Fall Bouquets in Vermont

I enjoy making centerpiece bouquets for my stand at Saturday's St. Johnsbury Farmers' Market.  Typically I place a hunk of oasis in a container, drench it with water treated with plant food and an anti-bacterial agent  I then make a framework of foliage and put  in whatever flowers are on hand that seem to combine nicely.

Here are the five bouquets I made for Saturday's market.

This bouquet (Above, and close up below) features pink lavatera, purple ('Laura ') phlox, Pink Delight butterfly bush,  and even some allium.

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This bouquet, above and below,  is more of a "wild" arrangement with golden rod and the white flowers of artemesia lactiflora.  The blue is a cutting ageratum, the rest are all perennials.

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The above bouquet has hydrangea as a white highlight.  I find that the Pee Gee and Annabelle hydrangea blooms do not last long in bouquets, however for some reason the blooms from the grafted tree hydrangea (which is what I have used here) are long lasting.  

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This bouquet (above and below) has the white flowers from cimicfugia (actaea) which are highly fragrant.  The other pink spikes are from butterfly weed.  The open pink flowers are Joe Pye weed and the darker pink/purple flowers are ironweed.

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And finally a true summer bouquet with white phlox, double click cosmos, golden rod, verbena bonarienses, and rudbeckia laciniata, known around here as 'Golden Glow' or 'the outhouse plant.'

Houston - We have had Frosts - What is Blooming Now

Above is "iron weed" or veronia noveboracensis. I don't remember where I got this plant and I always forget about it until the fall when I am desperate for cut flowers and this one is perfect. The dark blue/violet goes nicely with mums and it is long lasting in bouquets.


Summer phlox can be problematic. Deer find it tasty and some years powdery mildew takes it down. This particular phlox is 'Laura' and it seems to be both disease resistant and long lasting in bouquets - and ... very fragrant.




Cimicifuga (white plumed flowers above in foreground) provide a dramatic fall statement. The common name is 'bugbane'. The horticultural folks have decided to reclassify the plant and now it is 'Actaea racemosa', but I finally got comfortable pronouncing cimicifuga - and so it will remain at Amanda's Greenhouse and Perennials. I don't care for the species as it spreads and becomes rather sparse, but cimicifuga ramosa atropurpurea forms a huge vase-shaped specimen plant that always delivers in September and October.


Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium purpreum) is another guaranteed fall bloomer. It's a "weed" only in the sense that it is a wild plant in north America. It's an OK cut flower and I'm told it can be dried. 'Little Joe' is a new shorter introduction, and I'll be able to report next year on how well it does, as the native Joe Pye can easily be 6 feet tall.




Step away very slowly from this plant, (macleaya cordata or 'plume poppy'.) It is mightily invasive. I might recommend it for the edge of a pond or background in a very wild setting, as it really is lovely in its own overbearing way. I unknowingly planted it among other perennials in a row and have been fighting it back the last ten years. Right now a woodchuck has a happy home in its center. (Plant seen above and below).











I love artemesia lactiflora (white mugwort) for its late blooms and the fact that it is non-invasive, unlike many other artemesias.


Above is sanguisorba canadensis, another very late bloomer that I use extensively in my fall bouquets. The common name is 'Canadian burnet' and when not blooming it has pretty serrated foliage. This one is vigorous, but controllable.

Now I have to figure out how to make my photographs larger for this blog. And I am already ordering for next year!