Nature may not be blooming in the garden quite yet, but there’s nothing to stop you inviting it into the warmth of you home! Fresh flowers are a great way to cheer up the gloom, and despite the harsh winter, plenty are in season right now.
Just as fruit and veg is tastiest when it’s in season, flowers are at their best and most beautiful when they’re locally sourced and at their natural peak.
While it’s possible to fly in flora grown out-of-season from all over the world, it’s so much more environmentally sound to source it closer to home. It’s also so much nice and more grounding to have flowers around us that we already associate with spring in the spring.
So other than daffodils, which blooms are reaching their peak in March? Most flowers that are in season now are characteristically ‘delicate’ varieties, many of which you’ll probably already associate with Easter, Mother’s Day and other early spring festivals.
Fresias are a popular choice for providing decoration and colour at this time of year, and their strong, sweet scent makes them particularly lovely to have around the house. There are plenty in the shops at the moment, but you can also order a bouquet direct from Lincolnshire grower Fresia.co.uk. Here, you’ll also find lilies, which are another winter-blooming plant. Tulips are another colourful flower that are found in abundance around now. Amyrillis (pictured above), in red or white, works particularly well as an indoor plant.
If you’d like to create your own bouquets from scratch, have a think about which smaller and shrubbier flowers are growing at this time of year, then combine these with larger blooms. Gypsophila (or ‘Baby’s Breath’) makes a particularly versatile ‘filler’, and sunny-yellow forsythia can make a glorious contrast in your arrangement.
Image of an amyrillis by Gailf548
