In the Valentine bouquets this year I used lots of cuttings from a vine called Hardenbergia violacea (sometimes referred to as “Happy Wanderer”). I got so carried away with it that I kept running out; twice in the course of the weekend, I had to harvest some from my own garden at the crack of dawn before heading down to the store to make more bouquets.

I love arranging with vines… their sweetly twining form adds a big dose of romance to a bouquet, and so many of them are fragrant, which is a nice bonus. Some vines last longer than others when cut. Hardenbergia will give you a few days; jasmine even longer; clematis is very brief but gorgeous; and passiflora lasts a good long time in a vase.

Sometimes you’ve got to manhandle the vines a little bit to get them looking just right in an arrangement. Otherwise they’re likely to just droop over the lip of the vase. I use a few different techniques for this. When you’re cutting from a vine in your garden, carefully unwind its tendrils from your fence or trellis, whatever it’s climbing on. Then you can use the vine’s own naturally spiraling stem to attach it to another stem or branch (or even the handle of your vase, if you’re using a pitcher or loving cup)—just re-wind the curly tendril wherever you’re trying to hang it. Here’s a (slightly blurry) photo:

You can also just use a twist tie or a length of thin twine (gentle on the stems, unlike wire) to attach the stems, creating a naturally pleasing arc that mimics the way the vine would grow in a garden. If you cut the ends of the twine very short, it should just disappear in the arrangement.

Lots of fun! And then of course there are the vining succulents… I’m working with a couple of brides who are excited about having the “string of pearls” succulent in their bouquets. Can’t wait to share how that turns out!

Tillandsias, with their explosive little forms and gorgeous green tones, are great in bouquets. I’ve been playing around with ways to use them so they don’t get lost among the other plants. Here I decided on a deep dark begonia leaf for contrast; I love the way the chartreuse of the tilly really stands out against that dark leaf.

The technique for prepping the tillandsias is the same as for succulents; even simpler, actually. Just insert a length of thick-gauge wire into the root area of the plant and trim the wire to the appropriate length. You have to be a little gentle with the tiny tillandsias (like the one pictured above) so you don’t shear off any of its leaves, but basically it couldn’t be easier to give these air plants “stems.”

Last week, with the help of the fabulous Julie Benjamin of Little Lane Studios (moms, take note… you must see Little Lane), I decorated the Target Wine Cube booth at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. Using three earthenware cubes (to mimic the shape of the wine boxes), we created three tall, leggy arrangements for the shelf along the back of the booth, and on the table in the center we made a little landscape with live moss and some clusters of succulents nestled inside.

Most cut orchids come from Hawaii, but these deep bronze cymbidiums are grown in Salinas. We used some fun succulents, too, including the crasula featured here.

We wired some little succulent rosettes directly onto the magnolia branches to give the tall arrangements some more interest up high. I love how those turned out!

The silvery cerifera palm fans we used came from plants grown on our Southern California farms. And the moss is actually “live moss,” cut fresh from the forest. Moss like this is just so much more textured and lovely than dried decorative moss… in this photo you can really see all the little different shapes of moss mixed in. We sell it at the nursery; it’s gorgeous for potted plants if you keep it nice and moist.

We had so much fun with this project! Stay tuned for a fun how-to later this week.

Saul and I are on vacation this week, so we stopped at the farmers’ market Saturday on our way out of town, hoping to bring some flowers along to brighten up our rental cabin. I was so excited to find these anemones, one of my absolute favorite flowers. They’re from Cypress Flower Farm, a wonderful family-run flower grower in Half Moon Bay. I arranged them with some foliage from my garden (leucadendron Safari Sunset, and of course pieris, another one of my favorites for bouquets).

Okay, off to relax and enjoy these beauties. Have a great week!

Today I had the fun opportunity to play around with a mixed succulent palette in a bouquet. Don’t they just look good enough to eat? Like a candy shop.

A client wanted a long-lasting arrangement to display in her home while it’s being shown by her realtor. Succulents are a perfect alternative to traditional cut flowers when you want something that will stay fresh for a good long while. In my experiments I’ve found that echeveria and sedum varieties tend to be super-hardy (staying pretty for a few weeks, at least), while aeoniums, for example, wilt a bit sooner (but still last a lot longer than most cut flowers). So I stuck with echeveria and sedum for this bouquet, adding some trailing “string of bananas” to soften up the shape.

The pretty gray pumice I used to fill the vase disguises the succulents’ wire stems and also provides a bonus function: it acts almost like floral foam, holding the stems in place exactly where I want them.

While I secretly love (or not-so-secretly, I guess, since it’s going on my blog!) this gray and stormy weather, I do find myself a little color-starved. When the blue sky peeked out yesterday, I felt oddly giddy. So here’s a little colorful pick-me-up for all of you, from back in the fall… we installed this at a bakery with gorgeous slate gray walls.

Winter gets a pretty bad rap, doesn’t it? The stereotypical winter landscape is a blanket of barren white, but in California there’s still so much vibrant color to be found. Our occasional rains (more, please!) cause lush growth spurts and leave the gardens around town looking fresh and green. And some of our favorite proteaceous plants, of course, keep on putting out their showy pink blooms all winter long.

I’ve been finding some really fun color for our seasonal winter bouquets. Let’s take a look…

Aren’t those little baby pomegranates too adorable? I love the ones that are cracking open, showing the bright red seeds. And the golden color of their skins is just such a nice contrast to the echeveria’s sweet purple hue.

Viburnum is great for flower arranging, especially when it’s not fully in bloom; the clusters of pink and white buds (center of the bouquet above) are perfect for filling in holes with a little splash of color.

I’ve also been playing around with various eucalyptus that bloom around this time of year. To me, these are just so emblematic of San Francisco, right down to their distinctive fragrance, which really permeates certain neighborhoods. And the red and pink starburst-like flowers are so whimsical and fun.

I don’t know, maybe it’s the Irish in me, but I’m a little obsessed with heather. It lasts forever, it’s field-grown, and the bright jewel-tone purple strikes me as really festive and fresh. I love how it contrasts with the chartreuse leucadendron here. The silvery acacia was an afterthought—one of the trees in our nursery garden needed pruning, and I lucked out!—but I think it adds a great unexpected note of blue.

Pincushions are just coming into season, and I am soooo excited. Check out the crazy pink tips on this one: Leucospermum Guensii. Combined with the pink-edged echeveria… it’s like a carnival in there! Love it.

I can’t wait to see what else we can bring in as the season evolves and spring approaches. Later this week, I’ll have a sneak peek at some of our Valentine’s Day offerings, so stay tuned!

Succulents may not seem like the most likely cutting garden plant, but in fact they’re gorgeous in flower arrangements, and especially at the holidays. Those silvery greens and pinks are just perfect at this time of year. And of course, when you’re finished with your succulent cuttings, you can plant them right back in your garden and they’ll take root. A truly sustainable cut flower!

I’m going to teach you an incredibly simple technique to use when you want to incorporate succulents in your bouquets and centerpieces. If you want step-by-step video instructions, there’s a great tutorial here, created by L.A.-based florist Flower Duet. All you really need are a few basic floral supplies, available at craft stores, or of course at the Flower Market down at 6th and Brannan. (Floral Supply Syndicate is open to the public.) Your supplies:

• Thick-gauge floral wire (comes in 18″ lengths)
• Thinner paddle wire
• Floral tape

Of course you’ll also need some succulents of your choice. I used little 2-inch and 4-inch plants from the nursery, but you can just as easily take cuttings from your own garden. Here’s how to prepare them:

Gently remove all soil and the tiny, thread-like roots branching out from the central root. Keep this central root intact. Remove any dead leaves, then wash the plant by swirling it in a basin of clean water, and dab it dry.

Insert a length of thick-gauge wire directly into the plant’s central root, giving it a “stem.” If your succulent and its root are especially sturdy, you may be able to stop right here. As long as you tuck the wire in among other foliage and flowers, all you will see is the succulent rosette.

If your succulent or its root are a bit more flimsy, use a length of paddle wire to secure it. Fold the top third of a piece of paddle wire down over itself, making a loop. Align the loop with the plant’s central root and the thick-gauge wire. Then take the long end of the paddle wire and wind it around the loop, the root, and the thick-gauge wire, binding all three together. (This step is actually simple but hard to describe; check out the Flower Duet’s video tutorial for a demo.)

For a cleaner look, use floral tape to cover the root and wires. Pull the floral tape taut as you work so that it sticks to itself (and make sure it’s kept dry while you’re working).

Now you’re ready to place the succulents in your arrangement, just as you would any other flower. They’ll last a few weeks, at least, and of course you can just remove the wire and plant them in your garden when the other flowers are long gone. The rosettes of these echeveria varieties, with their muted color palette, are stunning mixed with seasonal foliage and some delicate local hydrangea. I just can’t get enough of them!

We were having a tough time deciding on the name for our new Cutting Garden item. It’s the holiday season and all, but “Holiday Bouquet” just brings to mind some kind of poinsettia explosion. So instead we went with the rather less catchy “December Bouquet.” It’s December. It’s a bouquet. There you have it.

I’ll be making some samples this Friday and posting photos above, but here’s a little something lovely as a stand-in:

Circa December of last year, this bouquet does include (gasp!) imported proteas, a variety I've never seen from local growers. Won't be using these this year, of course, but they sure are pretty, aren't they?

We’ll be doing weekly deliveries on Fridays all month long, so the December Bouquet is a perfect choice if you’re hosting a holiday party. If you’ve got questions or special requests, or if you’d like a few special arrangements for your event, just drop me a line at susie@floragrubb.com.

Finished the Thanksgiving centerpieces yesterday. Lots of fun! They’re tooling around the city on the delivery truck as we speak. I used lots of persimmons, my favorite proteas, a gorgeous chartreuse geranium leaf, some snowberries, and even a surprisingly blooming crabapple from the Central Valley (confused, no doubt, by our recent warm weather).

I’m too wiped out (and frankly too busy baking!) to write much more now, so I’ll have to leave you with some photos instead. We’ll have some lovely little bouquets in the store this weekend for our Thanksgiving open house (along with fresh pecan cookies, courtesy of me and my mom), so if you want to see some flowers in person, now’s your chance. Have a happy holiday!