One Hundred years ago , flowers were a luxury token . Aside from a smutty bay wreath lei for a funeral , or simple bouquets for a wedding , flowers rarely get into the home plate of the work category . What we screw of today from gardening Good Book and documentation , come from a unlike lifestyle , that of the inner – for unless was a gardener or a caretaker , a love of flower , apprize their knockout as well as that of nature was a practice of the single madam – the wealthy – the upper class . Everyone else shovelled ember , carry lunch pails or cleaned houses .
Today we are rosy to experience in a dissimilar world ( I think ! ) . A world where orchid can be set up at every hardware depot next to inflatable snowman and reindeer limn in trailing disco prevail lights . Ahem . At risk of sound curmudgeonly and old fashioned – what the inferno happened to the Euphorbia pulcherrima ? The last clock time I take care , they were spray painted with glitter and as short as a silk decimal point . They might as well be fake . I think it ’s time to take Christmas plants into my own hands . Time to zoom back in time to a quieter and more realistic era , that of 1805 to 1900 .
I am coerce my own Lily of the Valley ’s this Christmas .
Why ? Well first of all , just try and find some Lily of the Valley pips ( perhaps While Flower Farm ? ) . They are impossible to find , yet I have a yard full of them . Second , you recognise I am a huge fan of forgotten flower – those lost jewel of Victoriana , the 18th and nineteenth Century when greenhouses and glasshouses first came into style , and thirdly – I am cheap . Yeah , at last I can hold it . I just ca n’t bring myself to pay off $ 75 dollars for 2 12 pips to plant in a jackpot or two . My dad said that he and my mom always used to force their own at the Holidays ( often start at Thanksgiving , even before that , potting up spot in mid - October , but as we are having a mild winter , enough so that I can still dig in the dirt , and because in the past , my mail order source delivered pip around Christmas , I see , why not sample my own .
We ’ve lost so many horticultural tradition that surround Christmas . There was a metre when white and crimson anemones , large white Christmas roses ( Hellebores ) , ruscus , Holly , Cyclamen , chrysanthemums , violets and Lily of the valley meant Christmas flowers . Even as late as one hundred years ago , Christmas flowers were quite dissimilar . In some kin photo record album from 1912 , many of the flowers which we associate with the Holidays season were still unheard of yet images of camelia corsages from local florists appeared on everyone .
Like Petticoats and waistcoats , fashions change with metre , and in the human race of flower , modification happens just as quickly , but throughout the eighteenth and 19th Century , most vacation plants and prime remained the same . Before poinsettia and silk flowers , there were only those plants found in ones own garden , or if you lived near a declamatory city where florists could be incur , those plants and flowers which could be forced into bloom during the shortest day of the year .
In 1900 most American and European home gardens had many greens and plants which could be dug for the Holidays . Of course there were impudent picked Holly greens , pine , spruce up cones for craft and other evergreen plant as well as midget woodland plant , especially those with crimson berry . In Europe , where Convallaria is native , the bloom was often a traditional New Years flower , often string on threads like pearls and used as a fashionable element for right ladies . But from the florists , there could be found many choices which had been so traditional for generation whether one had their own hot house for forcefulness in , or money to buy such luxuries from the local glasshouse . Christmas at the turn- of - the- last century meant table with Hellebores , blank Anemones , white chrysanthemums , and yes – white lily of the vale .
I spend so much time studying these lost trend in sometime books , but the idea that one can thrust ones own Lily of the Valley always captivated me . tight-laced Christmas bill often showed bunch of Lily of the Valley , often alongside former camellia , Hellebores and even illustrated along with berries and holly . How in just one hundred years could such trends become lost ? Such memories become forgotten ? I hypothesise the twentieth Century kill many traditions , and yet I doubt that today ’s Christmas icons of silk poinsettias or Rudolf will ever go away one hundred years from now , but I ca n’t help but find some lugubriousness that all silk or credit card poinsettia found at local craft memory are modeled not after unquestionable tall Christmas star but instead , are modelled ironically on those which have been drenched with growth hormone to be less than 14 inches grandiloquent , a more achievable size of it for shelving units in transport trucks and for people home . So pitiful that we are now reproduce genetically altered plants and oddly iconizing them . Future generations may never know what proper Point looks like .
In an effort to celebrate the gardening method acting of a 100 ago , I am going to force some of my own Lily of the Valley this year . Here in New England , we have been experiencing a mild December which has allowed me to dig a orotund clump ( matt ) of Convallaria ( Lily of the Valley ) up from the front garden . If you have Lily of the Valley out door int he garden , you must try and draw some this year . If the soil is still indulgent , see if you may cut into a few clustering up – they will drive easity on a cool windowsill .
Once dug , I cut the mat of root into deal - sized clod , rinsing them off in urine so that I could carefully see the pips or spike which will form the single leaf and flower stem . Those spike with degree tip will produce leaf , and those with a blunt end will produce a heyday prow . Forcing Convallaria in December is a custom which goes back at least 200 years , a pop household garden craft in Switzerland , Austria and Germany , where many New Years cards in the Victoria era prove Lily of the Valley flowers . In 1880 , the most democratic winter cut flower were odorous violet , force lilacs and Lily of the Valley , and even at the launching of the Titianic , Guest were care for with garlands of strung Lily of the Valley efflorescence and strings of Lilac flowers .
Share this:
Related
