For this self-designed Honors project, I created a cut flower garden with different blooms from spring through fall. April through November, I created floral arrangements to decorate countless tables as gifts for friends, while weeding, planting, deadheading, and watering. I harvested peonies, dahlias, Gerbera daisies, cosmos, coreopsis, and wildflowers.
Being a gardener is now such a core aspect of my identity, and I recommend it as a grounding hobby to practice slowing down intentionally and connecting with nature. It has brought so much peace and beauty into my life. Enjoy the colorful gallery below!
Gallery above: Home-grown bouquets of zinnias, coreopsis, cosmos, wildflowers, and peonies.
Above: arrangements of just dahlias! Such a tricky flower to grow from bulb, requiring very heavy regular watering. I also discovered that dahlias are prone to attracting Japanese beetles, so I purchased Neem oil and went to war spraying and crushing the pests. I also learned the hard way that you should not put bulb flowers in vases of hot water, as all the petals will fall out of the flower head within a matter of minutes. Cool water only for vases of dahlias!
Above: garden shots throughout the seasons. For such a small patch of land, it yielded an intense harvest of cut flowers.
Video above: One particularly abundant dahlia harvest - I ran out of vases.
Finally, wrapping flowers in paper cones to gift them.
Comments