Welcome to this weeks In A Vase On Monday, when I am linking up with Cathy from Rambling In The Garden to join in her challenge to find something from the garden to put into a vase every week.
This is quite a challenge this week as I am once again away from home. I have been spending a few days in a beautiful hotel in Lanzarote, catching some sun with my husband and eldest daughter who is starting her first grown up job later this week. I am surrounded by beautiful flowers like the lovely hibiscus below, but there is nothing here in a vase to share with you.
Fortunately I was in an organising mood last week and made a vase before we left home – just in case I had trouble this week.
My hydrangea arborescens “Annabelle’ is looking beautifully fresh at the moment so it was a perfect candidate for a vase. After chopping some heads off I arranged these blooms outside and took a few photos in the evening light.
The jug was then moved inside to its final position on the mantle in the dining room. You can see that I have included a few stems of Bells of Ireland to add a bit of green contrast to these delicate ivory blooms.
Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’ is a perfect flower for my dining room as it matches the blooms on my dining room curtains!
As a final thought, this hydrangea is a beautiful bloom to decorate a wedding gift with. If we have a wedding or anniversary to celebrate in August I will often wrap the gift in a sheet of white or ivory plain paper and cover the paper with a piece of lace. I will then add a small head of Annabelle to decorate the present. Sadly I have never taken a photo of this, so cannot share it with you, but I will make sure to capture this the next time I wrap a present this way!
In the garden Annabelle is a very easy plant. Cut back hard every spring she is soon full of these large but delicate flowers which are airy enough to survive a rain storm and do not drag the flower stems down too much. The flowers open in a shade of lime green, progress to white and then fade gently to brown. The brown heads will stand all winter until I have had enough of them in spring and cut everything down to about 12 inches from the ground. A quick feed with fish, blood & bone is all the attention the plant needs, apart from a good watering during dry hot periods.
I am flying home in the morning and will be back later this week with more photos of hydrangeas taken on my recent visit to Petersham Nurseries. In the meantime I must get ready for dinner! Thank you as ever to Cathy for hosting and I hope you will pop over to her blog to she what she and the others have made this week.