Yellow flowers

Yellow is the brightest and warmest colour in a bouquet — it stands for joie de vivre, friendship and confidence. In the old language of flowers, yellow carried a reputation for envy and jealousy, but that reading plays virtually no role today: anyone receiving yellow flowers reads sunshine into them, not resentment. That is exactly why yellow is the first choice at a sickbed and in a get-well bouquet.

The yellow range runs through the whole year: in spring, daffodils and yellow tulips open the season, and at Easter they belong on every table. Summer belongs to sunflowers — stacked high at the Veiling in every size — while craspedia adds graphic accents with its mustard-yellow spheres all year round. Add yellow roses and solidago as golden filler.

Yellow almost combines itself: with white and plenty of greenery you get a fresh, summery look; with blue and violet — say iris or delphinium — the classic complementary contrast that makes both colours glow. With orange it turns warm and harvest-ripe; and if you want to calm yellow down, simply add more foliage.

A note from the workbench: after cutting, daffodils release a sap that clogs the stems of other flowers in the same water. We therefore stand them in their own water for a few hours before they join a mixed bouquet — the same intermediate step is worth it at home.