Birth Month Flowers

Flowers designated to celebrate birth months.  Blooms for especially significant birthday gifts.

Birthdays' gemstones are exciting, but there are limits to the numbers of emeralds, diamonds, etc. we can bestow on our loved ones! Instead, the practicality and versatility of birth month flower gifts are better suited to today's lifestyles and personal finances. Below are birth month flowers readily available in family gardens or at local garden centers or florist shops. 

January ~ Carnation - At a time when most landscapes are denuded of flowers, the spicy clove scent of carnations is most welcoming. The low cost of carnations has somewhat sullied their reputation as a sophisticated, gift-worthy flower, but a skilled florist can create a contemporary design using a “foliage cage” of overlapping grasses, a cube-shaped vase, or a sweet pomander to create excitement with this modest bloom. Carnations are easy to work with, so why not purchase a block of floral foam and create your own gift design tailored to the recipient?

February ~ Iris and Violets - I always have envied those with February birthdays as they claim the lovely amethyst as their birthstone, plus they get the regal iris, too!

The blue Dutch iris looks stunning when paired with yellow spring flowers available in late winter, such as tulips, forsythia, or jonquils. Violets also are considered a birth flower for February, so a nosegay of the tiny blooms or a tasty confection dusted with candied violets makes an exceptional birthday gift.

March ~ Daffodil - Although you can order fresh-cut daffodil arrangements for March birthday gifts, a live planted basket or trug will endure for up to two weeks longer than a bouquet. DIY types can plan a jumbo planted basket by forcing bulbs during the winter: Keep them in a cold frame or refrigerator for 16 weeks, then pot up in a sunny window for a few more weeks before the gift-giving date.

April ~ Daisy - Celebrate April birthdays with a gift of fresh cut daisies, either the traditional shastas or one of the many gerbera varieties. The secret to the longest lasting gerbera daisy arrangements is to recondition the flowers every day. Cut off the lowest part of the stem under fresh water to encourage water uptake and to discourage rot.

May ~ Lily of the Valley - The lily of the valley has always been a favorite of royalty, as seen in the bridal bouquets of both Princess Diana and Princess Kate. The quintessential springtime flowers make a fragrant birthday gift, either as a potted plant or in a small bouquet. The unusual and hard to find pink form is every bit as vigorous in the garden as the white variety.

June ~ Rose – Roses love to be planted in the heat of summer, to bloom for the rest of the year.  If a gift of roses feels cliche after all of the other flower-giving holidays, find a new way to present this timeless bloom to a loved one.  A live blooming miniature rose is a long-lasting alternative to a short-lived rose bouquet. Ultimately, nothing tops the fragrance of a bunch of old garden roses instead of the standard bouquet of florist's nearly scentless roses.

July ~ Larkspur - Gardeners may know the July birth month flower, larkspur, by its other botanical name, the delphinium.  The blooms are packed together very tightly so this flower prefers cool, moist summers to grow, but if that doesn’t describe your growing region, create a dramatic, shaded planting area to cultivate the tall pink, blue, purple, or white spikes of this perennial favorite.

August ~ Gladiolus and Dahlia - August birthdays have two flashy birth flowers designated to their month. The thousands of varieties of flowers included in these two beauties means you have an unlimited color palette to play with when choosing floral gifts.

September ~ Aster - The prolific blooms of a potted aster are a welcome way to bridge the gap between summer and fall when most flowers are winding down for the season. You can choose from flower colors in all shades of blue, white, pink, and purple on plants that will stay in bloom through late fall. Plant them in the ground and this hardy flower will come back each year.

October ~ Marigold - The vibrant pumpkin orange and harvest gold hues make this flower stand out above the rest of Autumn's blooms. The low cost and lush shape of marigolds means you can give a birthday gift that looks bigger than it really is.  The plants prefer cool, moist soils that follow our mountain monsoon rains, and if so indulged will continue to flourish well into late autumn.

November ~ Chrysanthemum -When you give a gift of chrysanthemums, you continue a tradition of flower giving at birthdays that dates back to the 15th century B.C. This flower, native to China, still looks lovely as part of a corsage, and brings cheer to front porches in our favorite autumn colors of yellow, orange, and red.

December ~ Poinsettia - Not everyone gravitates to the traditional red poinsettia, so if your recipients feel that the winter holidays impinge on their birthday celebrations, give a cheerful coral-colored poinsettia, or one of the color-enhanced pink, burgundy, or white blooms we grow specially for Watters Garden Center. Horticulturists have also been playing with the form of this Mexican native flower, so you can create a fairy garden with a miniature poinsettia or give a poinsettia with ruffled bracts. If the birthday celebrant is a gardener, it may be fun trying to re-bloom the poinsettia next year!

There you have it, the most popular flowers to honor each month of the year.  All can be found and grown as plants during the growing season.  It's especially touching to celebrate your loved ones by planting their respective birth month flowers in your garden.

Scented winter flowers

To me there is nothing in the garden that is as uplifting as fragrance, particularly in the darkest depths of winter. Catching an unexpected whiff of the scent of summer on a cold, grey day when dashing out the front door or walking to the bus stop is one of the everyday surprises which makes gardening so magical.

However, as a self-confessed fair-weather gardener who hates the cold, for me there is just one downside to many winter flowering shrubs: you have to get out in the freezing drizzle to actually smell them. I barely last a few minutes at a time. Fortunately, a small handful of these beauties also happen to make excellent cut flowers, so you can surround yourself with the scent of the outdoors all day. Having experimented with loads each winter, I have come up with my top four that smell as good in the house as they do in the garden.

Wintersweet, or Chimonanthus praecox, lives a secret double life as a mild-mannered garden shrub all summer long, with plain green leaves that are easily overlooked. Yet come this time of year, its bare branches erupt into waxy yellow flowers with deep burgundy throats and a scent that will stop you dead in your tracks. Spicy, sweet and intensely fragrant, it is well worth the few years’ wait for the plants to reward you with flowers.

If you only have a tiny spot to play with, you couldn’t do much better than Daphne bholua, especially if it is overshadowed by trees and tall buildings. These shade-loving, tiny, evergreen shrubs produce delicate white or pink blooms that look like they are made from sugar icing. And the scent – oh, the scent. Deep, rich and classically floral, it reminds me of vintage perfume.

Sarcococca hookeriana is another excellent candidate for smaller, shady spots, producing a jasmine-like scent so powerful you will almost certainly smell it before you see it.

Last but not least comes Viburnum x bodnantense, a large shrub with small pompoms in delicate white or pastel pink. With its extremely long flowering season, starting from mid-autumn until early spring, you’ll get a conveyor of scented blooms right when you need them most.

No garden? No problem

Even if you don’t have any outside space at all, there are many winter flowering house plants you can grow for unbeatable fragrance indoors. I am a huge fan of the ivory, scented flowers of trailing cactus Epiphyllum anguliger, with its mad, fishbone-shaped foliage. For lovers of the classics there are always the white, rose-like flowers of gardenia, with an infamously intense perfume and the old-school bridal bouquet favourite of stephanotis, whose lighter, fresher scent can still fill a room.

Whitney's Fabulous Flowers

Whitney Bromberg Hawkings is the o-so-glamorous Co-Founder and CEO of the booming online floristry business, FLOWERBX. Rooted in luxury, the company has a stylish client roster, supplying flowers to the likes of Dior, Bottega Veneta, Jimmy Choo and Tom Ford - and it's easy to see why with their gorgeous blooms.

The Net-a-Porter of the flower business, having conquered the UK, their impressive business plan sees impending expansion into Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Collaborating with other leaders in their field - namely the fashion industry, recent partnerships include Laura Bailey as well as London-based womenswear designer, Emilia Wickstead. Here, the Bailey Bud Vase Collection, consisting of 5 beautiful hand-blown bud vases is best accompliant to any mantle piece and with the Emilia Wickstead Collection - think sleek, cylindrical statement brushed brass vases.

Felicity Carter: Tell us about FLOWERBX...?
Whitney Bromberg Hawkings: After working for TOM FORD for 19 years and feeling frustrated with the cost and inconsistency of the flowers I was buying and sending, I wanted to create a branded floral offering. Also, as a working Mom, I buy everything online. My weekly groceries are from Ocado, my clothes from Net-a-Porter or Matches.com and everything else from Amazon. Flowers were the one thing I couldn't buy, in a simple, chic way, online.

I started FLOWERBX a little over two years ago and am happy that it has resonated with so many people, so quickly and that the growth has been so significant.

FC: Why flowers?
WBH: The floral industry is one that hasn't been disrupted and for which there is no real, branded on-line solution. I am so happy that we have been able to create what I hope will be the first international flower brand.

FC: Who is your customer?

WBH: Our customer is a time-starved, discerning individual who is looking for quality and value. He or she likes the convenience of online shopping but is also looking for an exceptionally smooth and curated luxury experience.

FC: How has the brand evolved?

WBH: While we started out as purely an online flower delivery service, we were quickly asked to apply our clean, branded aesthetic to events for a lot of our individual and B2B clients. While this was initially not something we had intended to do, it was impossible to refuse both the sales' potential and the incredible marketing and exposure we get from doing events.

Vases were an obvious evolution to selling flowers, and we have been able to provide elegant and simple solutions for people that have, until now, been slightly fearful of "doing their own flowers."

Why hoverflies prefer Sikkim flowers to those in Bengaluru

If you were a hoverfly, part of a species that is among the most important pollinators in the world, flowers in Sikkim may perhaps be more attractive than even the ones found in Sweden or Bengaluru.

The simplest of the scientific questions — how does one of the most important pollination species in the world select its flowers — has lead to not only greater understanding of the pin-head-sized brains of hoverflies, but could also hold key to the protection of wild pollinators.

A global collaboration involving researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden, Flinders University in Australia, and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru set out to find these answers.

The teams led by Shannon Olsson (NCBS) and Karin Nordström (Uppsala University) followed hoverflies for months and patiently observed them.

The scientists tabulated the behaviour of hoverflies in tropical climes of outskirts of Bengaluru, mountainous northern Sikkim, and hemiboreal (landscapes close to the subarctic regions) of Uppsala, Sweden.

The observations — which were published recently in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the United States — showed that the tiny brains of hoverflies process multiple, complex factors to determine which flower they pollinate.

Crunching over a million data points, researchers found that combinations of visual clues (colour, shape, size), flower scents (more than 96 volatile chemical compounds) and immediate environment (humidity, carbon dioxide) determine attractiveness for, say Bengaluru hoverfly over its Swedish counterpart.

They then created artificial flowers (lures) based on what hoverflies in each place ‘liked' to test their hypothesis.

The study found that ‘Sikkim lure' worked well in other places, while, ‘Bengaluru lures' were "less attractive" to hoverflies from other places.

Dr. Olsson hazarded a guess, "In Sikkim, the hoverfly is the major pollinator as bees do not thrive in high altitudes. Wild flowers developed ways to make them as universally attractive as possible. Whereas, in tropical Bengaluru, flowers have a choice of pollinators and do not have to try hard to attract hoverflies in particular."

Hard to find in Bengaluru

During the study, the team realised that hoverflies were hard to find in urban Bengaluru, leading to the start of research to find the link between hoverfly populations and air pollution.

The study, says Dr. Olsson, can give insights on reversing the decline of wild pollinators, which are critical to the nearly $577-billion worth of crops globally.

"There is a thought on creation of pollination gardens and other spaces to revive pollinator populations. But, these ideas cannot be broad-based, because what works for European insect pollinators will not work in India. Studying these difference will help," she said.

While arresting the decline in pollinator population will need lowering the use of pesticides, decreasing monoculture agricultural practices, and increasing natural vegetation, Dr. Nordström said, "It is also incredibly important to understand the natural ecology of wild pollinators, not just hoverflies, so we can make informed choices when planning strategies."

Bootstrapped Farmgirl Flowers Is Taking On The Flower Industry

Christina Stembel, 39, grew up on an Indiana corn and soybean farm and didn't go to college. Now she's building Farmgirl Flowers in San Francisco, which will clock $15 million in revenue this year. When she launched the company in 2010, the $18 billion U.S. flower industry was dominated by four big players who offered huge selections, mostly made up of flowers shipped from overseas to small shops where about 40% of the inventory wound up in the trash because it spoiled before it could be sold. Stembel's strategy: source flowers locally and slash waste by selling a very limited number of arrangements direct to consumers from her website. She wraps her bouquets in distinctive burlap donated by nearby coffee roasters. When she tried to raise money, she was dismissed by VCs, but she managed to bootstrap the business and now has investors approaching her. In this interview, which has been edited and condensed, she explains the impact legal marijuana is having on her business and why she thinks the company could ultimately produce $1 billion in revenue.

Susan Adams: Where did you get the idea for Farmgirl Flowers?

Christina Stembel: I was director of alumni relations at Stanford Law School and during the economic downturn in 2007 and 2008, we were doing a lot of events but the budgets were getting cut. We were spending between $100 and $200 on centerpiece flower arrangements. I started to research why the flowers cost so much, and I found that just four companies did three quarters of the flower business.

Adams: What made you think you could compete with them?

Stembel: I'd send flowers to my mom in Indiana and I was always left dissatisfied with the whole process, not just the product. I spent an hour online looking at options, to find the least ugly one. Then I'd spend $80 to $90 on that, and when she received it, it wouldn't look anything like what I ordered. There's even a hashtag, #flowerfail. My research also showed that younger consumers were purchasing fewer flowers.

Adams: Why would you enter a shrinking market?

Stembel: The most recent innovation was in the '90s with ProFlowers, which started sourcing from South America instead of North America. They didn't do anything to fix the problems I saw.

Adams: What role did waste play in your decision to start a flower company?

Stembel: Flower shops waste between 40% and 60% of their inventory. They have so many options and the owner doesn't know what people are going to order so the flowers go bad. I came up with a model that I thought would solve all the problems. Instead of having 100 choices, we offer only a few curated options. You just get to pick the size you want. We have less than 1% waste.

Adams: How did you know your model would work as a business?

Stembel: I didn't know, but I thought it was a great idea. I did one focus group before I quit my job. I gathered almost 50 people and showed them a bouquet I made versus three or four from the top four florists. Eighty-six percent of the people in the focus group chose my bouquet.

Adams: What are margins like?

Stembel: I think at scale, we can get them to 25%. We're at a 2.9% net profit margin now but that's because we're investing all of our profit back into the company so we can grow. If we weren't doing that we'd have a 10% to 12% net profit. 1800Flowers had a profit margin of 8% last year.

Adams: Was there anything else you considered before starting the business?

Stembel: It had to check four boxes for me. With no college degree and no network, I had to be able to bootstrap. I wanted the ability to scale big if I was going to work that hard at something. It needed to solve a real problem. And I wanted to do something good in the world, which for me was sourcing flowers locally.

Adams: Why did you care about local sourcing?

Stembel: In my research, I learned that 50% of U.S. flower farmers had gone out of business. Growing up in the agricultural industry, it was important to me to support local agriculture.

Adams: How did you fund your launch?

Stembel: I had $49,000 in my bank account. I thought it was a lot of money. It's not. But I'd been at Stanford for seven-and-a-half years and I thought, if it's not now, it's never. I gave myself two years.

Adams: Where did you get your flowers?

Stembel: San Francisco has a great flower market where I could get great prices for flowers in small quantities directly from wholesalers and directly from farmers. But one of the early problems I ran into was that some farmers wouldn't sell to me. They'd only sell to wholesalers.

Adams: Why wouldn't farmers sell to you?

Stembel: Because their dad didn't and their grandpa didn't. A lot of them were like, this Internet thing, I don't know if it's going to be long term.

Adams: How did you market the business?

Stembel:  I would take flower arrangements to coffee shops in San Francisco with little marketing cards on them. Then I'd go back to the shops and see how many cards had been taken to see if it was worth the $20 flower cost.

Adams: How was your first year?

Stembel: I did $56,000 in revenue. The second year was $276,000. The third year I started to be able to spend more money on marketing with Facebook and some with Yelp. That took us to $920,000 the third year.

Getting to the root of problem with rhododendron

Theresa H. of Santa Rosa asks: The leaves of my rhododendron are curling inward and turning brown, and the plant is wilting. What's going on?

Phytophthora cinnamoni (root rot), is a root rot disease which is usually fatal and often kills a plant very quickly.

The symptoms are a sudden collapse of parts of the plant, or the entire plant, during the growing season. Check the roots and cut into the infected part of the stem. The disease is characterized by the roots being a deep brown color instead of white, like healthy roots should be.

If you scrape away the bark at ground level you will find the cambium layer below the bark has been stained a dark reddish-brown. The disease is caused by inadequate drainage and warm or hot soil temperatures. The combination of these two is often fatal to rhododendrons.

It is most common in areas with hot summers but can occur anywhere with poor drainage. Phythopthora cinnamomii is most active at a soil temperature of 65-75 degrees. Plants in containers are particularly susceptible, especially if watered overhead.

Be sure that the planting area is well prepared with coarse organic matter to ensure good drainage and aeration in the soil. Freshly composted bark has been shown to have some root-rot resistant properties. Packaged mixes for rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias would be good to use.

Make sure that the soil where the rhododendrons are growing does not become compacted by people or animals walking over it.

Growing rhododendrons in shade and mulching with organic matter will help keep the soil temperature down.

If you have a heavy clay soil, the best thing to do is to plant above soil level, either in raised beds or by mounding up the soil around the root of the plant.

Tom M. of Windsor asks: I would like to use my cold frame this year and grow a few greens, other than the usual Swiss chard, lettuces, etc. Any suggestions?

With a little protection from the elements, you can keep harvesting fresh greens well into fall and winter. Choose frost-hardy crops that continue growing during the transition to colder weather and shorter daylight hours.

Plant them early enough that they're nearly mature by the time the day length drops below 10 hours.

Here are a few good choices for the more unusual fall and winter greens, along with timing tips to help you get the most out of your greenhouse or coldframe.

Claytonia, also known as Miner's Lettuce, is one of the most cold-tolerant of salad greens and is hardy to about 0 degrees. It is easy to grow, is not bothered by moderate frosts and you can get multiple harvests over the course of winter.

The heart-shaped leaves have a wild flavor, and have a crunchy, succulent texture that is especially delicious.

Each stem has tiny white edible flowers. Sow seeds directly into the ground about 1/2 inch apart, 1/4 inch deep, in rows 12 inches apart, thinning to 4-6 inches apart. You can even plant in succession.

Mache, also called corn salad, is a very hardy, low-growing plant that produces tight rosettes of thick glossy leaves hardy to 5 degrees.

Late-blooming flowers worth the wait for your garden

You can't avoid flowers in the springtime. Most plants burst naturally into bloom as warm weather returns, with the flowers producing fruits and setting seed that will ripen over the summer and germinate during the following seasons.

But that doesn't mean you have to forgo flowers in the fall. Annuals will keep pumping out blooms until cold weather turns them off. And perennials? Well, let's take a look at just some of the most dazzling late bloomers.

No fall flower garden would be complete without hybrid Japanese anemones (Anemone x hybrida). Around Sonoma County, they bloom in September, with some sporadic follow-up bloom in late September to early October. They grow 3 to 4 feet tall on slender stems in a sunny to partly shady site with some summer water to get them through the seasonal drought. They'll reward you in September with the most charming 3-inch-wide flowers with a cluster of bright yellow stamens in the centers. Depending on the cultivar, the petals may be white, pink, or purplish pink, but my favorite is a variety called "September Charm" with clear shell pink petals that are strikingly beautiful. Kept watered, the anemones will spread into a wide stand that produces a sea of these exquisite blossoms.

In 1961, botanists changed the name of the Chrysanthemum genus to Dendranthema, which caused such a horticultural uproar that botanists restored the name to Chrysanthemum again in 1995. Thank goodness, because our fall gardens just wouldn't be the same without our mums — possibly the most beloved of all the fall flowers, all exhibiting typical fall colors: rusts, ochres, white, reddish browns, and yellows. We cut them and make big, poofy vases full. Ladies use them for corsages at football games. They are the essence of fall in a flower. It's almost impossible to pick a favorite cultivar because there are so many flower forms of this perennial: cushion, pompon, button, decorative, single, spoon, quill, anemone, spider, cascade and exhibition. You choose.

Did you know that there are a range of autumn-blooming crocuses? So this genus is not only the first up and flowering in the spring, but has representatives that are the last to go to bed in the fall. One of the most popular species is Crocus sativus, the saffron crocus. The late September flower is pale pink to purplish mauve and the orange, feathery stigma, when dried, is our precious culinary saffron — which is why it's no longer found in the wild. Saffron hunters plucked it to death. But it's widely grown in cultivation.

Although not particularly showy, Kirengeshoma palmata, commonly called waxbells, is an interesting native of the mountains of Japan. It makes a 3-to 4-foot mound of large, maple-like leaves, and hangs out pale yellow, shuttlecock-shaped flowers in September. It likes shade and moist soil, so plant it where you can water it during summer's drought.

Among trees, the floss silk tree (Chorisia speciosa) blooms with pink, rose, or purple star-like flowers in September and its subsequent fruits burst open into cottony masses of fluff. It likes full sun and some summer water and grows into a tall tree with a studded trunk. It's perfectly suited to our climate.

The Franklin Tree (Franklinia alatamaha) is persnickety, like its namesake Benjamin Franklin, and takes extra care to grow. It was discovered in Georgia by John Bartram, a friend of Franklin's, who brought it to Philadelphia. It disappeared from the wild in 1790, and all Franklin Trees since are clones of Bartram's rescue. It's an exquisitely beautiful small tree, especially when its last white blooms in September are seen against its reddish purple senescing leaves. I tried growing it in Sebastopol, but it lasted only a couple of years. Maybe you'll have more luck. It will be worth the effort.

From October to December, the Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo "Compacta"), a cousin of the madrone, hangs out pendulous clusters of white, urn-shaped flowers and bright red strawberry-like fruits at the same time, making quite a show. It's an evergreen, like its cousin, and loves our coastal climate.

Among shrubs, definitely plant a Blue Mist (Caryopteris x clandonensis "Heavenly Blue"). It's compact, growing from 2 to 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall, likes full sun, and produces scads of deep blue fringed flowers from August until December. Give it some summer water to keep it going strongly for its fall display.

Of course, nature in her profuse enthusiasm for flowers in all seasons, has more: escallonia, camellia, gardenia, chaste tree, and others, but the suggestions in this article may give you ideas for plantings this fall or next spring that mean your garden will not peter out just when harvest season rolls around. Your Thanksgiving table will always need a centerpiece, n'est pas?