Tag: flowers

  • A Jar of Garden Flowers: The Mindful Ritual of Bringing the Outdoors In

    A Jar of Garden Flowers: The Mindful Ritual of Bringing the Outdoors In

    There is a particular pleasure in walking the yard on a May morning with a pair of scissors and a jar of water, looking for what is ready. A few stems of hydrangea, a sprig of mint, a branch of something green: brought indoors and set on the kitchen table, they change the feel of a room. The arranging itself can be a small, absorbing ritual, the kind of task that quiets the mind because it asks for your full attention.

    A lesson from ikebana

    Ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging flowers, grew out of flower offerings made at Buddhist temples and developed over centuries into a formal discipline with many schools. Its oldest school traces its roots to a temple in Kyoto. Where Western arrangements often aim for abundance, ikebana values line, empty space, asymmetry and a clear sense of the season.

    You do not need to study ikebana to borrow its spirit. Try choosing three stems instead of thirty. Let one be tall, one medium and one short. Leave space between them and notice how the gaps make each stem easier to see. A single branch in a bottle, placed with care, can be more striking than a crowded bouquet.

    Cutting and conditioning, the simple way

    • Cut in the cool of the early morning or evening, when stems are full of water. Midday cuttings in the Georgia heat tend to wilt quickly.
    • Carry a bucket or jar of water with you and put stems in as soon as you cut them.
    • Recut each stem at an angle indoors, and strip off any leaves that would sit below the waterline.
    • Let the stems rest in cool water for an hour or two before arranging, which helps them settle and drink.
    • Change the water every day or two and trim the stems again when you do.

    What a late-spring yard offers

    Look beyond the obvious flower beds. Early hydrangea heads, roses and gardenias make lovely cut flowers, and as the season moves on, zinnias and black-eyed Susans join them. Herbs such as mint, basil and rosemary add fragrance and a casual, kitchen-garden look. Ferns, magnolia leaves, ivy and bare twigs supply line and greenery when flowers are scarce. Even a few grasses or seed heads can be beautiful on their own.

    Two cautions are worth keeping in mind. Cut only from your own yard or with permission, and leave wildflowers in parks and natural areas where they grow. And if you share your home with cats, keep lilies out of the house entirely, because they are highly toxic to cats. The ASPCA maintains a list of plants that are toxic to pets, and your veterinarian can answer questions about others.

    Making it a weekly practice

    The ritual works best when it is small and regular. Choose one day a week, perhaps Saturday morning, and fill one jar. Arrange slowly. Turn the jar to find its best side. Notice the smell of the stems, the weight of the water, the way the light falls across the petals. When the flowers fade, compost them and begin again.

    Over a summer, the jar becomes a quiet record of the season: gardenias giving way to hydrangeas, herbs to zinnias, green to gold. It is a reminder, right there on the table, that something is always blooming if you take the time to look.

  • Honeysuckle: The Lore and History of a Late-Spring Southern Scent

    Honeysuckle: The Lore and History of a Late-Spring Southern Scent

    On a warm May evening in Middle Georgia, you often smell honeysuckle before you see it. The scent drifts off fencerows, ditch banks and the edges of the woods, sweet and a little spicy, strongest just as the light starts to fade. For many Southerners it carries a whole childhood with it: bare feet, screen doors and the trick of drawing a single drop of nectar from the base of a blossom.

    Two honeysuckles, one name

    The honeysuckle most of us smell along Georgia roadsides is Japanese honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica. Its flowers open white and fade to yellow, so a single vine often carries both colors at once. It was brought to North America from East Asia in the early 1800s as an ornamental, and it liked its new home a little too well. Today it is considered invasive across much of the Southeast because it climbs over and smothers native plants.

    Georgia also has a native honeysuckle, the coral or trumpet honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens. Its slender tubular flowers are red to coral on the outside and yellow within, and they have little scent. What they do have is hummingbirds, which visit the blooms through spring and summer. If you want to plant a honeysuckle, this is the one most native-plant gardeners recommend, and your county office of the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension can help with local advice.

    A botanist, a nickname and an old English word

    The genus name Lonicera honors Adam Lonicer, a sixteenth-century German botanist and physician. The common name is more straightforward: it comes from the old habit of sucking the sweet nectar from the flowers. In England the native honeysuckle has long gone by another name, woodbine, and it appears in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where woodbine canopies the bank where the fairy queen sleeps.

    In the Victorian language of flowers, honeysuckle was often associated with devotion and the bonds of affection, a fitting meaning for a vine that holds on so tightly to whatever it climbs.

    Why the scent is strongest at dusk

    Many people notice that honeysuckle smells strongest in the evening. That timing is no accident. Moths are among the flowers’ pollinators, and the long, narrow blossoms and evening fragrance suit night-flying visitors well. Step outside after supper and you are smelling the plant at its most generous.

    That same scent is surprisingly hard to capture. True honeysuckle extracts are rare, and most honeysuckle candles, lotions and perfumes are recreations built by perfumers from other materials. They can be lovely, but the real thing is only available outdoors, for a few weeks, on the vine.

    Enjoying honeysuckle gently

    • Take an unhurried dusk walk along a fence line or woodland edge and let the scent find you.
    • Show a child the nectar trick: pinch off the green base of a fresh flower, draw the thread-like style slowly through and taste the single bright drop.
    • Cut a few sprigs for a small jar on the porch table, where the fragrance will carry into the evening.
    • Leave the berries alone. The berries of many honeysuckles are not considered edible, so teach children to enjoy the flowers and skip the fruit.

    If you are sensitive to pollen or strong floral scents, enjoy honeysuckle from a little distance, and talk to your doctor about any reactions that concern you. For everyone else, it is one of late spring’s free gifts: a reason to slow down, stand still at the edge of the yard and breathe in the end of the day.

  • Gardenia: The Creamy White Bloom That Perfumes a Southern May

    Gardenia: The Creamy White Bloom That Perfumes a Southern May

    There is a week or two in May when whole neighborhoods in Middle Georgia smell of gardenia. The scent is heavy, sweet and unmistakable, drifting over fences at dusk and following you down the sidewalk. For many Southerners it is the smell of early summer itself, tied to porches, weddings and grandmothers’ yards.

    A flower from far away with a Carolina name

    The gardenia most of us grow, Gardenia jasminoides, is native to China and other parts of East Asia, where it has been cultivated for centuries. Its common name, Cape jasmine, is a double misdirection: it is neither a jasmine nor from the Cape of Good Hope, though it was once thought to have come from there.

    The genus name honors Alexander Garden, a Scottish-born physician and naturalist who lived in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1700s and corresponded with the leading botanists of his day. The plant arrived in the American South not long after, found the climate much to its liking and became a fixture of the region’s gardens.

    Why gardenia is so hard to bottle

    Unlike lavender or rose, gardenia gives up almost no essential oil through steam distillation, and what little can be extracted by other means is scarce and costly. Most “gardenia” scents in perfumes, candles and lotions are recreated by perfumers from other materials. Nothing wrong with that, but it explains why the real flower is such an experience: you can only have it in the garden, in a vase, or tucked behind an ear.

    If you see “gardenia essential oil” sold cheaply, it is almost certainly a fragrance blend. Treat it as a scented product, not a pure plant oil.

    Growing one in Georgia

    Gardenias are evergreen shrubs with glossy dark leaves, and they thrive in the Southeast when their basic needs are met:

    • Acidic, well-drained soil rich in organic matter
    • Morning sun with some afternoon shade in the hottest months
    • Steady moisture, especially while buds are forming
    • Protection from drying winter winds

    Yellowing leaves and dropped buds are common complaints, often tied to soil or watering. Your county extension office is a good source of local growing advice.

    Enjoying the bloom

    The fragrance is strongest in the evening and early morning, so those are the times to sit near the shrub. A single blossom floated in a bowl of water will scent a room for a day; two will scent a hallway. The petals bruise easily and turn brown where they are touched, so handle them by the stem.

    Because the scent is so rich, some people find it overwhelming indoors. Keep blooms in a room with a window open, and give yourself the option of moving them. A fragrance this strong is best met on your own terms.

    Gardenia season is brief, which is part of its charm. For a couple of weeks each May, the whole South smells like a celebration. Step outside at dusk and breathe it in while it lasts.