Large Urn Arrangement Recipe

September

A September large Urn; waiting for the good bit with texture and movement.

I like a lot of my flowers undressed right now, waiting until the petals fall. Once they’ve developed their seed heads, I’m interested; which is a good job this month with autumn in the air. This is a large Urn giving structure and texture in a sophisticated palette of burgundy, rusts, greens and browns. Mottled and damaged leaves, ordinarily picked over, can now be embraced, telling a story of the summer and anchoring the arrangement in late September.

All ingredients, materials used and how, together with growing requirements, cutting and conditioning techniques below in this September Floral Recipe.

Skill - Intermediate

Grow to Arrange Time - 3 years +/-

Vase Life - Can be prepared days in advance.

Ingredients

Urn

• Sunflower seed heads

• Crocosmia seed heads

• Sweetcorn stems, leaves & flower seed heads

• Macleaya stems & seed heads

• Rudbeckia laciniata

• Persicaria microcephala ‘Red Dragon’

• Hydrangea Annabelle flower heads

• Miscanthus sinesis

• Molinia transparant

• Verbascum chaixii ‘Album’

• Continus ‘Grace’

• Physcocarpus opulifolius ‘Diablo’

Growing Methods & Conditioning

With most of the arrangement coming from mature shrubs and grasses, if you know, you know. This is a gardeners arrangement. And unless you have many of these plants, you won’t be repeating this often since the plants don’t reproduce in the same way that salvias and dahlias do at this time of the year. The rusty mottled stems are almost priceless so this is a highly considered and treasured arrangement for the most important occasions. Or simply just because, which is how I felt when I was moved to cut and combine these together, on a hot sunny afternoon at the end of the summer.

You can use almost anything that has a seed head and / or texture, look at your plants a little differently. They haven’t gone over, they are mature and stately. Don’t strip whole shrubs and plants though, just take a few stems, cutting deep into the plant. If you can’t see you have been, then good job. Leave the shape of the plant for a winter silhouette, frosty morning, food and shelter for birds and insects.

1. Annuals

   Sunflowers and sweetcorn are half hardy, sown in early April in individual 8cm pots of multipurpose peat free compost. Just one seed per pot pushed a knuckles depth and germinated in a frost free place, a porch, conservatory, windowsill or greenhouse. If you don’t have these, sow in mid May directly into the soil. Give plants plenty of room with about 12” at least between plants. Sweetcorn likes to grow in a matrix as they need to be able to pollinate each other. I grow sunflowers like this too. You can grow nasturtiums or even better, french or runner beans below the plants and use the stems as support.

   Harvest the sunflowers and sweetcorn throughout the summer. Cut seedheads off the plants to dry or arrange with as you wish. For this arrangement I stripped the sunflower leaves off but used the sweetcorn thick strap like ones for weight.