Flower Belle

Your Fourth of July celebration could begin and end with a real bang when you use flowers to accent and decorate the day. If you’re thinking you need to stick with the traditional red, white, and blue carnation arrangements you normally see on Independence Day, think again! Flowers come in so many varieties and they’re so easy to customize to the occasion that the possibilities are endless.

If you’re planning on throwing a Fourth of July celebration, contact your local florist for help in choosing the perfect floral arrangements and other accents to make your party memorable and your guests feel special. When you decorate with fresh flowers, it shows your guests that you’ve taken the time to think about how you can make the surroundings beautiful and enjoyable for them. Your florist can make doing so easier than you ever thought possible.

Your florist is a professional designer who is able to create just the pieces you need to accent and beautify your party location. And, he or she will also have unique, fun ideas that you could use as party favors, to recognize special guests, and to use as centerpieces.

Because flowers come in so many different colors, you’ll have a huge selection to choose from even if you decide to go with the traditional red, white, and blue theme. Although your florist will be able to show you many flowers he or she has available, here are some flower varieties in the traditional colors to get you started:

# Red Flowers: Roses, tulips, carnations, anthurium, gladiolus, freesia, lily, gerbera, chrysanthemum.

# White Flowers: Asters, gladiolus, freesia, hydrangea, lily, orchid, chrysanthemum, rose, snapdragons.

# Blue Flowers: Delphinium, gladiolus, liatris, irises.

All these beautiful red, white, and blue flowers can be used in many different ways for your party. Your florist can create small, simple centerpieces, or large and elaborate pieces to place in more spacious areas. You can also ask your florist to make special napkin rings or provide single stems to tuck into your napkins or place at each setting. These can double as party favors that your guests can take home. And, since the Fourth of July is a day to celebrate the freedom of our country, you might also consider having corsages and boutonnieres made to honor guests who served in the military.

Talk to your florist about the endless possibilities for using flowers in your Fourth of July celebration. He or she is sure to have many great ideas to suit your needs and light up your party more brightly than the fireworks in the sky.

Source: http://thephantomwriters.com/free_content/db/b/fourth-of-july-flowers.shtml

Throughout his life, Charles Darwin surrounded himself with flowers. When he was 10, he wrote down each time a peony bloomed in his father’s garden. When he bought a house to raise his own family, he turned the grounds into a botanical field station where he experimented on flowers until his death. But despite his intimate familiarity with flowers, Darwin once wrote that their evolution was “an abominable mystery.”

Darwin could see for himself how successful flowering plants had become. They make up the majority of living plant species, and they dominate many of the world’s ecosystems, from rain forests to grasslands. They also dominate our farms. Out of flowers come most of the calories humans consume, in the form of foods like corn, rice and wheat. Flowers are also impressive in their sheer diversity of forms and colors, from lush, full-bodied roses to spiderlike orchids to calla lilies shaped like urns.

The fossil record, however, offered Darwin little enlightenment about the early evolution of flowers. At the time, the oldest fossils of flowering plants came from rocks that had formed from 100 million to 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. Paleontologists found a diversity of forms, not a few primitive forerunners.

Long after Darwin’s death in 1882, the history of flowers continued to vex scientists. But talk to experts today, and there is a note of guarded optimism. “There’s an energy that I haven’t seen in my lifetime,” said William Friedman, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The discovery of new fossils is one source of that new excitement. But scientists are also finding a wealth of clues in living flowers and their genes. They are teasing apart the recipes encoded in plant DNA for building different kinds of flowers. Their research indicates that flowers evolved into their marvelous diversity in much the same way as eyes and limbs have: through the recycling of old genes for new jobs.

Until recently, scientists were divided over how flowers were related to other plants. Thanks to studies on plant DNA, their kinship is clearer. “There was every kind of idea out there, and a lot of them have been refuted,” said James A. Doyle, a paleobotanist at the University of California, Davis.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/science/08flower.html?_r=1

There are occasions when you want to send a huge bouquet of the most exotic blooms but do not have a budget. Never despair for the World Wide Web has solutions to everything. All you need is the conviction that you can still send a beautiful bunch of flowers.

Log on to the internet and look for discounted flowers or wholesale flower websites. Surf the net for a bargain. But check what shipping costs you. Otherwise you will be pennywise and pound foolish.

Here are seven tips to send flowers on a shoestring budget:

1. Look for seasonal discount offers online. Many florists have a bargain section where great buys can be had. Choose a flower bouquet that has more greens or a mix of real and silk flowers.
2. Surf the internet to find out how you can send great flowers and yet not overspend. The World Wide Web is a knowledge highway and experts give tips through informative articles and links.
3. Use discount coupons offered by online websites to get beautiful flowers at a lower price. Many websites offer great discount coupons as also airport parking lots and credit card companies. Become a bargain hunter and know how and when you can save money.
4. Choose seasonal blooms rather than exotic ones. The pricing will be vastly different. Be sure to check what shipping will be. Find out if any online florist is offering a free shipping deal.
5. Use comparison tools offered by online websites to find the best deal from online florists.
6. Use a friend or family member’s membership to get a better price or discount from online florists.
7. Think beyond a traditional bouquet. Many online florists offer options like a nice ornament with just a single rose. Or a combination of silk and real flowers. Or a potted bloom. Often arrangements are more economical and beautifully decorated.

Learn to think out of the box and save money. Send flowers but don’t go broke. The internet has something for everyone; all you need to do is master where to look.

Often times, buying from a flower grower or wholesaler is cheaper than from a florist. The downside is that your recipient will have to arrange the flowers. Look for wholesaler and grower websites and determine what the difference in rates between these flowers and that offered by florists is.

Ordering flowers online benefits growers as well as buyers and you could even consider buying a bouquet from an auction website. You may even get the best flowers for as little as a dollar.

Source: http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/singapore/flower/1221/7_tips_to_send_flowers_on_a_budget_.php