For a brief span of 4 days, I worked with cut flowers to make Valentine Day bouquets. The faithful underling who was delighted to once again join the professionals to learn a few tricks and navigate the pure joy of working with fresh flowers. In my span of nursery work I can also add that Valentine's Day on the other side, the working side, is completely new to me. Red roses rule the day, that color in roses represents love and romance. Yellow roses are for friendship, pink for joy - gratitude and grace, while white is for purity and innocence (maybe best for a child's bouquet). Even though men are the primary buyers (red, red, and red), there was 1 young man who was buying for a "real" gardener and forewarned that her bouquet had better not be red.
Boxed roses are popular and arrive with each stem in a water tube with instructions on how to build your own arrangement. The presentation is pretty spectacular.
I'm personally a fan of working with dusty miller or Jacobaea maritima (used to be Senecio cineraria), especially with soft pastels. The furry gray leaves are a staple for arrangements from Merrifield Gardens.
But when it was all said and done, the hundreds of red roses are sold out, then it's time to embrace something a little different - whew, what a relief!
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