Beautiful Flowers at Skylands
During my stays at Skylands, my home in Maine, beautiful flowers fill nearly every room.
I love decorating my homes with fresh, colorful blooms. In Maine, we grow all the flowers in a large cutting garden that's located in the same area as the vegetable garden. And every summer, we bring the outdoors inside by creating extraordinary floral displays that capture the attention of all who visit.
Here are some of this year's photos, enjoy - and always check out my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48 for more.
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- These lily arrangements are the first one sees upon entering Skylands. They’re on this long table in the foyer – so bright and inviting. Gorgeous arrangements don’t always have to be giant in size – the pair work perfectly here. I grow many different kinds of lilies at Skylands and at my farm in Bedford. This year, the lilies bloomed so beautifully. Many of the gorgeous arrangements this year were made by Skylands gardener, Wendy Norling.
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- Here is a beautiful collection of snapdragons. Snapdragons are great for arrangements as they last quite a long time. A palette of pink, yellow, white, and orange looks very pretty against the earth tones in this room. These snapdragons are in a giant faux bois basket.
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- The hydrangea is among my favorite of flowering plants. It offers huge bouquets of clustered flowers from mophead to lacecap from summer through fall.
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- Here are more glorious pink lilies. Lily flowers are large and come in a range of colors including yellows, whites, pinks, reds, and purples. These plants are late spring- or summer-flowering. They are native to temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere.
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- Along this dining room table, small vases of rudbeckia with their bright, showy flower heads. Rudbeckia flower colors include yellow and gold, and the plants grow two to six feet tall, depending on the variety.
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- The Living Hall at Skylands is always used during summer months. This grand faux-bois cement table is where I like to display large flower arrangements for my parties. On this day, we had an arrangement of delicate lacecap hydrangeas. The lacecap is very similar to the mophead, but instead of growing round clusters of showy blossoms, this hydrangea grows flowers that resemble flat caps with frilly edges.
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- This pretty arrangement is made using asters, snapdragons, and scabiosa. Scabiosa is also known as the pincushion flower. The easy to care for plant has interesting flowers with cushion-like centers and pin-looking stamens.
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- On another day, stunning amaranth decorated the Living Hall. Their velvety flowers are dense with drooping tassels. Blooms come in richly saturated harvest hues, and they hold their colors and shapes even when dry.
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- The sunflowers also bloomed very nicely this year. Sunflowers, Helianthus, are the popular and cheerful annuals whose round flower heads look like the sun. Sunflowers come in vibrant yellow, but they’re also seen in orange, red, bronze, and even white.
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- Here, gorgeous lilies are placed on the coffee table of my guesthouse.
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- I love faux bois, which means “false wood” in French. Faux bois refers to the artistic imitation of wood or wood grains in various media. The craft has roots in the Renaissance with trompe-l’œil. I have many faux bois urns at Skylands. This year, we planted them with natural elements from the woodlands and created miniature forests that last all season long.
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- Here’s another vessel filled with beautiful moss. Moss is a slow growing wild plant that should never be harvested in large amounts – in fact, it is illegal to take any moss from national forests without permission. Once the season is over, we always make sure the moss we harvested is returned to the forest where it can regenerate and flourish.
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- Some of the mosses that grow at Skylands include sphagnum moss, pincushion moss, Mountain Moss Leucobryum, plume moss, and bog moss. My gardener at Skylands, Mike Harding, created the woodland arrangements – I think they are very pretty.
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- On this outdoor table – colorful zinnias. Zinnias are native to Mexico and Central America. The Aztecs originally called them “plants that are hard on the eyes” because of their colorful flowers. Zinnia is named after Johann Gottfried Zinn, a German botany professor who discovered the plants and brought them to Europe in the 1700s. When cutting zinnias for flower arrangements, pick the flowers in the morning when they’re fully open. Unlike other cut flowers, zinnias do not continue to open once cut and brought indoors.
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- I have many lilies growing at Skylands. Some lilies can be quite tall – they can grow in height up to six-feet. My granddaughter, Jude, took a series of beautiful lily photos – the colors are so vibrant.
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- Here are some bright yellow lilies growing in the garden. Lilium is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants growing from bulbs and all with large, prominent flowers. The flowers are often fragrant, and come in a wide range of colors.
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- When arranging cut lilies, handle them with care – they can bruise easily.
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- And don’t forget, lilies have heavily pollinated stamens, which stain, so before bringing them indoors, it’s important to gently pull the anthers with a tissue, or pinch them off with your fingers.
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- And on my birthday table, more bold yellow rudbeckia blooms are used as centerpieces. Rudbeckias are easy-to-grow perennials and include the popular black-eyed Susan.
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- This is my birthday cake – also decorated with bold yellow rudbeckia. My cake was spectacular – made by Chef Pierre Schaedelin from PS Tailored Events and his helpers Moises and Federico. It had yellow sponge layers filled with orange and lemon curd and then covered with a rich meringue frosting that was lightly browned. Jude also took this photo. It was a wonderful celebration and a wonderful time at Skylands.
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