Expert says let plants speak for themselves when arranging

Having been a florist for more than 20 years, Linda Beutler knows a thing or two about cutting and arranging flowers.

Her 50-by-100 lot in Portland spills over with plants suitable for cutting and arranging, as well as favored fruit trees and vegetables, which she often incorporates into her arrangements.

“Flowers by themselves are boring,” Beutler says. Bouquets should include berries and leaves because a plant’s elements of maturation over the season can be a lovely part of a design’s journey, she explains.

She includes not only traditional plants such as lilies and roses into her arrangements, but the not-so-traditional tulips, bleeding heart, ornamental grasses, and yes, even clematis. In case you’re wondering, her personal collection numbers more than 300 species and cultivars.

Among her many attributes, Beutler is also a garden writer and instructor of horticulture at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City.

She will give a talk “The Year Round Cutting Garden” at this year’s Insights into Gardening Seminar on Saturday, Feb. 9 at the LaSells-Stewart Center at Oregon State University. (See sidebar for details.)

Necessity is the

mother of invention

Beutler’s gardening passion is perceptibly clematis, which she says began with the purchase of her first mis-named variety. Beutler now serves on the governing council of the International Clematis Society, is a founding member of the Friends of the Rogerson Clematis Collection (2003), and was recently hired as that collection’s first curator (July 2007). This passion for growing clematis also led to the publication of her first book, “Gardening with Clematis” (Timber Press, 2004).

A second book “Garden to Vase” (Timber Press, 2007) stemmed from her frustration at not being able to find a suitable textbook for the classes she teaches, so she decided to write her own.

Design philosophy

“I like to see arrangements made complex by using many types of flowers and foliage, but using simple mechanics.” Beutler says.

Her design basics include:

n Let flowers speak for themselves — without using props.

n Add foliage first, flowers next, and fillers last, and build a bouquet in your hand before putting it in the vase.

n Any flower combination that looks good together in your garden will look good in a vase.

n Use three kinds of foliage in an arrangement — minimum. These can include ornamental grasses such as Chasmantium latifolium Northern sea oats and Miscanthus sinensis Gold Bar; broadleaf evergreens like euonymus and Viburnum tinus are revered for both their foliage and berries.

n To add fragrance to a bouquet, use peonies, hyacinths, roses and lilies. (Tip: With lilies, the anthers (the part that contains the orange powder that stains hands and clothes) are tenuously attached by filaments and can easily be pulled off when they first appear — in their waxy form. Use tweezers or rubber gloves otherwise.)

Clematis tips

One of Beutler’s favorite cutting forms is the species C. stans from Japan. It is an herbaceous perennial (NOT a true vine — because it does not cling or climb).

Ice-blue in color, C. stans is a species with relatively small blooms and petals that flare back. It blooms from mid-June to September.

“It makes great filler in an arrangement like baby’s breath,” Beutler says. And like other herbaceous perennial plants, it needs to be cut back from the ground each year.

To maximize vase life, she recommends harvesting stems of clematis when the flower buds are just cracking open and snip stems long enough so that you are taking some of the woody brown stem and not just the green top.

Let the stem drink from a deep bucket of fresh water for several hours or overnight, and only then cut it down to the length you need.

Tulip tips

Ever since she received her first bouquet of red tulips from her father on her 10th birthday, tulips have been Beutler’s absolute favorite flower. She cautions that tulips are one flower that will continue to grow even after they are cut (growing 1-2 inches in 10 days).

That dictates harvesting them when they are smaller and NOT fully colored or open all the way.

Certain tulips last longer in bouquets than others. For instance, the so-called French tulips (simply defined as any tulip with a stem longer than 18 inches) have bigger flowers and longer stems than most garden tulips and last longer. Those from the series Viridiflora (meaning green and have a green-stripe on the outside of each petal), according to Beutler, maintain their green color the longest. The fringed group, named for its quarter-inch fine-fringed edging on each petal, as well as parrot tulips, all have a very long shelf life.

Tips to get tulips to return year after year in the garden are to “cut them just above the bottom two leaves (these leaves should be left as they serve to feed the bulb for next year) and plant bulbs deeper (8 inches is better than 6 inches).“

Rose tips

Being an organic gardener, Beutler says the only kind of rose she grows these days is “antique old garden roses” — these tend to be repeat bloomers and the most disease resistant. She’s partial to Jacque Cartier — a double blooming pink that is very fragrant. It doesn’t require a lot of pruning each year either, like most roses do.

By her front door she grows an old climber dating back to the 1860s called Sombrieul (pronounced by the French as — Sombroy). It is fragrant, creamy white, and also a repeat bloomer, with very double flowers all summer.

Keep it clean

“The best way to keep cut flowers fresh is to keep the water they sit in clean!” Beutler says.

Debris, from sloughed-off cells, foliage under water, etc., is what gums up a stem’s vascular system. So she says that any foliage that will be under water should be cut off before placing flowers in a vase.

Vases

Simply said, “If it can hold water, it is a flower container,” says Beutler.

As many of you have found, mason jars, tea pots, cups and bowls often work as vases. But so do gourds, pumpkins and even apples. (Tip: Insert a plastic container into a carved out pumpkin or gourd, in which to place floral foam, oasis and water.)

For apples, insert bloom stems into flower tubes placed in the hollowed out core.” (Tip: Just remember that these little tubes don’t hold much water so will need refilling frequently. And keep in mind that apples give off a gas called ethylene that causes flowers, foliage, berries and other fruits they sit around to age faster.)

Make creative use of the plants you have in your garden this winter by adding fresh flowers from the store to twigs, leaves, evergreen boughs and berries. It will warm your heart on a chilly day.