BRIAN WAGNER
WE love summer season, with all the colours and fragrances that fill our gardens.
Many people ask us what they can do to to enjoy their roses inside the house as well and to make their cut roses last longer. By following a few simple tips your roses and flowers arrangements should look great in a vase for at least a week, sometime even more.
1) Cut your roses from plants that have been well watered the days before. Stressed plants will produce flowers that lose their petals more quickly.
2) As soon as you cut the roses – ideally before the sun’s first rays have struck the plant – put them into a full bucket of water. Leave them to soak up as much water as possible over six hours.
3) If you’re trying to make rosebuds open up more quickly, add one tablespoon of sugar into every litre of water.
4) Fill the water in your vase always to the very top, and then change the water daily. This will prevent bacteria building up in the water.
5) You may also be able to track down a professional preservative called Chrysal, to prevent bacteria building up in the water. It’s possible to source this online as well as from florists, and it’s well worth the trouble of buying a small container to keep on hand.
Would you like to make a beautiful bouquet or arrangement with your roses?
You can use some green filling from your garden, of the same colours of the roses’ leaves you are using, or much lighter to create a contrast – lambs ears, for example, look great in a bouquet.
Also herbs from your veggie garden will look really nice. Have you ever tried using rosemary, for example? Or dill?
We have a few videos on our website, with the talented Cindy Cross showing how to prepare beautiful flowers arrangements with roses.
And we also have a collection called Cut Flowers, listing all the rose varieties that are perfect if you like displaying your roses in a vase and enjoy their colours and fragrances at home as well on www.wagnersrosenursery.com.au
