Late Fall Color For Your Garden

Chrysanthemum koreana ‘Sheffield’

Chrysanthemum koreana ‘Sheffield’


It’s the last hurrah for gardens across New England. This time of year, colors are starting to fade and foliage is beginning to turn. What’s left in most gardens are seed heads, fall grasses and browning leaves.

You can stretch the growing season by incorporating some choice perennials that can carry the color throughout September, October and even a few weeks in November!

Left to right: Calicarpa, Amsonia, Hydrangea, Continus, “Oso Easy” Rose and Platycodon

A Sweet Treat

Melissa Mullen Photography

Melissa Mullen Photography

A Little Extra Sweetness for Valentine’s Day Pre-Orders!


This year, we’re partnering with Dean’s Sweets to bring you Maine-made hand dipped truffles (double dark and milk) with your Valentine’s Day arrangements.

Melissa Mullen Photography

Melissa Mullen Photography

As an extra bonus, if customers order before 1/31/20 they will receive a complimentary box of truffles with their order!

Dean’s Sweets is located at  475 Fore St., in Portland, Maine.

Source: https://www.prettyflowersmaine.com/blog/20...

How to Make Your Flowers Last

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A little care is the key to longevity.

  1. Keep your flowers away from intense cold or heat.

    In the winter months, pay special attention to your flowers when moving them from one controlled environment to another. Always cover your flowers with a plastic bag or paper if the temperature. Inside, keep your flowers away from any heat vents or wood stoves. Flowers prefer to be slightly cool but not below 40 degrees.

  2. Change the water every day and recut the end of each stem.

    Stagnant water invites bacteria. The easiest way to keep your flowers lasting long is to change the water in the vase every day with lukewarm water. Snip the bottom of each stem at an angle so the stems can absorb the maximum amount of water. Once trimmed, immediately get the stems back into water before air is trapped.

  3. Remove any greenery on the stem below the water line.

    As mentioned in #2, if greenery is floating around in your water source, bacteria will grow even quicker. Avoid this easily by stripping the stems below the water line.

  4. Keep your flowers out of the light.

    Avoid displaying your cut flowers in direct sun. The sun heats up the stem and weakens them, causing stress.

  5. Leave ‘em alone.

    By far, the best advice is to avoid over-handling flowers. Pulling the flowers out one-by-one and laying them on a counter will only bruise the delicate petals and stems. Instead, when changing the water, create a cuff with your hand and pull them out of the vase in one gentle grab. With the other hand, replace the water and recut the stems. Gently guide the flowers back inside the vase and return them to their cool spot away from direct sunlight.

Source: https://www.prettyflowersmaine.com/blog/20...

The 5 Best Flowers for a Cutting Garden

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What’s better than going out your back door and cutting fresh flowers from your own garden?

We’ve compiled a list of The Five Best Flowers for a Cutting Garden.

  1. Foxglove, ‘Dalmatian Peach’

    This bi-ennial (perennial that blooms every other year) self seeds. Each plant can produce 5-7 cut flowers throughout their growing season. The more you cut, the more they bloom.

    From Floret’s website: The towering stems boast soft peachy-apricot blooms that glow from the inside out. An excellent addition to bouquets and wedding work, this salmony beauty is a must-have in any cutting garden. While most foxgloves are biennials, this new hybrid flowers the first year from an early sowing of seed and will also produce the second year if left in place.

  2. Poppy, ‘Princess Victoria Louise’

    This perennial has large crepe-paper like blooms in salmon pink with a dark center. Papavers are easy to grow, long lived and virtually care free, it is also deer and rabbit tolerant.

    After you’ve determined the correct length of the stem for your vase, sear the bottom of each stem with a flame. Searing the end of each stem will keep the sap from escaping and allow the flower to drink water. 

  3. Peony, ‘Bowl of Beauty’, ‘Krinkled White’ or ‘Sarah Bernhardt’

    There’s a reason why Peonies are loved my so many people. They’re an easy perennial to grow and they only get better with time. It’s best for the plant to cut only 1/3 of the blooms each season. For longer lasting flowers, cut the stems when the heads are still closed, but squishy to the touch.

  4. Sweet Pea, ‘Windsor’ or ‘Jacqueline Ann’

    This perennial is easy to grow and are loved by many for their large, deep purple blooms. This plant loves to climb and is an excellent choice for a trellis, wall, fence or arbor.

  5. Clematis ‘Jackmanii’

    This annual can be grown from seed and should be planted beneath a strong trellis to support their vines. For the longest vase life, cut stems that have at least 2 unopened blooms at the tip.

    From Floret’s website: Stunning in the garden, this richly hued beauty has warm chocolaty-maroon blooms that make a real statement. Blooms are quite fragrant and ride atop long strong stems, making it a fantastic variety for cutting. Every cutting garden deserves a row of fragrant, nostalgic sweet peas. A fistful of these demure little blooms are how Floret was born and they continue to spellbind us each season.

Source: https://www.prettyflowersmaine.com/blog/20...

Valentine's Day Arrangements

This year, Valentine’s Day falls on a Friday.

We’re offering '“Designer’s Choice” arrangements at increments of $75, $100 and $150 on up- using only the freshest, most beautiful flowers available. We’ll also have traditional red roses for $95.

If you have a special request, please give us at least 2 weeks notice so we can do our best to fulfill your needs.

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The mixed assortment on the left is a sample of what your arrangement might include: orange roses, red amaryllis, specialty carnations, leucadendron and blackberries on a stem.

Each assortment of flowers comes designed in either a specialty glass vase or ceramic vessel.

We include an adorable 3” x 3” card on which we handwrite your special message.

We happily deliver all over the midcoast region of Maine.

Brunswick, Topsham, Harpswell, Orr’s Island, Bailey Island, Bath, Georgetown; Freeport, Durham, Cumberland, Yarmouth, Falmouth and Portland.

Delivery fees are based on distance but delivery to anywhere in Brunswick is always FREE!

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The Bowdoin Orient feature

Amy was recently featured in The Bowdoin Orient, Bowdoin College’s online student newspaper. Read the article below!

FEATURES

Always in bloom, Pretty Flowers changes with the seasons

By Emma Sorkin

December 6, 2019

When you walk into Amy Maloney’s house, it looks like any ordinary house. Magnets, pictures and notes cling to the fridge, art hangs from the wall and light streams in from the windows. There are three cups on the kitchen table, each full of pencils sorted by color, with a large sheet of paper showing Maloney’s latest landscape design laid out beside them.

The door adjacent to the kitchen leads downstairs, marking the barrier between Maloney’s house and her workshop. Wood tables are covered in flower stems, leaves and paper. Pots line the shelves, soft yellow lights hang from the ceiling and green wreaths are laid out across the table in the back room, surrounded by piles of ribbons and pinecones.

Maloney runs her business Pretty Flowers out of her Brunswick home and has done so since 1991, after her daughters were born.

“I decided I didn’t want to work outside the house, so I had to figure out something I could do at home. I grew up in California, and I followed my grandmother around in her gardens and  always loved that and thought, ‘you know, I can do that’,” Maloney said.

Pretty Flowers began with casual sales from her home on Mere Point Road. A big break for her, she said, was the chance to do arrangements for Bowdoin and design gardens on campus.

Reuben SchafirALL SMILES: Founder of Pretty Flowers Amy Maloney specializes in custom floral arrangements, wreaths and landscaping. The business crafts arrangements from largely locally-sourced flowers.

Reuben Schafir

ALL SMILES: Founder of Pretty Flowers Amy Maloney specializes in custom floral arrangements, wreaths and landscaping. The business crafts arrangements from largely locally-sourced flowers.

“That was huge. [Doing an arrangement for the College] really got things going because I’d do something here and something there for somebody because they’d asked, but it wasn’t really a viable business,” Maloney said. “So that was when it all kind of started.”

Today, Pretty Flowers has seven employees and takes on projects ranging from wedding flower arrangements to holiday wreaths to landscape design.

Whenever possible, Maloney tries to source flowers from local farms. “I do depend more and more on local flower farms. I’m very much into not harming the earth any way that I can, but I also like things to be unique,” Maloney said. “There are limits to locally grown flowers [because farms] tend to grow the same things.”

When she cannot find a flower she needs locally, she drives to Boston to hand-select it from the New England Flower Market.

She used to travel to the New England Flower Market to pick up flowers once a week. These frequent trips helped Maloney separate her business from other Brunswick florists in terms of types of flowers available.

“When I started, there were 20 vendors. I think they’re down to eight [now],” Maloney said. “Things have changed. We get things shipped up as much as we can, but I liked [going to Boston]. I’ve always loved to just go see. I’m not very good at planning things—I go with my gut a lot.”

A flower business in Maine, however, comes with its share of challenges, Maloney explained. When business slows in January and February, Pretty Flowers plans for the coming seasons. In winter, the business sells wreaths, each one decorated by hand with specialized features, intricate ribbons and colorful arrangements.

“It’s had ups and downs because there’s a price point people don’t want to pay. We charge $125 for ours, and they last for a long, long time, but people have a tough time when they can buy one for 40 bucks from L.L. Bean and have it sent wherever,” Maloney said. “But we’ve got people that have been buying wreaths from us for 20 years, so I guess we’re doing something right.”

Today, people can buy flowers from the internet with a simple search, which, along with social media, Maloney cites as a reason for the shrinking of the flower market in Boston and other specialty orders. Maloney, however, still values personal relationships with vendors, customers and employees for the success of her business.

“I rely on [the market vendors] to make sure I get the best product, and hopefully that’ll keep going. I do worry if I can’t just go and depend on those really crucial people that helped me make my business unique,” she said. “I lead by example.”

Having worked in sales, Maloney values the creativity and freedom that having her own business affords her. Her favorite thing about Pretty Flowers is “the fact that it’s mine,” she said. “I worked for other people for the first 30 years of my life, and I’m glad to work for myself.”

“I just [enjoy] making people happy with what we can do, being artistic, and having a business where people appreciate our artistry and want to have us do things for them, whether it be in their garden or on their kitchen table.”