The Shrub Queen: A Day at the Beach.
I usually conjure up my vases on Sunday morning as many things in South Florida can get wilted in the afternoon. This morning I was scratching my head as it didn’t seem to me much was going on in the garden.
As I was walking around the garden it occurred to me what a wonderful exercise in seeing putting a vase together every week is. (This is also a flashback to design school -looking and really seeing) First, I noticed the berries on the Firebush (Hamelia patens)
Then the fluffy seedheads on the mystery plant:
Whatever this is popped up in my garden a few years ago. I left it for the flowers or seedheads. Please let me know it you recognize it. I thought it was some sort of Amaranth, but don’t really know.
After finding the two base plants, I found the Red Shrimp Plants (Justicia brandegeana) and Beach Sunflowers (in yellow, Helianthus debilis) are still flowering and the thus far, oddly small Cactus Zinnias were added. Then I went around to my herb pots and snipped some Copper Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare “Purpurea”) to complete my arrangement. The flowers were placed in an vintage amber glass candlestick holder from Dansk, a favorite of my husband, repurposed for a vase on Monday.
Then it dawned on me, this was so easy it was like a day on the beach. So, I decided to go see how things were on Jensen Beach. If you are in a cold place I hope this warms your heart.
Amelia Grant
A native of Atlanta, Georgia and extraordinarily well seasoned Landscape Architect/Designer/Writer. I began bouncing around South Florida in the late 1980’s selecting and buying plants for Shopping Mall Interiors I had designed.
Eventually my college roommate landed in Hobe Sound and I came to visit and fell in love with the Treasure Coast. My husband was on the verge of retiring from the practice of Architecture. We came down. Then we bought a house near the Indian River and left the big city’s cold and the traffic far behind.
The blog began as an effort to fill what I considered a vacuum in good gardening information for the Treasure Coast. The Shrub Queen name is a nod to a long standing joke, my husband has called me this for years after one too many Architects asked me to “shrub something up”.
