almost red white and blue natives

We had some peo­ple over to view the local fire­works yes­ter­day. To mark the occa­sion I threw together some of the bloom­ing natives from the gar­den for a pas­tel ren­di­tion of the red, white and blue theme of the day.

White was the easy color. Sev­eral white buck­wheats were bloom­ing, and I picked some stems of the flat-top buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum fas­ci­c­u­la­tum. Its broad, open umbels also look a bit like fireworks.

For red, the dark rose col­ors of San Miguel Island buck­wheat (Eri­o­gonum grande var. rub­sescens) pro­vided a rea­son­able stand-in. If I had some Del­phinium car­di­nale in the gar­den, it would have really pro­vided a bright scar­let kick. Maybe next year…

For blue, the pick­ings got pretty slim. The blue-violet whorls of Cleve­land sage (Salvia cleve­landii ‘Win­nifred Gilman’) were the clos­est I could come up with. As with the white buck­wheat, the struc­ture of the stems seemed a bit like fire­works, with whorls of lit­tle tubu­lar flow­ers explod­ing out from the stem.

The result was a lot less sub­tle than flo­ral fire­works, but I liked how it marked the occa­sion and cel­e­brated a South­ern Cal­i­for­nia sense of place.

Many of the peo­ple who showed up knew I was a plant nut, so two of the host­ess gifts were col­or­ful florist bou­quets. One of them marked the occa­sion by includ­ing red, white and blue flow­ers. But even florists with all their inter­na­tional resources some­times have prob­lems with the color blue. This florist’s solu­tion? Why not dye white flow­ers blue? The results don’t look much like any­thing in my Cal­i­for­nia gar­den so the gift flow­ers and the local posies weren’t inter­mixed, and the dif­fer­ent bou­quets have their own places around the house.

I hope you all had a great fourth!

July 05 2010 02:49 pm | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • •

9 Responses to “almost red white and blue natives”

  1. tina on 05 Jul 2010 at 4:45 pm #

    I really like that buck­wheat. Seems like I remem­ber a post you did on it before? It sure does make the per­fect white. Happy 4th to you too. Mine was relax­ing. Yeah me-I hate fire­works so it did not include them. Your get together must’ve been fun and dyed or not I love the blue rose.

  2. Jean on 05 Jul 2010 at 5:03 pm #

    I love your lit­tle bou­quet of natives. It’s charm­ing. I must admit that florist-dyed flow­ers in unnat­ural col­ors give me the creeps.

  3. Town Mouse on 05 Jul 2010 at 5:58 pm #

    Nice flower arrange­ment. That would have been good with some Triteleia mixed in, but even mine are at the end of their flow­er­ing time.

    Glad you had an enjoy­able celebration!

  4. Ramesh on 06 Jul 2010 at 10:30 am #

    Hi there, this is OT but I saw your post about using sheet steel for a gar­den retain­ing wall:

    http://www.soenyun.com/Blog/2008/07/20/beautiful-rust/#comments

    I’ve been want­ing to do some­thing sim­i­lar. What type of steel did you use? I see many dif­fer­ent types such as gal­va­nized, cold rolled, hot rolled, stain­less, etc., and I don’t know what to ask for.

  5. lostlandscape on 06 Jul 2010 at 12:32 pm #

    Tina, I did post before on var­i­ous buck­wheats, and con­cen­trated on Saint Catherine’s lace, yet another species. I’ve always enjoyed fire­works, but I also find them a lit­tle dis­turb­ing at the same time.

    Jean, thank you. I wanted to keep it casual and a lit­tle naive. I found myself han­dling the blue flow­ers at arm’s length, the same way I might han­dle some­thing that could cause me some harm. It’s an inter­est­ing stunt, mak­ing them blue, but I’m not sure I love it.

    TM, triteleia would have been a nice addi­tion for sure. I can’t believe I don’t have any in the gar­den. Maybe I can plan bet­ter for next year’s bouquets…

    Ramesh, I’ll plan on doing a fol­lowup post at some point, as my project was an exper­i­ment done with­out any instruc­tions. But to answer your ques­tion quickly, I used “mild steel,” and I believe it was hot rolled, though I may be mis­taken, in which case it would have been cold rolled. Either will weather to a sim­i­lar sur­face. Cold rolled is stronger, but cost­lier, I believe. Gal­va­nized will have a par­tic­u­lar look, as will stain­less; nei­ther of them will rust to the same patina that the mild steel will. Both gal­va­nized and stain­less will cor­rode over time, despite their sur­face treat­ments or chem­i­cal makeup. I used 11-gauge, which is fairly thick and heavy. One prob­lem I’m expe­ri­enc­ing is with cor­ro­sion from con­tact with soil. I’ve read of some peo­ple coat­ing the inside with fiber­glass or an asphalt mate­r­ial to repel water and to reduce con­tact with the ele­ments in the soil that will speed up cor­ro­sion. Avoid­ing ground con­tact on the exte­rior of the con­tainer would also lengthen the life of the struc­ture, but that would require lam­i­nat­ing an exist­ing wall with steel. One advan­tage of that would be the pos­si­bil­ity of using thin­ner steel. Good luck with your project!

  6. Jess on 06 Jul 2010 at 7:12 pm #

    What a great idea, and the bou­quet is lovely. Blue is so abun­dant in spring–Gilias, Triteleia, var­i­ous Phacelias–but hard to find by July. For red, I favor Silene lacini­ata, but you have to plant a lot because it’s any­thing but dense. There’s also Monardela macran­tha ‘Mar­ion Samp­son’ but it doesn’t have very long or sturdy stems for cut­ting. How about plant­ing a Galvezia and snip­ping off a few stems? Any­way, love the idea of cel­e­brat­ing your own par­tic­u­lar place on the 4th!

  7. ryan on 06 Jul 2010 at 10:47 pm #

    I used to look at florist’s bou­quets and think they were bet­ter than the wild­flow­ery ones I occa­sion­ally did, but now I don’t really think so. Start­ing to feel that way about gar­dens, too, that some of the really well designed ones aren’t any bet­ter than the less care­ful ones. Any­ways, nice bou­quet, bring­ing the gar­den inside.

  8. Donna on 08 Jun 2011 at 1:23 pm #

    I have a bride request­ing blue roses, I have heard they can be dyed but with just reg­u­lar frost­ing dye? Does it effect the longevity and how long before the color took? Thanks for hav­ing this, i’ve been look­ing everywhere!

  9. lostlandscape on 09 Jun 2011 at 7:16 am #

    Donna, I’ve never done it, but yes, it’s possible–and fairly easy–to dye roses blue. Start with white roses and an intense solu­tion of blue food col­or­ing (“intense” as in use an entire bot­tle of the col­or­ing). Google “dye­ing blue roses” and you’ll see sev­eral ways you can do this. Be sure to exper­i­ment to see which method gives you the results you want.

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