Creating Art with Wildflowers in Vancouver
Here, Marlene has assembled a brilliant combination of
,
,
(silene),
and others—in her entryway planting box. By combining her favorite annuals, she creates "mini-meadows" in pots, planters and window boxes--all beautiful.One of our favorite customers, Marlene Highet, from Vancouver, BC, Canada, has sent us photos over a period of years...always beautiful ones of her wildflowers grown in containers.
She lives in a townhouse near downtown Vancouver, and has soil-filled wooden planting boxes near her doorway and also along the edges of a rooftop deck with a great view of the city’s skyline of skyscrapers. In both places, she plants wildflower seed each spring. She writes that she plants the seeds close together to get rich bloom, and the photos always explain it all. She says she loves the variety of using seed mixes, since as one species wanes, another steps up into full bloom for a rainbow she enjoys right into fall. She simply chooses her favorite short annuals, mixes the seed, and plants the containers.
Marlene Highet created this beautiful Thank You card with pressed flowers she grew from our wildflower seeds, and then sent it to our staff with a lovely note inside. (See right.) Pressing flowers is one of the great advantages of wildflower gardening. With wildflowers, you always have blooms in various stages--buds, wide open, etc. And you always have plenty of flowers to pick and press, without damaging the outdoor display.When we first featured her photos on our website, she sent a spectacular Thank You card to the American Meadows staff. The photo shows a scan of the card’s cover. Marlene has obviously become an expert at making pressed flower pictures! All these blooms were pressed from flowers grown from our seed. Inside the card she wrote:
Dear AmericanMeadows.com:
I created this card especially for you with wildflowers grown over the years in my planter boxes with your seeds. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy my wildflowers!
Sincerely, Marlene Highet
It’s one of the finest thank you’s we’ve ever received! And we’d like to say Thank You to such a fine friend and expert wildgardener!
….The Staff