Beginner Gardening Tips Blog

By Jennifer Murray

If you’ve always played it safe with a dozen red roses on Valentine’s Day, this year, try something a little different.

Genevieve Bismonte, head florist at Quince Flowers in Toronto, offers some easy ways to up the ante this year.

When picking a bouquet, think colour. “We always try to push for unusual colours, like oranges, or a green bouquet, something like that,” Bismonte says. If you’re not comfortable straying that far from the traditional colour palette, pink flowers make a sweet statement on Valentine’s Day.

If you love roses, Bismonte recommends getting away from tradition. “We have these awesome roses called red intuition and pink intuition; they’re almost like a variegated rose. They’re two-toned roses and they’re lovely.”

For traditionalists who just can’t bear to part with their classic red roses, it’s all in the name: Bismonte says you just can’t beat a ‘Sexy Red’ rose.

An arrangement from Quince Flowers

I came across this sweet idea last week on the Design*Sponge website. Since alot of people are watching their waistlines these days, it’s a nice alternative to chocolate if you want to bring some cupid karma to the office for your favourite work peeps. Of course you could always add a truffle or two to the mix so your co-workers could choose between sweet and sinful. Instructions can be found here.

It was about a month or so ago that I first laid eyes on the pincushion flower. So when I needed to figure out what I wanted to carry at my wedding (which took place this past weekend), yellow pincushion flowers came to mind not only for their unique beauty, but because I liked the sewing connection, as well. I also ordered some extra to display on the tables at our venue, School Bakery & Cafe. Besides the yellow orbs of the pincushion blooms, I was pretty clueless as to what else I could put with them. Without having an example flower on hand, Helen at Anthi Floral Boutique was so helpful recommending complementary greenery — Jamaica greens and bear grass for the vases and aspidistra for the wedding bouquets. For vases I used Bernardin jars that I got thanks to my Uncle Glenn, and then I tied black raffia around the necks as a finishing touch.

For the bouquets my sister and I carried, we removed the greenery from the lower stem of the pincushion flowers and wrapped them in aspidistra and raffia.

Below is an image of one of my vases. I was very pleased with how they turned out!

What is this interesting-looking thing?

My lovely fall bouquet

Today’s the first day where it’s actually started to feel a little like fall. There’s a slight wind here in Toronto and it’s overcast and raining. We’ve had a very warm September until now. Even Northern Alberta, Vancouver and Whistler, where I spent the last week, have enjoyed an unusually warm fall. Only a few leaves here and there were beginning to turn various shades of gold in Northern Alberta, but everywhere else still seems fairly green.

My first real glimpse of fall colour is in this lovely ‘welcome home’ bouquet that greeted me when I returned from my trip. Especially interesting are the red and furry, pie-slice-shaped flowers. I have never seen them before. My fiancé said they were called ‘high fives’ until I realized he was pulling my leg. Does anyone know what these are?

(photo taken with a Kodak EasyShare M381 digital camera)