Saturday, December 1, 2012

What The Colors Of Roses Symbolize

The rose color that you choose to present to someone says a lot about your relationship. You may intend to convey friendship or gratitude with a rose, while the color you give that person may represent romance or passion. Whether you are giving or receiving roses, it is always important to know what the color symbolizes.


Red Roses

Red is the universal symbol of love and romance. According to Greek and Roman mythology, the red rose was tied to the goddess of love. Early cultures used them to decorate wedding ceremonies, and red roses were a traditional part of wedding attire.

The red rose is known as the lovers' rose. Red is traditionally known as a symbol of love and fidelity, and is the most popular way to say "I love you." When someone is presented with a bouquet of red roses, it can signal the beginning of romantic intentions, and is a sign of commitment.

White Roses

White symbolizes purity, innocence, sympathy, and spirituality. White roses are commonly used as wedding flowers, and represent unity and virtue. They also represnt the pureness of a new bond of love. Bridal bouquets are often made of white roses and a mixture of other white flowers.

White roses are popular in sympathy arrangements, and memorial flowers. In these circumstances, white roses symbolize honour and reverence. They represent heavenliness and resepct.


Pink Roses

Pink roses represent love, gratitude, and appreciation. Pink is a symbol of grace and elegance. Pink roses symbolize sweetness and poetic romance. Light pink roses symbolize gentleness and admiration, and can be used as an expression of sympathy.

Purple Roses

Purple is the colour of opulence, glory, and majesty. Purple roses represent royalty and enchantment. They also symbolize elegance and grandeur. They are considered magical, and if you are the recipient of purple roses, the sender is likely enthralled by you.

Lavender Roses

Like purple, the lavender rose represents majesty and enchantment. Lavender symbolizes love at first sight, femininity, grace, and elegance. It can also mean wonder, impossibility, and magic.

Yellow Roses

Yellow is the friendship rose, and is closely related to the sun. Yellow roses are known to bring joy, and can also mean "get well."

The yellow rose was discovered growing naturally in the Middle East in the 1700s. In Eastern cultures, it represents joy, wisdom, and power. In European history, the yellow rose was used as a symbol of jealousy and dying love, but in the present day, yellow symbolizes joy and friendship. Yellow roses can be used to convey platonic love, joy, and delight. They are a great way to brighten the day of someone who has been feeling down.

Orange Roses

The orange rose represents desire, enthusiasm, and passionate romance. Orange is a mix of yellow and red. They are a sign of emerging romantic feelings, a bridge between the feeling of friendship and the feeling of love. Orange roses symbolize moving the relationship beyond friendship toward romance.

Blue Roses

The blue rose represents peace, openness, and serenity. Blue roses are rare in nature, and represent the unattainable, and the quest for the impossible. They can also represent an appreciation for something that cannot be fully grasped.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

An Introduction About Wedding Flowers For Every Season

From the rings to the shoes, from the food to the flowers, weddings come at no small cost. It only makes sense that current brides and grooms-to-be are choosing to penny-pinch wherever possible. Wedding flowers often become the first casualty of a budget-minded couple's matrimonial plans. Wedding flowers can be very expensive, but they don't have to be! You can have the wedding flowers chosen by royalty without breaking the bank.


Spring Wedding Flower Choices

For a spring wedding, there are many colorful and inexpensive flowers to choose from. Sweet pea with its delicate pink hue is a beautiful accent for wedding flower bouquets and centerpieces and is reasonably priced. It was once used as altar decorations for weddings by Italian royalty and is still perfect for spring weddings.

Purple wedding flowers such as irises and lilacs when arranged with delicate pink sweet peas and some traditional white wedding flowers like lilies scream of springtime. Irises come in a variety of colors and are very fragrant, relatively inexpensive, and are a traditional wedding flower favorite.

According to legend, a blue iris and a white iris in a vase were placed at a bride's table signifying that marriage would have its bright times as well as its dull ones, and this was the beginning of the "for better or worse" phrase found in the traditional wedding vows.

Chrysanthemums have always been popular choices for wedding flower bouquets and centerpieces. They come in many colors and are inexpensive. A wedding flower bouquet of peonies, sweet pea, irises, chrysanthemums, lilacs, and lilies can be absolutely breathtaking and easy on your budget at the same time.


For the Summer Wedding

If a summer wedding is in the works, you have some really nice but inexpensive flower choices available to you. Yellow wedding flowers like yellow chrysanthemums combined with blue or purple hued accents such as irises or wisteria are great for spring and summer weddings and are particularly pretty when combined with orange tiger lilies.

Alstromeria has blooms that look very much like orchids and they have many blossoms per stem, making them a more economical choice. Alstromeria comes in several different colors and keeps fresh for a long time.

Dahlias are another great but economical choice, particularly if the wedding is taking place in late summer. Consider a wedding flower bouquet and centerpieces made with alstromeria, dahlias, daisies, irises, tiger lilies and chrysanthemums for sophisticated color, style, and savings.

Colorful Flowers For Your Autumn Wedding

Fresh wedding flowers of choice for fall are anemones. Their deep hues of red and blue bring rich vibrancy without major expense. Many brides in Italy wear crowns made of them at their weddings. Asters many years ago were almost like family heirlooms, passed from one generation to another.

Where better to use asters than in fall wedding flowers, since weddings are often the prelude to the next generation? Delphinium, with its strong stems and delicate purple blossoms is the symbol of strength, particularly with regard to the marital bond.

Wedding flower bouquets and centerpieces containing anemones, asters, delphinium, gerbera daisies, gladiolas, and chrysanthemums not only add spectacular color but are easy on the budget, too.

Wonderful Flowers for a Winter Wedding

Winter wedding flowers can be absolutely elegant and budget friendly, too. Red, the color of love, is simply dashing with white, which symbolizes joy. Star of Bethlehem with its delicate white blossoms resembling stars is absolutely gorgeous combined with amaryllis or poinsettias.

Adding Euchalyptus to the greenery in your winter wedding flower bouquets and centerpieces enhances the natural beauty of your flowers.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Do You Love Tulips Flower

Tulips are synonymous with springtime, and along with Daffodils, are among the most popular springtime bulbs. They come in such a huge array of colors, bloom times, and sizes that you could conceivably plant nothing but tulips and have a traffic-stopping garden for over three months.
Tulips are easy plants to grow, but plant them as soon as possible after buying the bulbs, because improper storage can damage or kill the bud and bulb. They are not picky about soil, but don't like wet feet, so build the soil up for drainage so they won't rot. They will do well in sun or part shade, and appreciate an application of bonemeal or superphosphate at planting time. Plant them in the fall, if possible, or buy the bulbs in early spring and chill in the crisper of the refrigerator for 6-8 weeks. Tulips require this chilling off process in order to bloom. Keep ripening fruit away from the bulbs if you are chilling them in the refrigerator, or the buds may be damaged. Planting depth for tulips is dependent on the size of the bulb. The larger bulbs should be planted 4-5 inches down, and obviously, the smaller bulbs should be planted closer to the surface. If you plan on leaving tulips in the ground permanently, do not cut the foliage back until it has turned brown, but don't count on a spectacular spring show every year from this planting, as these plants only bloom reliably for a few years, and then require replanting.
There are many different types of tulips, from the small wild tulips that make nice additions to rock gardens, to the large Darwins and Parrot Tulips. Darwins are probably the most sought after of the tulip species, because they come in every color of the rainbow, including black. They are long-stemmed and make good cut flowers and make very attractive mass plantings in the garden, explaining their ever-growing popularity with home gardeners.
If you haven't tried tulips in your garden, now is the time to experiment. Tulips can be planted at any point in the fall or early winter as long as the ground is not frozen. Beware, however, that if you have a deer problem or if you have rodents or burrowing animals on or around your property, your tulips plantings will not survive until bloom time, no matter what you try to do. Animals love these plants.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Good Advice On Planting The Jasmine

The cultural requirements of Jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum) are simple but exacting. When your plant arrives, put it in a cool room and set it in a window that receives bright light but little or no direct sun. Flowers will open and last longer with cooler home temperatures.
Jasmines are also sensitive to the dryness created by radiators, hot-air vents, and wood-burning stoves. The best way to increase the humidity around your plants is to run a humidifier nearby. You can also set plants in trays filled with pebbles or gravel. Add water to a level just below the tops of the pebbles (if the potting mix in the pots comes in contact with the water, the mix will draw water into the pot, which will cause the mix to become saturated, eventually leading to rot). Refill trays frequently to replace water lost through evaporation. (Our Humiditrays perform the same function without the need for pebbles.)
Water only when the top half inch of the potting mix is dry to the touch; Jasmine won't tolerate soggy potting mix. If these conditions are met, flowering generally begins in late January or early February.
After bloom, give your plant at least 6 hours of direct sun and normal room temperatures. When the danger of frost has passed, we recommend that you set the plant outdoors for the summer, shifting it gradually from a shady spot to full sun. Fertilize every 2-4 weeks during the growing season -- generally from early spring to early fall. Withhold fertilizer entirely during fall and winter, when the plant is resting. Use a water-soluble fertilizer designed for houseplants mixed at just half the rate suggested by the manufacturer. As with watering, plants suffer if overfertilized.
Prune as necessary to control size or to maintain shape, but stop pruning by August 1, because the plant sets flower buds in late summer.To encourage the formation of flower buds for next winter, be sure your plant experiences the cooler temperatures and shorter days of early autumn. The plant needs 4-5 weeks of nighttime temperatures between 40° and 50°F, plenty of sunlight, and the complete absence of artificial light after sundown. Bring the plant indoors before frost. Then give it cool temperatures and indirect light until it blooms again in late winter.