yarrow.

You can see in the full view of the ditch wall garden that there are a lot of daisies! I have a few varieties of yarrow, too. Lots of floppiness going on as they all seek the afternoon sun from their position under the Hawthorn trees.

Clematis view — A view of the Clematis Purpurea Plena Elegans, lychnis coronaria rose campion, and perennial geranium.

This little corner is rather happy, although it might be a bit happier if it weren’t quite so windy where we live. This Clematis – Purpurea Plena Elegans – is very pretty, with a deep burgundy color. The Lychnis Coronaria Rose Campion is quite prolific! It has sprung up in a few places around the garden! Thankfully, it is quite a pretty fuchsia pink flower with a silvery stem. I actually have a few plants in this garden that just like to take off. The Japanese anemone is just now starting to come into bloom (only one light pink flower on the left of this picture). The perennial geranium is a pretty light pink, and is quite hardy and also enjoys moving about the garden! At the very back of this picture is a tall Rosemary plant. It is now quite woody, but otherwise we still use it for cooking. There is a Japanese Maple tree in the middle of all of this – but it is not thriving due to the wind. I am quite stubborn and I am always hopeful that it will grow big and strong enough to handle the wind. We’ll see!

Clematis Purpurea Plena Elegans single — A close up view of the Clematis Purpurea Plena Elegans

Clematis Purpurea Plena Elegans full view — Clematis Purpurea Plena Elegans

lychnis Coronaria rose campion — Lychnis Coronaria Rose Campion – one of my favorite flowers

Japanese Maple Garden spring — A view in April of our Japanese Maple garden

The above picture is a view of the same bed back in April. I was quite proud of my shaping of the boxwood shrubs! The green ground cover in the front left of the picture is the Japanese Anemone. It loves to spread!

Hydrangea Selma full view — Hydrangea Selma

In this same ‘Japanese Maple’ bed, I have a hydrangea ‘Selma’. This is the best it has ever looked as it has loved all of our rain! The mophead flowers are redish pink around the edges with a white center. The leaves are a very pretty burgundy color.

Hydrangea Selma single — Hydrangea Selma

Moving to another bed – sometimes I get my plantings right, sometimes not so much. The Russian sage – Perovskia atriplicifolia Little Spire – is really happy in this bed. The plant next to it on the left – Zantedeschia aethiopica Arum Lily – although not dead, doesn’t produce any flowers. I don’t think it is happy. I’ll be looking to move that eventually.

The bed beyond the Russian Sage plant is the Rainbow garden. It has a lot going on in there! I just want to focus on one plant, though, the Buddleis BUZZ ‘Dark Pink’ Butterfly Bush. It is really showing off this year!

field view — A view of the fields and the Rainbow garden

Buddleis BUZZ Dark Pink Butterfly Bush July — Buddleis BUZZ Dark Pink Butterfly Bush in July

The next part of the garden to highlight is our front gate bed. I’ve been saying this a few years now, but I really need to move my hydrangea Incrediball. It gets a lot of sun where it is, and it would much prefer to be in shade! This bed is full of beauty. There are two lavender plants, which are super fragrant. The Pittosporum Tom Thumb is great for some different texture. The Lychnis Coronaria Rose Campion is a fabulous splash of color (even if it decided for itself to join this bed) and all of the way on the far right is the Leycesteria formosa – which is also knowns as Himalayan honeysuckle or pheasant berry. There are a lot of wonderful things going on in this bed! I’ll be sad to see the hydrangeas go, but I’m sure we’ll find something lovely to fill their places.

Front Gate Garden full view — Pittosporum Tom Thumb, Lavandula angustifolia Lavender, hydrangea Incrediball, hydrangea paniculata, lychnis Coronaria Rose Campion, Syringa v. Beauty of Moscow Lilac, and Leycesteria formosa, Bergenia and Iris ‘Benton Storrington’

The below picture is of planters that are at my back door. That is the first thing I see in the morning when I go to let the chickens out of their coop and feed them. Just a few planters with a bit of color and different sizes, shapes, textures. They’ve done really well this year!

Back deck flowers — Pots of plants at my back door. Lots of hosta, some dahlia, calla lilies, and soon to bloom marigolds, and gladiolas.

I hope you have enjoyed the tour! The garden seems to change on an almost daily basis. No matter what goes on in the outside world, life and growth continues in the garden.

Stay safe and healthy!

In Peace,
Dana

Hosta in sunlight — Hosta flowers in evening sunlight.

In a Vase on Monday: Sweet Pea, Hosta & Perovskia (Russian Sage)

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Mominthegarden

Without any sun it is somewhat drab

Today is Monday. It is a wet, cold, and miserable day! What a yucky end to the summer. The bright aspect of today, though, is the start of my joining in on “In a Vase on Monday”. Cathy, of Rambling in the Garden, hosts this lovely blogging theme. Here is my first “go” at joining in. To see some other lovely vases of flowers, please do visit Cathy’s blog: http://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2014/08/11/in-a-vase-on-monday-reddy-or-not/

Add a touch of sun and Voila! magic. The vase is from our Irish pottery collection from when we married 18 years ago (Suzanne May).

I know my crazy schedule, so I cut these flowers on Saturday evening. My sweet pea are white and different shades of pink and purple. They smell amazing in the wide open garden. The fragrance in the house when I have a vase of sweet pea inside is heavenly!

Perovskia ‘Atriplicifolia’ (Russian Sage)

I planted Perovskia ‘Atriplicifolia’ (Russian Sage) last year. I missed it from my previous garden. I’m so glad to have it again. It is such a delicate plant. I’ve added just a few strands to the arrangement to give it a bit of extended form.

The Russian Sage gives it some reach.

I also used some hosta at the base to kind of keep some form to the arrangement. I tried to not have it look like a collar, but I did like the contrast of the sweet pea on the green at the base.

Up close

The vase of flowers is sitting in front of me this morning as I am writing this post. It is still smelling fragrant and looking well. I’m glad I took those pictures on Saturday, though, as the weather is horrendous today! Even on Saturday the weather was changeable. You can see how it was cloudy and sunny while I was taking photos! The difference in photos is like night and day.

In a Vase: Sweet Pea, Hosta & Perovskia (Russian Sage)

I love flower arranging, so this was pure pleasure in putting together. The hardest part for me is cutting the flowers in the garden! I love seeing them in the yard. Incentive for me to plant enough to have in the yard, and in a vase!

I hope your Monday is lovely and bright.

Dana

Mom in the Garden

Enjoying life. In Ireland. With my family.

Tag Archives: Russian Sage

An adventure to Huntington Castle and Gardens for a Cut Flower demonstration

An unsettled start to August

A summer flower arrangement

A summer garden tour

In a Vase on Monday: Sweet Pea, Hosta & Perovskia (Russian Sage)