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A bouquet of stunning spring flowers is a classic Mother’s Day gift—and you can make it even more meaningful by cutting an arrangement from your very own garden. If you’re looking for a homegrown bouquet that’s guaranteed to look ten times better than one from the grocery store, we know just where to start.
Kate Spirgen, marketing & communications manager for plant brand Proven Winners, suggests these seven striking garden flowers for creating long-lasting Mother’s Day bouquets.
Credit: Proven Winners
Virtuoso® Dahlias
The first flower that Spirgen recommends is one of Proven Winner’s very best dahlias. These plants grow quickly and produce blooms early on, and are easy to maintain. This cultivar is also tolerant of powdery mildew, a common plant disease that can affect the quality of dahlia flowers.
Choose from soft pink with a yellow center, dark red, bright yellow, or hot pink colors. Each Virtuoso® dahlia color offers a different petal shape.
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Angelface® Angelonia
Angelface® angelonia produces elegant flowers for any bouquet, adding height and fullness to your arrangement. Also called summer snapdragon, angelonia flowers bloom all season long and the flowers have a delicious “grape soda” fragrance. This line of Proven Winners angelonia comes in several shades of pink, purple, and white, including a striking purple and white bicolor.
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Suncredible® Helianthus
This pollinator favorite offers layers of large, striking yellow petals with a gradient ring of red or brown. Suncredible® sunflowers can bloom for months without stopping on plants that top out around 4 feet tall.
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Sunstar® Pentas
Tiny clusters of flowers with pointy leaves provide the perfect textural accent for your Mother’s Day bouquet. Sunstar pentas® is heat-tolerant and requires no deadheading; the dark green foliage makes for a gorgeous backdrop in any arrangement. Light pink, lavender, bright pink, and bold red are the available Sunstar® colors.
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Fruit Punch® Dianthus
This ruffled perennial dianthus makes for a striking addition to your Mother’s Day bouquet. Colors like ‘Black Cherry Frost’ offer a dark-colored flower with light tips; ‘Spiked Punch’ and ‘Cranberry Cocktail’ are ultra-fluffy flowers in magenta and cranberry. ‘Sweetie Pie’ offers small and lightly-layered pink flowers with long green stems.
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’Serendipity’ Allium
Add some intrigue to your garden with these small globe-shaped flowers. This ornamental onion attracts bees and butterflies (and resists deer and rabbits, too). The perennial plant offers up spherical purple flowers that provide an easy-to-grow accent to any arrangement.
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Truffula™ Pink Gomphrena
This bold pink globe amaranth is easy to care for and blooms for a long time. It’s extremely easy to dry, offering a long-lasting twist on a classic Mother’s Day bouquet. Tiny yellow tips make this tall flower stand out in any arrangement, adding lots of variety with just a few of these small blooms.
Why Choose These Plants for Your Mother’s Day Bouquet?
These plants are excellent to grow for cut flowers for several reasons. “First, these flowers will continue to bloom and rebloom throughout spring and summer. However, it is important to cut all flowers at the correct harvest stage,” says Spirgen.
On its website, Proven Winners says that spiky flowers, such as angelonia, should be picked when the flowers at the base begin to open; the rest of the blooms on the stem will open in the vase. Sunflowers need to be harvested as soon as one petal starts to open, as they’ll continue blooming once cut and placed in water. Dahlias can be picked fully open.
“In addition, these varieties of flowers all have a long vase life, serve as strong focal points, and feature sturdy stems that will keep them upright in the vase rather than drooping,” Spirgen explains.
Mother’s Day Bouquet Ideas from Proven Winners
Looking for floral pairing ideas? “Overall, our recommendation is to have fun mixing and matching bouquet styles while considering incorporating a tall focal point, a shorter bloom and some foliage to fill in,” Spirgen says. “Some other ideas include mixing brights and neutrals, or opting for a monochromatic scheme like shades of pink or white.”
Proven Winners also came up with two bouquet combinations, both of which look gorgeous in your garden and even better in an arrangement.
Create a colorful and energetic ‘Bright Bunch’ bouquet using Suncredible® Yellow II Helianthus, Truffula™ Pink Gomphrena, and Sunstar® Lavender Pentas. The vibrant yellow sunflowers are undeniably the star of the show here, with layers of soft petals and a gentle ring of brown coloring. Light pink star flowers and magenta globe amaranth with tiny yellow tips accent the bouquet.
The ‘Pretty in Pink’ bouquet idea features an arrangement of three show-stopping pink blooms. Pink flowers can symbolize thankfulness, affection, and familial love, making them a classic choice for a Mother’s Day bouquet. ‘Pretty in Pink’ utilizes the Angelface Perfectly Pink summer snapdragons, along with the Fruit Punch® ‘Sweetie Pie’ Pinks dianthus for soft and sweet filler flowers. The enormous Virtuoso® Pinkerific™ Dahlia is the main flower for this bouquet, with dozens of fluffy pink petals and a soft yellow center.
Read the original article on Better Homes & Gardens
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