Making a Lily-of-the-Valley and Tulip Nosegay in Season

Hi there!  Is all well with you?  I could not let Lily-of-the-Valley season go by without making a floral creation of some kind.  The fact that I have an overabundance of Lily-of-the-Valley in my yard has helped with that decision. The other day I perused the yard and decided to make a nosegay bouquet using the LOTV in the garden.

I will tell you a very quick story from my childhood to give you another reason why I love Lily-of-the-Valley, and not just for its beauty.  When I was a young girl, my best friend was Debbie.  Debbie lived right next door, and my family was very close with her family.  Debbie was an outgoing person and had many friends.  She happened to have a friend who was not in my circle of friends.  I can't remember the friend's name, but I know her mom was Mrs. Walker who owned a floral design business at her home.  (Perhaps, I got the idea of starting my own floral business from Mrs. Walker.  That just occurred to me!)  One day Debbie offhandedly mentioned to Mrs. Walker that her mother loved lily-of-the-valley flowers.  You have to understand the Walker family did not live in our neighborhood and the friendship was fairly casual but, I remember the day when Mrs. Walker and her daughter (Wendy!  I just remembered her name!) arrived in their car on our street. All of the kids playing outside, including me, were curious as to why they were there unannounced.  Wendy and Mrs. Walker emerged from their car with a huge bouquet of lily-of-the-valley for Debbie's mom.  Mrs. Walker had picked the flowers from her garden. At that time in my young life, I thought that was one of the nicest things I had ever witnessed.  So now every year when Lily-of-the-Valley appears, even with its invasive nature, I am happy and I think of that wonderful act of kindness and of Mrs. Walker and the lovely shop she owned on her small Cape Cod property.  I can't help but love this flower and the memory it brings back to me.

Moving on with my nosegay story, I decided to add tulips to the bouquet because I didn't want to totally deplete my garden of  LOTV blooms.  I have since learned that it often takes 200 to 250 stems of Lily-of-the-Valley to make a bridal bouquet.   

I think I might try making a larger all LOTV bouquet next year.  It would be lots of fun and I would learn something in the process.

The other thing I learned from years past is that cut lilies-of-the-valley do not last all that long even in a vase. You need to enjoy them quickly.  In fact, the planted flower only lasts a week or so in the ground, which is a bummer.  This is why when, as a florist, you order Lily-of-the-Valley flowers to make a bouquet, they come to you in a wrapped bag.  The bag contains a LOTV plant with the roots still attached. No wonder Lily-of-the-Valley bouquets are in great demand and are expensive to make.  The flowers are very special.

Just a little florist info for those of you out there who are interested :).

Making a bouquet with Lily-of-the-Valley is a bit tedious. You need to cut many, many stems and then separate the blossom from the leaves. This may be why I resolved to make a 

nosegay instead of a full-size bouquet.  I do happen to love nosegays, however.  I think they are so 

dainty and diminutive.  I might have chosen to make one anyway.

For every blossom stem you cut you also get a stalk of a large leaf along

with a shorter leaf.  I am learning you need maybe 5 blossom stems to every

 one leaf stem.  I think my bouquet is a little heavy on the greens.  I will use less leaves

next time.  Live and learn.

One reason that I love nosegays so much is that when you are done

assembling them, they look perfect in a small vase and can be put

anywhere in the house...or you can give them to a friend as a handheld bouquet.  

Not many people receive such a unique gift that often.

And, as I said, they can fit anywhere.  Right now, the nosegay is in a small

vase sitting on my kitchen table.

As I also said, lily-of-the-valley flowers do not last long, a day or two or three, if

you are really lucky.  That is why I didn’t want to let the season pass me by. 

  

Thank you for dropping by!

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