Spruce Up Your Home with Garden Flowers

I am summer’s biggest fan. Outdoor living, evening grilling and an endless supply of seasonal blooms. Throw in a frozen lemonade and a pair of strappy sandals and I’m the happiest girl in town. Summer is the perfect season to experiment with the plant materials from your yard and garden. This is your chance to bring the outdoors inside—for practically nothing!

Here are a few of my favorite plant materials to cut and bring inside.

1. Flowers (of course!)
Don’t be afraid to cut blooms from your yard. I nearly cry every time I see a bushel of peonies drooping after a rainstorm. Most of the time, your landscape won’t even miss a few cut blossoms and in many cases, your flower can benefit from thinning.

Mid-summer show-offs include: coreopsis, larkspur, delphinium, yarrow, roses, poppies (and their seed pods), iris, lupine, snapdragons, geraniums.

Try using them in mass, small vignette groupings, mixed or singly. Trusty me, you will smile every time you walk past them in your living space.

2. Foliage
Oh, the possibilities are endless. Even if you’re not a master gardener, it’s likely that your yard has hedges, bushes, grasses, and branches. These can be just as showy and impressive as flowers.

Mid-summer show-offs include: privet, euonymous, dusty miller, ivy, Japanese maples, cotoneaster, smoke bush and tall grasses of any variety.

Use leafed out branches for height and drama. Shorter stemmed shrubbery is excellent in wreaths, topiaries and as a base to add fresh florals.

3. Succulents
The popularity of these dry climate lovers continues to impress. They vary so much in size, variety and color that they can make an impression mixed or standing alone.

Try using succulents in very contemporary containers—I love shiny black glass. The contrast in style, texture and color allows the succulents to shine. Dig up a section of those hens and chicks!

4. Edibles
This is an area of the garden that we generally do bring inside—but for dinner, not display. The truth is that your vegetable/herb garden is full of beautiful colors, textures, and fragrances.

Mid-summer vegetable garden LOVING: lavender, rosemary, sage, mint, chard, kale, rhubarb (stems and foliage), fruit tree branches, beet tops, parsley.

Try massing extra herbs in one mixed bouquet—the fragrance alone with change your life! Use blossoms from those plants that go to seed. Rhubarb stems—both red and green are gorgeous and the foliage dramatic. Immerse extra or overgrown vegetables in water or fill a large glass cylinder with them for a dinner party.