Displaying a vase or jar of home-grown flowers on the table is one of life’s greatest joys. We asked Akaroa’s Julia Atkinson-Dunn for tips on how to prolong the experience.

When harvesting blooms, you are aiming for optimum potential vase life; length of stem and cut in a way that encourages your plant to keep flowering. In most situations, choosing blooms that have opened about a third to a half, with the remainder still in bud, will give you an advantage to lasting longer in a vase – this is particularly true for foxgloves, delphiniums and snapdragons.

Once you have chosen your flowering stem, slide your snips down to where it meets the main stem and make a clean cut. It’s in this little intersection that many flowering plants will be encouraged to generate new growth, equalling renewed display for your garden and another round of potentials for the vase.

As soon as you have picked, pop your bunch of stems promptly into a jug or sink of water to keep them happy – you could carry a bucket around the garden with you when harvesting – they love it right up to their necks, if possible. Some plants are sulky and give you a very short window after cutting before they will start to irretrievably wilt if not sunk into water quickly.

Before you set up your vase, whip through the stems and condition them ready for arranging by stripping and trimming off all leaves, branches or thorns that will sit below the waterline. Woody stems (like branches of blossom, hydrangeas and roses) are helped along by cutting twice: once across the stem on a 45-degree angle, then again, around 5 cm or more vertically ‘up’ the stem to split it open, allowing for greater surface area to hydrate from.

Other flowers (like poppies and hellebores) benefit from a quick sear in boiling water to help prevent them wilting in the vase. A 10-second dip of the bottom 5 cm of a stem before going straight into a vase of cold water can work well.

 

Top tips

As plants move through their seasonal life cycle, flowering stems seem to get shorter, so don’t stress, just make cuter posies.

It is often easier to use finer-nosed snips, or even scissors, as opposed to secateurs when picking, which are heavier and harder to be precise.

For roses, look to cut just above the node you see on the stem – this is where new growth will generate from.

It’s best to pick in the morning or evening – outside the heat of the day – to give your flowers the best chance of survival.

 

Julia Atkinson-Dunn is a woman of many talents – artist, author, gardener and now one half of the bustling Akaroa Butchery & Deli. akaroabutchery.nz