Symbolism Of Flowers

Your Garden: White flowers offer beauty, symbolism

I hate white flowers," a fellow editor who worked hard on his home landscape once told me.

"They look like scraps of paper scattered around," he said.

That was about 30 years ago. I still think of the otherwise intelligent fellow as largely heathen.

White flowers are essential in gardens. And they are the only flowers in some of the world's most famous gardens, such as the White Garden at Sissinghurst Castle in England.

While white gardens are not known for their tidiness, they are known for their associations with romance, peace and elegance.

The color white, and white flowers especially, offer much symbolism. Some white flowers, such as roses, have had well defined meanings since the time of the Roman florists.

White roses can symbolize purity, innocence, silence, reverence, humility and wedded bliss.

White flowers in the landscape take on special qualities at dusk. Their luminescence makes them stand out.

If you have a deck and you entertain, white and light yellow flowers should be placed within a few yards of your guests' table. The flowers will shine in the night, lit only by whatever deck lighting you may use. This creates a certain elegance that can be attained no other way.

Some great white flowers include lilies, impatiens, the perennial and annual periwinkles, cleomes, roses in great variety, daylilies, petunias, begonias, angel trumpets, pearl bushes, spireas, viburnums, hydrangeas, water lilies, dwarf gladioli, magnolias, dogwoods, camellias, azaleas and other rhododendrons, fringe trees, white wisterias, gardenias, white redbuds and many others.

One of my favorite uses of white flowers is to lighten borders of strong colors. I used white impatiens last year in groupings of about 11 interspersed with groupings of the huge, electric orange impatiens Tangeglow along the outbound part of my circular driveway.

This year, I used dozens of white cleomes along that stretch and interspersed them with bright, deep red-purple impatiens and chocolate coleus, all grown from saved seeds.

Annuals are among the most persistent-blooming and useful white flowers.

The best performer for shade or part shade is the white impatiens. By selecting certain varieties, you can have tall or low white impatiens.

The best performer for full sun is the Madagascar periwinkle or vinca, as it is incorrectly called. It is botanically namedCatharantus roseus.

The Symbolism of Wedding Flowers

Gorgeous wedding flowers are the guarantee for a festive atmosphere. They meet the atmosphere of a wedding party with an extraordinary spell.

Today wedding flowers are mainly emphasizing the beauty of the bride. Previously, the choice of wedding flowers is of great importance, because with each flower should be something to be expressed. Let flowers speak.

She is the queen of wedding flowers and the flower of love. It flourished already in the Stone Age and the oldest finds that it has done so far, fossils, the footprints of rose petals are preferred. For the Romans, it was one of the highest luxury goods and feasts were of rose petals strewn. Guests were bathed with rose oil; rose rugs scattered and even swam in wine glasses petals. Cleopatra and roses have been revered for their meeting with the Anthony Rose carpet is over 30 cm thick. The white rose symbolizes purity, the red rose represents passion and desire wedding flowers.