Bouquets and Backyard Diversity

I had an unexpected insight on Mother's Day about the advantages of having a wide variety of flowering plants growing in one's yard. It began with a few preparatory texts in rapid succession from my older daughter the day before:

"Mother's Day tomorrow"

"!"

"If you want to get flowers or something"

Responding to this imperative, my first thought was to go to the store and buy a bouquet. Then I thought again. I value the local store, and store-bought flowers can be pretty, but a little predictable, and do I really want to be supporting the transport of flowers flown all the way from Colombia, Equador, and Kenya? 

So, my thoughts turned to the yard, which thus far this spring had provided a fine progression of daffodils, tulips, and lilacs. But now, with Mother's Day upon us, all those easy ornaments for the indoors had faded away. A cynical thought came to mind, that the creators of Mother's Day had timed it to coincide with a gap in local blooms, the better to spur sales of flowers. 

But no, climate change has been altering the timing of blooms for a long time now. And looking back at a post I wrote entitled "Mother's Day's Complicated History With Flowers," I found that Anna Jarvis founded Mother's Day to correspond to when her mother had died, on the second Sunday of May. She campaigned for nine years to make Mother's Day official, then spent the rest of her life fighting against the commercialization of it by the florist, card, and candy industries. 

My instincts were right, then, to head to the backyard for a bouquet, but what to use? 

There, blooming in brilliant, lacy white along the fenceline, was a native fringe tree. That got me started. Add some Lenten Rose, daisy fleabane, and some leaves of sensitive fern, and ... Voila! 

The usual plug for planting flowers in the yard is to feed the pollinators. Since different species bloom at different times, adding more species better insures there will be a steady progression of blooms to sustain pollinators throughout the growing season. 

On Mother's Day, our fringetree saved the day, showing how backyard biodiversity can also feed human relationships and indoor ornament.

Various family members have brought the outdoors inside to make bouquets over the years. Most of the flowers are native, but not all. This one, from June, adds sprays of Virginia sweetspire and the yellow of sundrops and yarrow to roses. 

Lenten rose mixes well with iris.

Those floppy peonies in the yard can thrive indoors in a vase, perfuming the house.

This one from early September combines boneset, purple coneflower, obedient plant, "Autumn Joy" sedum, and Indian grass with a few sunflowers.

October brings goldenrod, New England aster, frost aster, and the deepening burgundy of sedum. Some of the wildflowers drop pollen on the table, but that seems a small price to pay.

Sometimes it's good to rock out with the sheer joy of sunflowers, given some subtlety by the goldenrod. Perennial sunflowers spread like crazy in a garden, so try your best to grow them in big containers rather than letting them loose in the flower beds. 

Even in November there's beauty to bring indoors. A botanist friend, Cynthie Kulstad, brought forest and prairie together for this bouquet at the 20th anniversary of a watershed association I started in Durham, NC. 

For many people, perhaps most, nature's diversity seems intimidating. Thus the countless static yards simplified down to turf and nondescript shrubs. 

You can see, though, that the intimidation of nature's endless creativity outdoors can be overcome, and ultimately inspire human creativity indoors. It all begins with planting that first flower.