Category Archives: Flowers

A favorite past-time of mine is to peruse the flower displays at various hotels. If there’s one quick and simple way to judge the quality of prospective lodging, it’s in their floral lay-out. Here you see the impeccable collection of blossoms currently brightening up the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental in Boston. They always have an intriguing display, and this simple grouping of protea and floating cherry blossoms is elegant and refined, with enough exotic elements to make for a show-stopping scene.

The architectural aspect of the blooms is shown off to greatest effect in these simple yet striking globular vases. Most of the time, it’s best to let the floral form dictate the design. A mass of spray roses would be required to make half the statement that a single protea stem can accomplish, so these are wisely given a stand-out base, some flattering lighting, and little else so as to allow their own natural show-off status to truly shine.

I tend to favor one or two kinds of flowers, either en masse or sparingly used, rather than those giant Lisa Vanderpump bouquets that fill in every single possible space with foliage or flower, the end result of which is usually a big clump that ends up being quickly forgotten. In such cases, more is actually less.

Most flowers are interesting enough on their own to not require any sort of further embellishments or accents. It’s difficult to improve on nature, and those who attempt such tricky maneuvering do so at the peril of taste and refinement. A jumbled mash of roses, carnations, and Alstroemeria is always more garish than any of its components taken singly and simply.

One of the most striking flower arrangements I ever saw was at a friend’s summer wedding. It was an elegantly casual affair, and on the tables were simple groupings of circular bowls, low and not interfering with sightlines or conversation. In each was a single dahlia or zinnia, sometimes one of each, floating on the water. Simple. Elegant. Classy. And so much easier than dealing with frogs or oasis or baby’s fucking breath.

Every year at about this time (especially this year given the winter we’ve had) I seek out flower shows or other signs of spring to help me get through the finals days of this dismal season. Years ago, my Mom took my brother and me to the Philadelphia Flower Show, my first brush with this sublime experience. It was dazzling. It was beautiful. It was life-altering. It wasn’t usual for a ten-year-old boy to take such an active interest in flowers, but I’d been that way since I was even younger. I knew the scientific names of most houseplants and perennials, and the flower show was an almost-overwhelming opportunity to see things that I’d previously only been able to view in books. From the opening display of spring-blooming narcissus and azaleas, I was taken over by the whole experience, transported to another realm of beauty and all things sublime.

The greenery and blossoms stretched onward, and I excitedly named and examined each recognizable species. Back then, I wasn’t as interested in escaping winter, I was more concerned with seeing all the plants and flowers. As the years passed, however, I remembered that trip to the flower show, and when I found myself at Brandeis University, bemoaning an endless Boston winter, I sought out the New England Flower Show and boarded the commuter rail early on a Saturday morning in March.

I transferred to the Red Line and got off at the JFK stop, taking a bus to the large convention center than then housed it. I was struck first by the greenhouse scent. The same sense of wonder and awe filled me, and I was instantly brought back to that first Philadelphia experience. A glass-enclosed sitting room was set up in the center of it all, with arching Kentia palms and the floating blooms of Phalaenopsis orchids. A simple chaise lounge on dark mahogany legs like polished tree trunks stood slightly off-center, and it looked like the most paradisiacal place to read a book or spend a lazy afternoon. It formed the inspiration for the renovation of my parents’ attic that I was designing at the time, and offered hope for what that space might become. (It would eventually come to fruition, complete with a chaise lounge by the window, framed by two graceful palms, and softened by a curtain of fine netting.)

On that day, the flower show was the perfect antidote for all the stubborn dirty snow that adamantly refused to depart, a cure for the wailing wind and the continual threat of icy weather. It was almost as good as a vacation to some tropical climate where orchids bloomed from above and calla lilies rose from warm, wet beds. The smell of earth was in the air – that glorious fragrance of peat and moss and life – the wondrous stuff of primal existence, of the most basic of nature’s substance. It filled me with hope, and the outside pain of cold and concrete fell away, the winter receded, and the world blossomed again.

This year the New England Flower Show begins next week, so I may end up missing it, but in my living room there is a Norfolk Island pine, and several rabbit’s foot ferns to ease the chill of these remaining winter days. Mind over matter, beneath the fronds of a few ferns…

For most of my youth, fall signaled nothing but bad things: the start of school, the final days of freedom, and the end of playing outside. As I got older, and a return to school meant less children under shopping foot, I embraced the season. It gets a bad reputation, mostly from the end of it, when it does turn rather dismal, but it starts off in a blaze of flaming glory. Witness these scenes from a recent trip to Faddegon’s – and welcome to fall.

Apples and gourds, pumpkins and squash, mums and asters – this season is alive with color and texture. A feast for the eyes and the nose, and once the cider kicks in the tongue too.

These are the flowers of fall – the Sweet Autumn Clematis and the bluebeard, given supporting ornamentation by the fruit of the Chinese dogwood and the flowering of a grapefruit mint. Some gardeners, myself included, tend to neglect this part of the year, when we should actually be embracing and enjoying each day before the chill begins to settle. Flowers like this remind me of that.

These unassuming little rock plants made their home on the other side of the Charles River, in a park in Charlestown. On the day I passed through, the sun shone brightly in the blue sky – the kind of blue reserved for August and September, and that you never quite see the same way until the end of summer returns again. They softened the circumference of a fountain, where fish spat out water in arching rivulets, and the soothing sound of the splash drowned out any distant traffic. After crossing over from Boston, it was like another world – quieter, more serene, less busy and frantic. Here, there was peace. Here, there was beauty. Here, there was joy. It was a sort of oasis, afforded when the heart was most in need – of what, I could not right off tell, I would only know it when I found it, when it was time for the universe to deliver what had been lacking. Some things cannot be forced, like the blossoms on these tiny plants, which would only be coaxed into bloom by the fullness and the heat of the sun.

The morning glory. One of the simplest plants to grow, and of course it’s one of those that gives me some trouble. Not that it can’t be done, but every now and then there is an off year and they just don’t produce or grow the way I know they can. This year is not one of those years, as many (too many) have re-seeded themselves. (I actually haven’t planted a new batch of seeds in about five years.) I’m partial to the old-fashioned common blue variety (which is one of the elusive ones that has yet to show its face in the garden), but I’ll take these smaller, and more vibrantly-hued hybrids, as a reasonable substitute.

These plants seem to enjoy a simpler, unamended soil – in richer ones they make more leaf growth than flower power – and perhaps that is the reason for their hit-and-miss nature in my own garden. I remember coming upon a large expanse of morning glories covering a chain link fence in Chicago many years ago – and they seemed to be growing out of cracks in the sidewalk and a small patch of dry barren earth. Some things like a challenge, and perform all the better for it.