Planning Ahead for Memorial Day Flowers in Zone 6

When Memorial Day comes around, my family and I gather up armloads of fresh cut garden flowers for graveside decorations. With 28 grave sites to decorate, having enough fresh flowers takes some careful planning ahead.

For gardeners living in the western desert scrub of Hardiness Zone 6 (which includes southwest Idaho, central Washington and Oregon) our choices for Memorial Day flowers are somewhat limited. Mid spring blooms such as tulips, hyacinths, syringa, and lilacs will have disappeared by the middle of May, just a couple of weeks before the Memorial Day holiday. Fortunately for us, there are a wide varieties of bulbs and perennials that consistently come into bloom two or three days before Memorial Day.

Despite the wide variety of late spring bloomers, not all varieties of flowers will work in a Memorial Day arrangement. Weak or short stemmed garden florals really don't have the strength to hold their shape in a vase, and will droop several hours after being picked. From experience, we've discovered the best Memorial Day garden florals are those with long, sturdy stems including these five varieties:

Iris

The iris was first cultivated in 11th century France and has a long tradition of being used in the West for graveside decorations. These colorful flowers grow from either a rhizome or fibrous root stalk, and can reach heights of up to 40 inches. Irises have a very short bloom time with unusually fragile blossoms. Irises usually come into bloom during the Memorial Day weekend.

There are over 200 varieties of iris available. The more common variety of iris we see decorating gravesides include the bearded iris and the yellow flag.

Heuchera 'Paris' PPAF

Locally, we call these delicate flowers Cora Bells. This perennial has medium sized, white veiled leaves with columns of deep rose colored flowers that work quite well as "filler" in our graveside bouquets. Cora Bells have long lasting blossoms that typically come into bloom about a week before Memorial Day.

Roses