The Meaning of Flower Colors

Did you know there is an entire branch of psychology devoted entirely to colors and their meanings?  Is it any wonder, then, that people have long associated different flower colors with different meanings and in fact they were once used as part of a code to get across one's message in a socially acceptable and discreet way.  Overall, the gift of flowers says, "I love you", "I appreciate you" or "I care how you feel", but there are many other messages that have traditionally been conveyed by the choice of flower colors.

Red is known as the color of passion, romance and love.  You certainly don't want to send red flowers, particularly roses to the wrong person or you could be sending a message you don't want to send.  If you aren't in love, don't send red roses choose pink instead.  Pink is the color of fun and love.  You can send pink flowers to a romantic interest or even to a family member or secretary without it being thought of as a romantic gesture.  Yellow is also a popular color choice because it symbolizes friendship and is a bright cheerful color that can put a smile on almost anyone's face.  Yellow is a great choice for a sick friend or anyone who needs a little pick-me-up.

Deeper colors can come across as sexy and mysterious.  The blood red rose or black rose are prime examples of this.  If you give or receive this color flower, seduction is in the air.  White flowers, in contrast, stand for purity and eternity and make a great choice for weddings and funerals alike.  A white flower could also be a sign of sincerity and pure intentions.  You might want to consider sending orange flowers to express happiness or joy such as for the birth of a child or to announce a trip or other exciting adventure.

While people have traditionally recognized the meaning of flower colors to symbolize a particular message or emotion, you should not feel restrained by this.  Today it is perfectly acceptable to choose flowers just because you like the way they look and the message you intend can clearly be written and included on the card that accompanies the flowers.  While you might still want to send red roses with caution, other flowers can safely be given to a variety of people for a variety of occasions and the meaning of flower colors will not be as important as the thoughtfulness of your gift.

Growing scented roses for summer

The eglantine roses I planted in the blossom wood are doing exactly what I wanted them to, and I am feeling rather good about it. They have had two summers to get their feet in and rise above the meadow grass, and with a little bulk their aromatic foliage is beginning to catch the breeze. I planted them on the windward side of the path quite deliberately so that their perfume would form an invisible tunnel of deliciousness. After dew or a shower of rain, you can walk into their influence, a delicate cloud that smells of green apples and early summer.

Rosa eglanteria – or the sweet briar, as it's otherwise known – was a component of Titania's bower in A Midsummer Night's Dream. You might at first confuse it with native dog rose, or Rosa canina. Though it will be easily as rangy when it's established, the added attraction of the essential oils in the foliage make it the superior plant in my book.

As soon as the foliage breaks in the spring it is performing, and though the perfume dims in the late summer as the foliage ages, by then its hips are providing for you.

The arching sprays of dog roses are at their most wonderful just now with bud in reserve and a smattering of flowers tumbling over the branches. Dog roses have a delightful simplicity which far outweighs their fleeting fortnight of flower, and their easy demeanour more than compensates for the fact that they are once-blooming. You simply have to think of them as you might a blossom tree and delight in their ability to root you in the moment.

They start early with the "Canary Bird", which pops bright at the start of May. I admit to never having grown it, favouring the slightly later Rosa x cantabrigiensis, which grows bigger in all directions, eventually to about 10ft. I use it on the margins of larger gardens to feather the way from ornamental garden to something wilder. The primrose yellow flowers cover the bush at cow parsley time, and they make excellent companions. The foliage is fine and ferny, and in autumn the branches are scattered with tiny dark-red hips. If I have the room, I'll team it with "Frühlingsgold" for the change in scale in the flowers. Soft in tone, its flowers age fast from gold to primrose. There is a humble quality about the shrub, and although you would never call it a dog rose, the ephemeral nature of the flowers retains a freshness.

At a more accommodating scale are the Scotch briar roses. You find Rosa spinosissima growing in coastal sand dunes, arching to 3ft or so and running into thickety colonies. On the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, it grows with bloody cranesbill and sea holly, the single creamy flowers studding branches massed with little thorns. The foliage is dark and ferny and, come the autumn, almost-black hips weight the branches. Grow it among silvery groundcovers and low lavenders to show these to best effect.

Resistant to sea breezes, never really troubled by pests or diseases, Scotch briars are toughies. "Dunwich Rose" is a handsome selection from Suffolk and perhaps the most floriferous, with lemon-yellow flowers. It will adapt to a range of soils. I also love "Single Cherry", with its pale reverse and fruity red flowers. Though not strictly a dog rose, "Stanwell Perpetual" is one of the few Scotch briars to repeat-flower. It is palest shell pink and semi-double, and I love its arching growth and resilience. "Double White" will grow a little bigger than most Scotch briars, forming a thicket of up to 5ft and making a fine wind break if you need it. Each little flower, not much more than an inch across, is perfectly formed, like a doll's house rose, and perfect in a sprig for a summer lapel. I plan to use it on the banks around my vegetable garden to give me some shelter from the westerlies. Planted deep, so that the root graft is covered, it will quickly sucker and run to form a thicket of delightfulness.

Insects find lifeline in the busiest of busy lizzies

Pop, pip, pop ... seedheads of Himalayan balsam are bursting in tiny explosions. The flower heads are chandeliers of red-green, glassy, pendants, which open into lipped, lobed, bulbous flowers like orchids from cerise to shell pink.

Each of these has a bee’s backside sticking out of it. When they’re pollinated and the petals crinkle and fall, the seedhead grenades are formed.

The first of these popped in Britain in 1839 when the plant was grown in gardens from seed collected in the Himalayas. Since then Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera), the busiest of busy lizzies, has colonised stream banks, river valleys and damp patches all over the country.

Sometimes this spread has been due to natural encroachment – the seeds can land seven metres away and are viable for two years. Sometimes it’s been caused by enthusiasts casting seeds.

This balsam has infiltrated popular culture under the names of policeman’s helmet, ornamental jewelweed, poor man’s orchid, stinky-pops, kiss-me-on-the-mountain, bee bums and Mr Noisy’s exploding plant. Yet it splits opinion.

Some – including the government – find it a nightmare weed, an alien invader with gaudy flowers and a noxious pong, a thug bullying native plants and swamping habitats. Because it is shade tolerant it dominates other plants and, being an annual, exposes stream banks to erosion when it dies back in winter. This brings out armies of volunteers, and sometimes the army, on balsam bashing operations.

Others appreciate its exotic splash of colour and scent and the nectar it provides, not only in its flowers but from glands under the leaf stalks. A vast number of insects, particularly bumblebees at the moment, feed on it when there are few other flowers about, and will do so until later in autumn when the frosts hit.

Where the climate gets warmer and wetter, plants like Himalayan balsam will thrive. Perhaps the tide of opinion is becoming more accepting of the colonists. The Himalayan balsam patch I’m watching is certainly growing rapidly and is full of life, unlike the thickets of buddleia, which are also garden escapes and have been around long enough to be prized as butterfly plants but are largely as empty as abandoned nightclubs this year. Hopefully Mr Noisy’s “outlaw” will give sanctuary to insects being wiped out in the rest of the landscape.

A last flare of summer among the rocks

Today the sky is washed-out blue silk with pearl-grey ribbons trailing. The scent of dying leaves mingles with honeysuckle as the sun rises; buttery light spreads over patchwork fields, illuminating snapshot moments: a circle of cows, a squabble of hens, donkeys and even alpacas the colour of mushroom caps and conkers.

I am walking the lower slopes of Bosley Cloud – the name is derived from the Old English clud, meaning a rock; it lies on the Cheshire-Staffordshire border near Congleton, a few miles from the Peak District national park. Notices nailed to trees tell of sheepdog trials. At the farm there are logs, small hay bales and free-range eggs for sale. The plaintive song of a robin comes from the allotment, I hear it among the neat rows of beans, peas and shaggy-headed dahlias, but can’t see it. Above, there is the twittering babble of swallows gathering on telegraph wires. Hedgerows glisten with silvery spiders’ webs, scarlet rosehips and clots of blackberries. Somewhere in the distance a gun goes off and a flock of wood pigeons take flight.

Black sheep stare vacuously over a dry stone wall. There are sprawls of purple heather and outcrops of rock, as I scramble along the narrow track. At the top, I spot a cherry-red helmet and lime-green shoes. “Climb when ready!” the woman calls to her partner below, a wiry man clipped into an orange and black striped rope. Tinny jingling like cowbells and glimmers of silver: nuts, cams and hexes. I admire their daring but am content to simply enjoy the stunning view over the Cheshire plain. Until I glimpse tiny twists of lilac-blue tissue catching on grasses; when I pay close attention I see they are harebells.

As folklore has it, witches used juices squeezed from the flowers to turn themselves into hares; the Victorians believed fairies slept in the bells. Small clumps of frail flowers flickering on wire-thin stems, a last flare of life: bittersweet, signalling the departure of summer and the arrival of autumn.

Forty Years on the Welsh Bird Islands, the 2015 memorial lecture in honour of the late Country diarist William Condry, will be given in Machynlleth on 3 October by Professor Tim Birkhead. More details at thecondrylecture.co.uk

Gardens: what to do this week

Visit this

If you want to learn how to use grasses successfully, Knoll Gardens is the place to visit. Neil Lucas’s four-acre plot near Wimborne in Dorset tests new varieties and showcases brilliant plant combinations. Take a notebook.

Rosa ‘Pink Fire’: flowers all summer long

Groom this

Gardeners tend to ignore houseplants over summer because they’re too busy outside, but now is the moment to give indoor plants some love. Use a damp cloth gently to wipe clean thick, shiny leaves such as palms, dracaenas and yuccas; a soft brush will remove dust from cacti, succulents and hairy-leaved plants. Trim off dead leaves and mulch the pots with gravel, pebbles or slate chips.

Plant this

Gone are the days of stiff, formal rose gardens. Instead, roses muck in with other plants in modern gardens. It looks better and it’s easier to keep roses disease-free that way, too. Floribunda rose ‘Pink Fire’ will produce flowers all summer long. Height and spread: 90cm x 75cm. Order one 3.5-litre potted plant for £14.99 or two for £24.99 (prices include free p&p). To order, all 0330 333 6856, quoting ref GU363, or go to our Readers’ offers page. Dispatched September to October.

Alys Fowler: a little neglect goes a long way in a garden

I don’t mean to neglect you, I tell the garden, but I have. I hurriedly try to squeeze in a few more lettuces that have spent too long in modules. I ignore the fact that the young chard already has blisters of leaf miner and pretend not to notice that the slugs have razed nearly a whole tray of beans.

Plantago major ‘Rosularis’ will self-seed readily. Photograph: Heather Edwards/GAP

The garden sighs a little, flops about like a bored teenager and offers up a strawberry or two. I sit down on the bench and wonder if there’s any point unpicking this mess. It is already too late to stake; I could cut back, but the bees are enjoying the riot. Instead, I eat more strawberries and hunt around for a raspberry or two.

I don’t feel bad for the garden. It’s having fun sowing what it likes, where it pleases. Parsnips appear in strange places and it’s filled all the gaps with opium poppies and other oddities. Plantago major ‘Rubrifolia’ is coming up all over the place. This plant deserves more recognition. It’s a dark purple-leaved form of the greater plantain, P. major, a wild thing of disturbed places, path edges, tracks, gateways and cultivated grounds. It’s one of those plants that knows exactly where to seed itself – never where you might imagine, but once you see it there, resplendent with its large leaves, you think, “How clever.”

In a similar vein is P. major ‘Rosularis’, which has been in cultivation since medieval times. Its strange double flowers are often described as rose-like. I think a rose might be angered by this description: they are large and green and very odd, though in a good way. It reaches 15cm or so and is happy in shade or sun, self-seeding readily. It loves gravel paths and well-drained margins, though if you give it lush conditions it will rise to the challenge in a luxurious manner. P. major ‘Frills’ is a curly, parsley-like version that looks best in a pot, where you can admire its strangeness up close, but is lost among other things in a border.

If you can’t get hold of a plant, you can sow these varieties at any time of year, though spring is fastest and the majority of the seed will wait till then. Seed germinates best in very free-draining compost, so add up to 50% grit if necessary.

All these plantains are edible, but you’d have to be very hungry to want to eat them. The young leaves are best when very small, and can be used as a pot herb (aka a leafy green substitute).

However, there is one plantain that is worth eating. P. coronopus, buckshorn plantain, is still widely grown in Italy as a green, where it is known as erba stella. The leaves work wonderfully in salads when picked young and crunchy, or lightly steamed as a vehicle for butter. It’s a tough nut, growing in heavily compacted ground, and doesn’t even mind being trampled on. It’s a perfect edge plant for the vegetable garden, where it will make an excellent frill to any bed.

Alys Fowler: tough plants for windy plots

Japanese anemones are pretty undefeatable even in dry, shady soil. Photograph: Alamy

I am one of those driven mad by too much wind. My thoughts become hounded, I quickly become irritable. I can’t adapt but, with time, there are plenty of plants that will.

Early on in a plant’s life, high winds loosen roots, break and twist fragile stems and scorch foliage as the plant battles to keep moisture levels up. For tender young plants, some sort of barrier until they get settled is important in exposed situations.

Plants have adapted in all sorts of ways to life in the turbulent zone: bananas have leaves like sails, till they rip themselves to shreds so as not to blow over; trees send roots in the opposite direction to the prevailing wind to anchor in; grasses bend and alpines cling. The trick is to choose the right lot, so your whole garden sways appropriately. Lush, quick growth from too much nitrogen is always weak, so treating your perennials a little mean will, in the end, result in stronger growth. For borderline floppers, staking early is everything. If you feel windswept, they will, too, so don’t gamble – stake.

The best shelter is a layer of trees and shrubs staggered to filter the wind. Hawthorn makes resilient hedging, while Scots pines, willows, sycamores and poplars are flexible enough for the toughest gales. If you don’t have space for them, windbreak material or wattle fencing will do.

The back of the border should be made up of hardy soldiers to shelter the rest. Eupatoriums are among the toughest; they have large umbels of flowers in late summer – and the butterflies adore them. Eupatorium purpureum subsp maculatum or Joe-pye weed is an American species with some lovely cultivars, including the compact ‘Purple Bush’. I’ve seen it grown without support in some tough places, but if in doubt, stake. It likes organic matter around its feet, so mulch in spring.

Vernonia also survives extremes and makes a brilliant framework. It’s a classic prairie plant, so suits being with eupatorium and robust grasses such as miscanthus. Vernonia fasciculata or ironweed has short, sturdy stems, making it very tough. Sea holly (eryngium species) is worth a look, particularly for more free-draining scree, gravel and coastal gardens. Japanese anemones are pretty undefeatable, even in dry, shady soil, particularly if – you’ve guessed it – you stake them.

Short, thick-stemmed alliums such as A. angulosum are perfect near the front of a border, and veronicas rarely need staking. V. ‘Shirley Blue’ makes undulating mounds for the front of the border and trailing V. umbrosa ‘Georgia Blue’ will drape over walls or border edges.

I like the white forms of the everlasting pea (Lathyrus latifolius): this will grow through shrubs or tumble down a windswept bank. Low-growing ground-cover geraniums, if given something to get their roots into, will take any aspect. G. macrorrhizum ‘Ingwersen’s Variety’ is good for shade and evergreen to boot.

The flowers that bloom on roadside verges

Spiked rampion – as featured in Grimm's fairytale Rapunzel, and now appearing on Britain's roadsides. Photograph: blickwinkel / Alamy/Alamy

Big splashes of colour are carpeting the verges of many country roads. Foaming white sprays of cow parsley seem to be almost everywhere, sometimes towered over by their big cousin, the giant hogweed. The brilliant white ox-eye daisy, red campion, yellow buttercup and blue harebell are just some of the many other flowers now blooming on the verges. These flowers usually pass us by in a blur, but roadside verges are becoming increasingly important refuges for wild plants, especially if left to grow. And as traffic speeds past, it carries the seeds in the slipstream and helps spread the plants far and wide.

In fact, two-thirds of all British wildflower species occur somewhere on roadside verges, including rarities such as the spiked rampion, with its unusual creamy-white spikes. According to the Grimm's fairytale Rapunzel, spiked rampion was the stolen plant in the story, and on the continent it is known as white Rapunzel.

Some roadside plants originally came from the coast, where they feed on salty air and saltwater. But now these salt-tolerant plants can feed on the salt sprayed on roads during winter. One such plant is the wild carrot, originally found on coastal clifftops. And Danish scurvy-grass is also becoming common on busy roads – it is hard to believe that a century ago this plant was only found on coastal salt marshes. The charity Plantlife has launched a Road Verge campaign to preserve verges and highlight their importance for wildflowers.

Flowers For Abundance

A friend of the author is son to be married, so obviously wedding plans and subtleties have been that talk for days. In the case of the bride to be, this moment of a wedding carries a meaning of extravagance, wonderment, and pride.
With those things being said, once you come to deciphering what symbols stand out most for you, this can play a great role in the wedding itself. Think of gorgeous fluffy peonies and how loud they are. A great expanse and high petal count speak of abundance and are most enchanting.They have the appeal of roses but the grandeur of the extravagant dresses from the 16th century fashion. They are interminably classic.















For a less fragrant counterpart, but equally impressive, we recommend hydrangeas, which have a phenomenal shape, almost globe-like. Rounded blossoms make for real eye catchers!
It does not matter if you are looking for a free flower delivery of wholesale flowers online to delivery to California or Tennessee, we have got you covered across the nation.

Alys Fowler: comfrey, pulmonaria and hairy-footed flower bees

I have a huge fondness for the hairy-footed flower bee. They hover around you as if they are checking you out: I like a moment where nature turns the table and stares back at you. And it’s hard not to love a bee that likes to stick out its tongue. When they are not doing this, they fly fast; they dart about, then hover, then go back to darting. The male bee emerges first in March; he is bright ginger with hairy feet and a blondish moustache. The females are almost entirely black. You often find them checking out pretty flowers, tongue out in preparation. They are very partial to the lungwort family.

The bees are on the wing from spring to early summer, by which point they build a single nest, laying their eggs in excavations, mud banks and soft mortar in walls. They are incredibly gentle: you’d have to squeeze one tight to get it to sting.
Any opportunity to please such a wonderful bee should be embraced. The obvious choice is to plant pulmonaria. P. ‘Blue Ensign’ with its tropical ocean-blue flowers borne about dark green foliage doesn’t mind shade, so will happily sit under shrubs as long as the soil stays moist. ‘Trevi Fountain’ is as good a blue; the leaves are flecked with silver spots and it flowers for as long as it can. Or if a more refined white is your thing, ‘Sissinghurst White’ is one of the first pulmonarias to flower, starting in March and ending in April. Red lungwort (P. rubra) is more coral pink than red; it repeat flowers into early summer. P. rubra, P. ‘Blue Ensign’ and ‘Trevi Fountain’ look lovely planted with the Japanese painted fern Athyrium niponicum var pictum ‘Ursula’s Red’, which has reddish-bronze growth.
I also have a fondness for comfreys, though only if you have space to let them roam, as they are rather rambunctious. I use dwarf comfrey (Symphytum ibericum) under my fruit trees. It has rusted-red flower buds that open to white flowers. These appear before a new flush of leaves (it’s not evergreen in very cold spots). It is easy enough to keep under control; just hack away at it. The spoils can be rotted down to feed plants.
S. azureum is invasive, but lovely. It has grey-blue green leaves and pale azure flowers, and will run away with your garden if you let it. S. tuberosum is much easier to control and has soft lemon yellow flowers. Like dwarf comfrey, it doesn’t mind shade or poor soil.
If you buy any of these plants now, while in flower, water regularly until you see new signs of growth. And make sure they are pesticide-free, otherwise it’s not much of a treat for the bees.

All bets are off for forecasters in the unpredictable month of March

“March: many weathers”. When it came to forecasting the weather for this month, our ancestors certainly knew how to hedge their bets.
Perhaps they had a point. For March can be one of the most variable and unpredictable months of the whole year, weatherwise.
We can experience freezing conditions (as in 1962, 1963 and in the very cold March of 2013), or warm, spring-like weather, as we saw in 2014, when the contrast with 12 months earlier could hardly have been greater.
We know to expect March winds – especially at the beginning of the month – for as the old saying goes: “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb”.
But frost and fog are also frequent, as are regular falls of snow, especially in northern Britain.
Our ancestors welcomed thunder in March, as it is supposed to lead to a fruitful harvest. At least that’s the opinion of the Germans.
However, the French and Portuguese beg to differ, suggesting that thunder will only bring sorrow for the rest of the year. One saying is especially relevant now that we are experiencing earlier and earlier springs.
“March flowers make no summer bowers” points out that the earlier the flowering season, the fewer flowers will appear later in the summer.
In fact the two are not necessarily connected, as what happens between now and July or August will have a far greater effect than the weather of this particular month.

Spring flowers reveal their true selves in extreme close-up – in pictures

Flowers are one of the great joys of spring, but viewing them under a scanning electron microscope uncovers a surreal, alien beauty. These images were created by the award-winning German microscopy team Eye of Science, comprising photographer Oliver Meckes and biologist Nicole Ottawa

• 

  A primula petal

A rapeseed flower petal

The stamens of a hibiscus flower

Four grains of lilac pollen

 

A valerian flower

The stigma of an arnica flower

The anther of a small-leaved lime flower

A rapeseed flower petal

 

Pollen grains (grey) on the stigma (yellow) of an arnica flower

The beauty of the blossom

It's a big tree, but you barely notice it. All winter, you take it for granted. Then spring comes, and the tree is covered in dark pink cherry blossom. Ignore me now, it seems to say. Overlook this, if you can. It fills the tiny garden in which it is growing, as dominant as it is delicate.
Cherry trees are the conceptual artists of the botanical world. Christo wrapped the Pont Neuf in gold fabric. Eliasson installed a convincing artificial sun in the Tate Modern's turbine hall. The effect of a cherry tree in sudden and abundant bloom is similarly arresting. Overnight, the drabbest suburban streets are transformed by these magnificent flowering trees, which are magically at odds with their setting, and so beautiful as to be almost absurd. No wonder the Japanese celebrate them, hold picnics beneath their branches and forecast the arrival of the blossom, like weather, as waves of pink and white flowers progress northwards through the country.
There is beauty in a single blossom, a lone tree, or in a row of trees – a cherry orchard. Their effect and aesthetic can vary depending on the colour of the blossom – from white through to deepest pink – and on the shape of the tree, with the weeping cherry being particularly lovely. For all its famous delicacy, there can be something robust about the sheer depth and quantity of blossom, the weight and abundance of flowers.
And at the heart of it all is transience. It will last a week, this spectacle, no more than that. The gutters on the streets will be full of pink petals and the branches will be bare again. The petals will decay and the trees themselves will become unremarkable and will once more be taken for granted. And the trees themselves will no longer be so evident to us. All things must pass. Enjoy it while it lasts.