New York Botanical Garden - with kids!

The New York Botanical Garden invited me to explore their gardens so this past weekend I took up the opportunity and went with my husband and 3 little girls for our first visit to it in the Bronx. A first of many visits for certain!

Elegant autumn toned dahlias grew in the seasonal walk

I could not contain my excitement and I think it rubbed off on my girls as we excitedly went from garden to garden. As we walked up to the conservatory, my husband saw the sign "A world of Plants" and knew without words that I would want a picture in front of it.

 so many lovely green textures.

I really enjoyed the different hanging baskets of Apocynaceae plants native to Indonesia and Malaysia:

 

riding on the tram!

 The flowering 'sweet autumn clematis' were a sight to see:

Naturally, we spent the most time in the Everett Children's Adventure Garden. My girls loved seeing the massive critters designed using different plantings.

They also enjoyed a scavenger hunt that had them searching for medicinal plants. They even got to plant and take home their own medicinal plant to put on mosquito bites. At the time, I missed what seed it was that they were planting, but we will find out once they start to sprout!

 

overflowing hydrangeas

The garden grounds were so much larger than I expected! For any horty like me, I would recommend spending a full day at the gardens to fully enjoy each area without feeling rushed. There are many things I would love to go back and discover more about that we did not have time to see, especially the Mertz Library. It is one of the world's largest and most important botanical and horticultural research libraries, with over one million items such as books, journals, original art and illustration, seed and nursery catalogs, architectural plans of glass houses, scientific reprints, and photographs. I think that alone would take a whole day for me to enjoy.

As for my girls, they loved it and asked the next morning "when can we go back?!".

moments notice

i love having a great camera in my pocket... er phone... to take photos of the things that inspire me at a moments notice. I'll share with you the latest:

-creeping fig by my feet at the greenhouse,

-colorful coleus outside the bagel shop on a saturday morning

-rose hips on an evening walk with my little family

-two new designs i made months ago . i swear i will list them for sale one of these lazy summer days

- and double flowered perennial sunflowers growing in my neighbors front yard. they are about 7 feet tall. *reminder, i need to plant these gorgeous flowers!

flower ID: Abutilon

Abutilon, commonly known as Flowering Maple or Chinese Bellflower and pronounced ah-BEW- tih-lon. Even though they carry the common name, flowering maple, they are not in fact maples at all. The name derived from the maple leaf shape they have. The delicate orange/red blossoms attract hummingbirds and butterflies. They will thrive both in indoor or outdoor settings (in milder climates) and bloom from spring until frost and occasionally in the winter. For many reasonably priced varieties, go here.

flower ID: allium

pretty allium from my garden. I had planted the bulbs in the fall with Raquel and we were excited to see them bloom so lovely and purple for a few recent weeks. Raquel's preschool asked each child to bring in a flower from their garden so they could make teacher's appreciation day garden bouquets. We snipped a few allium and gave them along with some of our hosta leaves.

Allium is also gorgeous when they are used in a landscape mixed and mingled sporadically in a garden like here and here.  Sooo, think about planting the bulbs in your garden this fall. I look forward to seeing them each spring now.

flower id: anemone

beautiful, fragile, anemones. These were headed for the trash yesterday by a unappreciative designer as I worked designing for valentine's day. Their petals will soon fall which is why they were too spent to use in arrangements. I couldn't bare to see such blooming beauties wasted at their prime, so I saved them and brought them home. One designer's trash is another designer's treasure :)

anemones are in the buttercup family, ranunculaceae, and also known as the poppy anemone or the anemone coronaria. The anemone coronaria are native to the Mediterranean region and grow wild all over Israel and Jordan. They come in a variety of colors like white, red, pinks and purples. And how are they pronounced? a-nem-o-neeee, you know like how nemo pronounces it. These are one of my favorite flowers, I love how delicate they are and how each center looks different.

I am thinking about doing a giveaway of one of my designs so come back soon!

flower id: cyclamen

Cyclamen persicum, or Florist’s Cyclamen, is a common winter flowering plant found in many stores and florists. It is a tuberous plant native to the Eastern Mediterranean area. They come in a variety of shades from white, to red and many hues of pink. My favorite thing is their heart shaped leaves (above) which is perfect for a valentine's day gift. Cyclamen are a breath of fresh spring air in the dead of winter. Their flowers are very fragrant and showy. So fragrant that my girls wont stop sniffing them.

Blooming: Plants will bloom from mid-winter to spring. Cyclamen like bright indirect light while flowering. They go through a summer dormancy when they do not flower and prefer to be kept out of bright light. You can the break dormancy and stimulate it's winter flowering period again starting in the fall.

DIY Valentine's day gift!!!
cyclamen potted in vintage milk glass

... create your own valentine's gift by dressing up a common cyclamen from the store. Add a little sheet moss (available in most craft stores) and pot it up in a thrifted vintage milk glass planter like my hobnail one. If you don't have the time for thrifting, you can find many vintage milk glass planters on etsy here.

flores del sol is also celebrating the 600th sale! Take off 10% today by using the code 600sale at check out!!!! not valid on custom orders.

know your christmas greens

it seems as though each year as the Christmas season sneaks up, my mind draws a blank when naming a few of the different cut evergreens. Know your Christmas greens. Impress your boyfriend's mom by commenting on the lovely scent of cedar from her wreath or ask your friend where she acquired her centerpiece with juniper berries.

My favorite green this year are magnolia leaves. I love there deep, broad leaves and the soft velvety brown tones underneath. Here are some Christmas container plantings I did for a client. Test yourself, can you identify what's in them?

flower id: ilex berries

Ilex berries, also known as winterberries, are gorgeous holiday berries used in Christmas arrangements by floral designers at this time of year. They are grown from a shrub that has copious amounts of red berries in late autumn. Once cut, the ilex berries stay on the branches for a long time. I love to use them in outdoor planting too. You can find them at a flower market, florist and (sometimes) the grocery store.

the winner of the blossom buddies book giveaway this week is domestic diva! congrats!

twilight wedding flowers

This past weekend I may or may not have gone out for girls night to see breaking dawn. Ok, I'll fess up... I did. I am no twihard, but I did read the books 3 years ago and enjoy seeing the movies with my friends who first got me to read the books. So we giggled like little girls, sat packed in a full theater and of course discussed the movie afterward in comparison to the book. Bella and Edward marry in this movie. A Twilight wedding? You better believe it was huge and beautiful. It was held almost as much a secret as the royal wedding. The whole feel was very organic, woodland and romantic with the canopy of white wisteria cascading from the trees (40- 50 feet in length!) and moss covered stumps flowing with white flowers. The floral designer in charge was Tammy Polatsek.

So I put together a collage of the flowers used in the wedding:

.

Bella's bouquet:

I still can not even find a photo of Bella's bouquet so from what I remember it had all mostly white ranunculas, stock, freeshia and possibly roses and sweet peas mixed in.

Boutonnieres:
I believe they were small freesia florets. It was hard to tell though without getting up close.

The cake:
5 tier, sweet peas, cream roses and green viburnum.

Centerpieces:
Green viburnum, white delphinium, stock, white ranunculus and sweet peas with moss and ferns and manzanita branch-like candelabras.


so if you want to go-ahead and comment that I am a huge dork and you've lost all respect for me... or that you vomited in your mouth upon seeing the title of this post... or confess you saw the movie too ;)


images 1, 2, 3 , 4-floresdelsol

flower id: dahlia

some dahlias i picked from my autumn garden. they are seemingly flawless. look at their petals, perfect symmetry ! my favorite part of a dahlia is their celery-like smell when you snip the stems. they bloom late summer- autumn around here and are one of my favorties to use in fresh arrangements. i also think the name is so pretty. so much so that I tried to persuade my husband to name our last little baby dahlia, call her dolly for short. he didn't like it... :(

inspiration: the forget-me-not

forget-me-not by sunshine....

I had a wonderful weekend. I'm a Mormon and on saturday evening, from the comfort of my own couch, I was able to watch the General Relief Society broadcast. It is a wonderful hour and a half of talks from leaders to encourage, teach, and strengthen women worldwide. Every woman, whether or not she is a member of The Church, is invited to attend/watch this meeting.

This year Elder Dieder F Uchtdorf gave an inspiring talk using the forget-me-not flower as a metaphor. It is small, insignificant and often overlooked amongst larger show-stopping flowers, but it is still vibrant and happy in the background.

“You may at times feel a little like the forget-me-not—insignificant, small, or tiny in comparison with others,” he said, noting: “I hope (the forget-me-not) will be a symbol of the little things that make your lives joyful and sweet.”

Using an example from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, President Uchtdorf described how Willy Wonka hid five golden tickets in chocolate bars, promising to reveal wonders to the people who found the tickets.

“In their anxiousness, people began to forget the simple joy they used to find in a candy bar. The candy bar itself becomes an utter disappointment if it does not contain a golden ticket,” President Uchtdorf said.

President Uchtdorf warned not to put your happiness on hold waiting for a future event, or a golden ticket to appear. Be happy in the moment now, with the small forget-me-nots in your life.

“The lesson here,” he said, "is that if we spend our days waiting for fabulous roses, we could miss the beauty and wonder of the tiny forget-me-nots that are all around us.”

Exactly what I needed to hear.

I really wanted to but could not put his whole talk on here! It is found here .

Another awesome message from Dieter F. Uchtdorf on creativity here.