Sunday, July 30, 2006

The testing area


One of the preconceptions about garden flowers is that they will not last as long as florist flowers. This could not be further from the truth - many garden flowers do not travel well packed into refrigerated lorries or aircraft holds for 24 hours without water and that is why florists don't have access to them, it is nothing to do with their vase life.
I test out vase life by putting each of the flowers that I sell in a stem vase or bottle and lining them up along the mantlepiece in our dining area. I don't use flower food and they are in an area which almost gets direct sun and which adjoins the kitchen so it is a good test of the minimum vase lifethat I can expect.
It is also one of the prettiest ways of displaying flowers - encouraging you to look at them individually. At the moment we have pink snapdragons (on day 8), marigolds, cornflowers, annual chrysanthgemums and rudbeckia ( on day 3) and alliums and rudbeckia green wizard (on day 14!)

No comments: