Decorating Your Home With Wild Flowers

Many of us live in towns within reach of country walks. Wild flowers make beautiful accessories to your home decor. To these I offer some suggestions about the use of such foliage.



Even in winter there is hardly a country district where you will not find wild flowers worth bringing home. There are berried boughs of Ivy, and, for those who know where to look for them, fronds of Polypody and Hartstongue Ferns, and there are wild rose hips, and foliage of Bramble in its red-bronze and sometimes nearly scarlet coloring.

Then there are sheets of brilliant mosses, and on hedge-banks little creeping sprays of small-leaved Ivy in much variety of color; some grey-green with white veins, some approaching scarlet where the soil is sandy and the sun has been upon them. These mossesand small Ivys alone are charming in flat dishes.

Then in February there are the little scarlet Fairy-cups, which are wonderful to put in a setting of fresh green Moss. The Fairy-cups will be found in hedge-banks where there are trees; they grow on little pieces of decayed wood, generally under Elms.

By March there are the handsome leaves of Lords-and-Ladies, the wild Arum; If wild Daffodils can be found, they go well together; but the Arum leaves are good alone, and there will still be some clusters of the heavy blackish-green Ivy berries. Soon after the middle of the month is the time to look for the wild sweet Violets, in low sunny hedge-banks or in places where the small Periwinkle grows.

March is the real time for the beauty of Mistletoe. When it is gathered for Christmas the berries are not yet mature; in fact, they are not fully ripe till April. But a nice branch or two, put in water with some dark-berried Ivy, will show its quite special beauty and if some shoots of catkined Palm-Willow are added, either when the catkins are in their early dress of grey velvet it or their later garb of yellow anther, the bouquet becomes still more interesting.

April brings the ever-welcome Primroses, and on loamy soils Cowslips. In the Primrose woods will be wood Anemones. They appear to wither before one can bring them home, but a deep bath will revive them. In damp meadows there will be Marsh Marigolds, and in cool meadows, in a few areas, the purple - Fritillaries. When the young green leaves come on the Larch, little branches should be picked and arranged in water indoors for their sweetness.

In May there are Bluebells in the woods, and the early purple Orchis with its splendid red-purple coloring; and young Oak leaves, golden-green, and for handsome foliage quite young plants of Burdock (Arctium); seedlings of last year. The whole plant should be cut underground and be given a deep bath of water for an hour or two before arranging.

The other common roadside Dock (Rumex) is also a capital thing to treat in the same way for foliage. Both this and its near relation, the Sorrel of meadows, much like the common Dock but with narrower leaves, will also come into our wild bouquets a little later when they are in flower.

In some areas the Bird-cherry is a wild thing of woods and copses. There is the wild Cherry too, with bloom as pretty as that of garden Cherries. Any of these are most desirable to arrange in rooms. Lowlier flowers that may now be found are the Cuckoo-flower of the meadows, and in woodland the lovely little Wood-Sorrel (Oxalis). This is best arranged in moss just as it grows.

In the end of May we have the beginning of a class of plants that will add greatly to the beauty of our bouquets throughout the summer. These are various species of common plants by all waysides.

The thing that is most helpfull is to advise that they should not be overlooked. They are plants of the Parsley, Carrot and Cow-Parsnip character, flowering in umbels and common everywhere; following each other until the autumn, so that there is always a good supply.

June brings flowers in plenty. By the waterside the lovely Forget-me-not, the yellow Water Iris and the great yellow Loosestrife, and perhaps some bushes ofthe Water Elder, whose ball-flowered form is the Guelder Rose.

Here and there in loamy woodland we may find the surprisingly beautiful white Butterfly Orchis. On dry banks in light soil there will be Broom and Ox-eye Daisies. In hedges there will be Dog Roses and Elder in bloom good to arrange together.

Now is the time of beautiful Grasses. Every roadside and field footpath is bordered with them; there are only too many to choose from. Try Scarlet Poppies and Ox-eye Daisies and Grasses together; choosing the Poppies in whole plants of moderate size and cutting them below ground so that you have the top of the root-stock. Remember that Poppies have a milky juice that dries quickly, so that it is well to make a fresh cut at home just before they are put in water.

In July, perhaps the best flowers are to be found by the waterside. The leaves and spreading bloom of the Great Water Plantain look like something from the tropics. A lucky search may find one or two blooms of the Flowering Rush (Butomus) or of Arrowhead.

In hedges and the more open parts of woodland there will be Honeysuckle; in wood edges the tall Bell-flower (Campanula Trachelium); in woodsides and hedges also three beautiful plants of the pea and bean tribe namely, the pink Rest-Harrow, the large yellow Meadow Vetchling, and the purple Tufted Vetch.

In cornfields there will be Cornflowers and Viper's Bugloss; and perhaps in boggy places the sweet leaved Bog-Myrtle, and everywhere on dry banks the graceful Hare-bells,

Several kinds of Thistle that will now be in plenty are fine things for our wild bouquets.

In August again riversides and damp meadows will give plenty of handsome vegetation.

In heathery places there will now be plenty of the common Heather. Its soft grey-lilac colouring makes it more acceptable than the equally common fine-leaved Heath and it is better in form ; for if carefully chosen it maybe picked in nice-shaped pieces a foot or more long. It arranges charmingly with both flowering and leafy spikes of the grey-foliaged Wormwood.

There will be berries by now on many trees and bushes; the black berries of Privet, the scarlet (with a few black) of Mealy Guelder-Rose, both bushes of the chalk; and in wet places the scarlet berries of another Viburnum, the Water Elder, besides the handsome fruit-clusters of Mountain Ash.

September brings these same berries in still greater perfection ; the fruit of the Water Elder becomes more transparent and gains greater refinement. The Spindle-tree berries are opening their outer coats of rosy pink and showing the orange seeds within.

Fennel, with its pretty yellow umbels and fine hair-like foliage is still in good bloom; it is best cut long, with yellowish foliage of Oak or Ash or Spanish Chestnut.

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