Welcome to In A Vase On Monday when I am linking up with Cathy at Rambling In The Garden to find something from the garden to put in a vase every week.
This week there was no choice to be made – my beautiful pale pink cherry blossom is making its fleeting visit to the garden, so I knew that would be the star today.
In the background is a little vase of tulip Chato, which I have picked largely in bud so that they will open gradually over the next few days and hopefully keep fresh until the weekend.
The stems of cherry blossom are in a new blue and white stem vase that I found on a jaunt to a vintage collectibles shop last week. I bought this as a pair, so I am sure I will be using the two together very soon. The tulips are in a cut crystal footed vase and both are displayed on my moroccan silver tray, which always bounces the light so well.
This blossom originates from a tree that was in the garden when we arrived. It was very small five years ago and flowered with a very sparse scattering of blossom. It is growing year by year but very slowly, although it does seem to produce more flowers these days. There are cherries to follow the flowers, but the birds always get to them before I do!
This pale pink blossom follows the white blossom of my dark leaved ornamental plum tree and the recently planted apricot tree (also white blossom). It always comes into flower the week after the forsythia opens up.
I make a point of visiting this tree every day when it is flower – the clouds of delicate blossom are so beautiful.
The tulips that I used today are called Chato. Purchased from Sarah Raven, this group were planted in the Cutting Garden in autumn 2013, so are flowering well for the second year. Chato is an early double variety which bears a strong resemblance to a peony when fully open. As many doubles do not repeat flower well I am delighted to see this group performing so well.
I included this tulip in a Flowers On Sunday post last year and love its rich pinky purple colouring just as much this spring.
I have spent much of today in the Cutting Garden cutting tulips for Saturdays wedding. My plan was to start cutting on Wednesday, but the recent high temperatures, with even higher temperatures predicted for the next couple of days, has meant many of my white tulips are opening up. I am worried that if I leave them they will be too open to use by the weekend. On the other hand cutting early is a risk – will they last the week? To maximise their chances I have bunched them into bundles of 10/12 and wrapped each bundle tightly in brown paper above the height of the flowers. The bundles are standing in trugs of water in the cool dark potting shed. Hopefully this will preserve the flowers until I am ready to start arranging on Thursday.
I am finding that many of my tulips in the Cutting Garden are coming into flower very early this year and on very short stems. A bit of research has revealed that a number of professional growers of British flowers are complaining of the same problem.
As recommended most of these tulips were planted in November and December. Interestingly my border tulips in the main garden which have been in place for 3 or 4 years now do not seem to have the same problem. The only one in flower at the moment in the borders is Purple Prince, which has lovely long stems. In contrast, Purple Prince planted late last year in the Cutting Garden is flowering on a stem barely 6 inches long. I would be interested to know if anyone has any views on this observation – it certainly has made me question whether I should be planting tulips earlier so that the bulbs have longer in the ground and less time in storage.
I will hopefully be back over the weekend to share some photos of the finished wedding flowers! Until then thank you as ever to Cathy for hosting and I hope you will pop over to her blog to see what she and the many others contributing to this inspiring meme have made this week.
Insert your profile info here, by going to Users -> Your Profile -> Biographical Info. Profile image (avatar) comes from gravatar.com. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam faucibus ornare lectus nec cursus.
Really so lovely both vases…love the contrast of colors too…so wish we had a cherry tree….I have a very young, stick, native cherry but it is very slow to grow and never a blossom yet. I can’t wait to see the weeding flowers…keeping my fingers crossed that all works out as you planned.
Stunning photos of the Cherry blossom, it is so fleeting in the garden.
Beautiful blossom and I love the tulips. The short stems may have something to do with how long a cold period the bulbs have. My tulips often have short stems and they often flower quite late indicating that they haven’t experienced the cold weather until later. Pre-chilling all the tulips might be an option.
Julie: As I’ve mentioned in one of my posts, my tulips are almost always shorter than they “should” be. I attribute this to living in a warm climate where the winters are mild and short. However, this last winter was unusually cold…but even so my tulips are just not as tall or as lush as they might be in another climate. I don’t get them into the ground until very late November; but there really is no option as the weather is too warm until then. As Christina said, pre-chilling is certainly an option but somehow I haven’t been that organized!
That oddly named tulip, Chato, is one of the most stunning I have ever seen! So like a peony. I wouldn’t get any work done….I would spend my time gazing at that arrangement. I’ve grown a bed of 300 Purple Prince tulips direct from Holland one year, yet they only had the vitality for two full bloom cycles. I think tulips are very tricky and almost best thought of as an annual.
beautiful, beautiful! I had no idea you could cut tulips so early. Hope your technique works well Julie. You must be getting excited (and busy) in preparation for the wedding.
This Chato tulips are so beautiful! As usual, your vases are very elegant, Julie and yes, you are perfectly right, the cherry in blossom is a shining star.
Stunning! 🙂
Beautiful!
I love the pink color in your cherry blossoms. Very soft but very cheerful.
The cherry blossom is absolutely stunning Julie! I love it! Thanks for sharing your beautiful photos. 🙂
And sometimes you don’t need to dither, like you and your gorgeous blowsy cherry blossom and the equally gorgeous tulips. I guessed it was a Sarah Raven tulip as soon as I saw it!! The discussion about tulip stems is most interesting and I shall observe mine more closely now. Just a thought – could the combination of the perceived wisdom of planting really deeply and the milder UK winters make a difference, I wonder? I so look forward to seeing your wedding flowers…
You disappeared out of my reader again Julie, so I will have to refollow you. I thought that perhaps you were too busy to post. Anyway I love your Prunus, it looks very like ‘Accolade’. And that tulip is definitely on my list for next year.
Gorgeous and good luck with the wedding flowers and can’t wait to see them on your next post.
stunning images of blossom. I am currently training in a cut flower garden and the owner has the very same problem of when to cut, but very best wishes for a successful wedding. On the topic of short stemmed tulips, she also has this problem and has been pulling them rather than cutting them. I don’t know whether this is technically good practice, but it does give a slightly longer stem.
I imagine you have been really busy with the wedding flowers, but just to say I sent an email about collecting the book. Christina