I once grew a bulb available by mail order called Roman Hyacinth in preference to the usual disfigured type that people grow at Christmas, and was much rewarded with a more natural looking flower. When you live with a shrub grower who nurtures plants that can take years to grow, cutting flowers for the house is a highly controversial thing to do, and unlike my sister, who has specialised in growing plants that grow, flower and seed in the same year,I have slowly tried to introduce plants that will naturalise in sufficient numbers that we wont notice the odd bunch disappearing into the house for too short a time, only to end, languishing in the compost bin. Now I can add this beauty to my collection. Sometimes guests have laughed at me for picking really quite unstriking weeds like willow herb as a way of having flowers in the bedrooms just to save cutting our more showy garden flowers. I am only following the the tradition of Constance Spry. When asked to tea, the mother of our present neighbour was struck by a few stems of wild raspberry stuck in a vase in much the same vein as the restaurant I once went to in Shepherd Bush that had Docks in vases on every table. So our Spanish Bluebells will not be dug up and burnt, but instead ruthlessly picked, which I agree may weaken them over time, but in the meanwhile, the flowers wont be there long enough to do much damage to the native version and our house will smell of bluebells with flowers like hyacinths!
Random photographs of other flower arrangements.
