Fresh-cut flowers from the garden are arguably one of the garden’s greatest joys. They are lovely, luxurious and all-in-all economical. I am a cut-whatever’s-blooming-put-it-in-a-vase kind of person, and when they are available, I like to put little vases anywhere I can — on my bedside table, my childrens’ dressers, the dining room table, the counter by the kitchen sink — anywhere I can see them and smile for their being there. I am not particularly fussy: I try to remember to trim the leaves from the bottom of the stems, I sort of adjust the blossoms based on their color and height so that they come together in a generally pleasing way — and I am very happy. However, when I see the work of a good floral designer, I instinctively know the difference between my casual grouping of flowers and their artistic crafting of an arrangement. I am always amazed at how many GOOD florists are in our region, but I distinctly remember the sensation when I walked into the Enloe Foundation Gala earlier this year in Chico. I saw the soaring and floating floral displays and thought: Now that is the work of an artist. Photo: Cut flowers fresh from the garden — waiting to be arranged.

Gerry Gregg, AIFD, co-owner with his wife Carol of the The Flower Market in Chico was the designer responsible for those floral arrangements. Gerry is a long-time and award-winning floral designer who regularly participates in international shows and publications with his floral designs, including the annual Las Floristas Headdress Ball at the Hotel Beverly Hills in Beverly Hills, Calif. Gerry is originally from the Chico area and after several years of living in more urban environments, returned to the area in the past few years with his wife, Carol, to open their own business. Photo: Gerry Gregg, AIFD — at The Flower Market in Chico.

The Flower Market is a full-service floral shop on the corner of 1st and Longfellow in Chico, specializing in unique floral displays for home delivery and special events but also creating unique floral products such as wreaths and home accents for the wholesale market. Many of the products, such as their geometric manzanita wreaths, are based around well-known North State plants.

Gerry, who is as happy to talk about the scientific aspects of a flower’s life-cycles and systems as he is about the Golden Proportion, and I have been chatting over the past few months about floral design and specifically about working with garden flowers for the purpose of home arrangement. This week he chats with us about some of his tips for long-lasting and outstanding results arranging with cut flowers from the garden:

1. When picking your flowers, pick them on the rise of heat, so in the early morning when their stems are cool and hydrated from the nighttime dew and their transpiration has yet to begin in earnest for the day. They will stay hydrated longer and remain hydrated more easily. This is not new or revolutionary information, but still some people don’t know it or they don’t know why to pick in the morning.

2. Cut flowers for arranging using a very sharp knife or Bonsai scissors rather than your everyday pruning by-pass clippers. It makes for a cleaner cut.

3. Cut woody plants just above a leaf-node and at a very sharp angle - 45 degrees or more - which will allow the water to get to the water-transporting cambium layer more effectively. After making the cut, Gerry also draws his knife a little way up the stem to further expose the cambium. While this is less important with softer stemmed flowers, it is still a good habit. For any plant that bleeds milk (think Euphorbias and Poinsettias), Gerry cuts these stems straight across and then sears the bottom of the stem with a match or lighter flame to seal them. For fragile blooms like poppies, Gerry suggests making sure to only cut these when the bud has just cracked open. Any further and they will shatter quickly; any sooner and they will never open. Other experts also suggest burning the ends of poppies.

4. Once cut, get your flowers into luke-warm water AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, making a new cut an inch or more right before you plunge it into the water. This fresh cut ensures that there is not an air bubble in the stem between where you made your first cut and the amount of water it lost between that cut being made and being put back into water. That air pocket makes it very difficult if not impossible for the plant to draw water up its stem.

5. As preservative, in Gerry’s opinion, a smashed aspirin is the best water additive for cut flowers. Do not use 7-Up or other sweet liquid, which just creates food for bacteria to grow in the water and accelerate decay. You should also remove all leaves that would be underwater in an arrangement for the same reason. Leaves underwater will begin to decay very quickly adding a lot of bacteria to the water and decreasing the life of the arrangement by both accelerating the decay of the stem and clogging the stem’s pores so that water uptake is more difficult.

6. If you are working with tulips, remember that they continue to grow even while in an arrangement after they have been cut. In this arrangement, Gerry started with the tulips cut to sit under the hydrangeas so that they had room to grow in the arrangement.

7. CHANGE YOUR FLOWER WATER FREQUENTLY. Gerry tells me that his advice is when you’re having your morning cup of coffee, walk around and give your flowers a shot of new water. If it is difficult to refill a specific arrangement, just set it in the sink and let the tap water flow into the vase until it has overflowed for a while. After you let it drain off and you have patted it dry, put it back in place. If you can, make fresh cuts on those stems that need it when you change the water. It’s not that they need water up a lot of their stem - they only need to be in about 1.5 inches of water to effectively stay hydrated, it’s that they need clean, fresh water.

8. Do not place your flowers in too hot or drafty a spot on your house for any length of time if you want them to last their longest, such as near an open window, in full-sun, near a working fireplace, or on top of your television. In the winter, you can even set them outside in a protected spot at night to keep them ‘refrigerated,’ as it were.

9. When starting to arrange, think about scale and proportion. In general, your arrangement should be 1.5 times (in height or width) the size of the container you are using. When you have a small flower head floating in a larger bowl, the proportion is inverse.

10. Be creative and have fun. Use vines, twigs, go up, cascade down, use any foliage you like the looks of - just keep looking at it and seeing that it still feels comfortably balanced to your eye. In floral design school, we were taught to think outside the box, Gerry tells me, and if you can’t think outside the box, then take the box apart and use its pieces in your design.

Gerry does quite a bit outside the box and the vase and all the pieces come together quite nicely.

In a North State Garden is a radio- and web-based outreach program of the Gateway Science Museum - Exploring the Natural History of the North State, based in Chico, CA. In a North State Garden celebrates the art, craft and science of home gardening in California’s North State region, and is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell - all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In A North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio KCHO/KFPR radio, Saturday mornings at 7:34 AM Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 AM Pacific time. Podcasts of past shows are available here.