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Victorians Loved Flower Arranging
Victorians loved flower arranging.
Today people send flower arrangements quite easily through several online vendors.
Flower arranging as an art form took hold in the Victorian period.
After 1850 the seed and nursery catalogs moved from selling mostly vegetables to flowers. Gardeners wanted flowers
Flowers became a Victorian passion. Flower arranging appeared everywhere.
David Stuart writes in his book The Garden Triumphant: A Victorian Legacy, “Flower arranging seems to have been an innovation of the Victorian period.”
Cut flowers added beauty to home decoration.
Stuart writes, “The decoration of rooms with cut flowers became increasingly important in the nineteenth century and gave rise, by mid-century, to all sorts of appliances to hold flowers and keep them fresh.”
Rochester, New York seedsman James Vick (1818-1882) offered many flower containers in the pages of his seed catalog. He featured wooden, metal, and even ceramic vases.
Vick also included this chromolithograph of cut flowers in a vase that his customers could frame and adorn the walls of the parlor or living room. [below]
The Victorian home needed flower arrangements for many occasions. Stuart writes, “The need for ladies to be accomplished flower arrangers extended to almost all aspects of both life and death.”
The magazine The English Garden recently posted an article called “Arranging cut flowers – secrets of a top London florist” about the English florist Vic Brotherson who recently designed the flower arrangements for Kate Moss’ wedding in London.
The flowers listed in the article included Victorian favorites like foxglove, allium, cosmos, roses, and dahlias.
The Victorians not only loved flower arranging. They taught it so well that today we still use the same Victorian flowers for such arrangements.
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Hi Tom, I love flower arranging. I must be a little bit Victorian in my nature as I love so many of the quiet pastimes. Hugs on this icy day.~~Dee
Hi Dee, good to hear from you. Here in the Boston area there is no snow left because the temperatures are above normal for this time of year. I am sure snow and that ice are right around the corner. Best.