Floral Shrines

Create a floral shrine at home or work.
Adorn yourself with blossoms like an Eastern goddess.
Relax and renew your mind and body with the natural fragrance of fresh spring flowers.
Get back in touch with nature.

Lei Lady Lei Coral-pink spray rose buds, lilac sprigs, and cream narcissi - a beautifully fragrant lei to adorn yourself with.

A garland of spray roses, purple freesia and lilac - a pretty (temporary) decoration for anywhere in the home.

Relax - snip the heads off spray roses, narcissi, freesia and branches of coral-coloured blossom, float in water, and you're done!

Peace Offering - A small shrine table - tiny posies of spring flowers adorned with lace and lucky charms demand a considered, closer look.

An abundant armful of spring fragrance - narcissi, freesia, tulips and lilac. Easy to arrange, easy to love.

Rosy Posy - Spring arranging is simple - lilac, a few tulips, some spray roses, freesia and narcissi make a pretty posy.

Nature's aromatherapy - the seductive fragrance of white lilies.

Freesia
Freesias are among the most popular and widely grown cut flowers in the world. This is due to their delicate scent and wide colour range including yellows, red, pinks, blues and white. Unlike most other flowers, where white varieties smell most strongly, if you want highly scented freesia look for pink and red. Buy freesia with at least one flower open on the stem. Make sure they have plenty of water and never let the stem ends dry out. Pinch out the tiny buds at the tips and remove old flowerheads to encourage new ones to open.

Longiflorum Lily
The white lily was the most significant flower symbol for Christians, as a symbol of purity. To the Chinese, lily means "Forever in love". In Greek poetry, the lily stood for tenderness. Lilium longiflorum, commonly called the "longi" lily is highly perfumed but generally white only; although recent breeding breakthroughs have developed "longis" with softly-coloured centres. Remove pollen stamens by pulling them up out of the flower. This prolongs the flower's life as well. Use sticky tape to remove pollen, not water which will fix the stain.

Narcissus
All daffodils are Narcissus, which is the genus (family) name. However, most of us think of daffodils as the yellow single flowered, large trumpet ones, and call the smaller headed scented varieties, narcissi. The Isles of Scilly start the season off in October with tiny tazetta types. It moves up the country via Lincolnshire, finishing in April with large trumpet daffodils from Scotland. If you want to mix your flowers, leave narcissi in water on their own overnight first and do not recut the stems. Or use specially formulated cut flower food for mixing daffodils with other flowers.

Lilac
Mostly known to florists by its genus name Syringa (pronounced sir-IN-ga), lilac is a well known shrub in English cottage gardens. The cut flower is far more glamorous than the shrub with long branches laden with flowers. The flowers are very labour intensive to grow but the final result is well worth it. Lilacs are available in white, mauve, violet or pink. The purple-flowered varieties, which have stronger scent are only available for a very short season of perhaps six weeks. Special cut flower food is available for shrubs like lilac.

Tulip
Tulip gets its name from the Turkish for turban, after its rounded form. The flowers come in every colour except blue and true black. Tulips are the third-biggest selling flower in Holland and are also very popular in the UK. In the middle ages tulipmania saw bulbs change hands for the equivalent of £4million pounds a bulb! Thankfully we can all enjoy tulips these days as they are one of the most readily available and good value flowers in season. Tulips continue to grow in water and will curve towards the light. This makes for some very interesting and natural-looking arrangements!

Eucharis
Eucharis (pronounced YOU-kariss) means charming in Latin. It is also sometimes known as the Amazon lily because of its Colombian origins. The flowers are pure white with a delicate apple green centre, looking something like an exotic glamorous daffodil. Each stem bears at least two flowerheads and often up to eight. Eucharis does not like cold, and warmth has the benefit of bringing out its delicious scent.

 

Buy some flowers - you deserve a treat!

Photography courtesy of The Flower & Plants Association