Creative ideas crafted and shared by our local florist, Sophia Mason. This month we’re displaying:

Borage

Blue is a tricky colour for florists. Customers love it, and rightly so, it’s one of my favourite colours too! But nature rarely provides a true blue flower, instead tending towards violet-y or mauve-y shades, so we often have to manage customers’ expectations about what’s possible when they ask for blue blooms.

Borage is one of the few, very welcome, exceptions. While its pretty little star-shaped flowers do have a warmth to their colour, it’s definitely a righteous and proper blue (except of course when it’s white or pink, which some varieties can be!).

But, as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried cutting borage from your garden and displaying it in a vase, it doesn’t last well as a cut flower. At most, you can expect three to five days, really, after which it will get pretty droopy and sad-looking.

That means it’s not ideal for giving in gift bouquets as your recipient might be a little disappointed in how short a time it lasts. But it’ll be fine to decorate an event that lasts no longer than a day, for example a garden party or a wedding. Being edible, the flowers are perfect to decorate cakes and buffet tables, too, just make sure they’re really clean.

Harvest early in the morning, just as the flowers have fully opened, and look for the sturdiest stems, putting them straight into a bucket of water as you cut. It’s best to wear gloves as you cut, because it has little hairs that can irritate skin (which is also something to note if you are going to be using borage flowers on a cake or somewhere that guests could touch them).

Once inside, strip off all the hairy leaves, give the stems a fresh clean cut with a sharp knife or secateurs, and give your borage a good drink of water with plenty of room for air to circulate between them, for at least an hour or two before you start your flower arranging. You could use the leaves as well as the flowers, if you like, but they can be untidy and they’ll wilt even faster than the flowers do.

If you aren’t decorating a special event but simply want to bring borage in from your garden to look pretty, I’d suggest cutting fresh stems every day or every other day, rather than trying to make them last longer than they want to. I think it’s always best to go along with nature rather than trying to fight it.

That said, though, there are a couple of things you could do to get more time out of your borage flowers:

1.     Cut the stems shorter: when there is less distance for the water to travel to reach the flower, they’ll stay better hydrated for longer. Actually, I think it looks lovely if you remove the flower heads from the stems completely and float them in a shallow dish of water.

2.     Change the water every day: this means bacteria won’t build up and shorten the flowers’ lives.

One last thing. Borage isn’t widely available commercially as a cut flower, because that short cut flower life makes it impractical for the international journeys that make up the modern flower trade. But a savvy florist will be able to source it for you, in season, from British growers. So, if you’d like some of that really special borage blue in your wedding, your home, or even for funeral flowers, just ask!

Sophia Mason is a florist based in a little studio in Cam. She offers flowers for all occasions, with a focus on sustainability and supporting local growers. Find out more on the Sophia Mason Flowers website