Fresh Choices BY KATIE VINCENT


BLUE HEAVEN > The United States’ semiquincentennial celebration is a golden opportunity to promote patriotic arrangements. Certainly, there’s no shortage of red or white blooms. (See the March/April issue for inspiration on the latter, which matches Cloud Dancer, Pantone’s Color of the Year.) But blue? Traditionally, that’s been more challenging for florists to source. “The sea and sky make up so much of Earth, so they say that’s why


there are so few flowers in those shades,” says J Schwanke, AAF, AIFD, PFCI, host of the television show “Life in Bloom,” which airs on PBS, and Create TV, the 2010 recipient of the Society of American Florists’ Tommy Bright award and the winner of the 2019 Marketer of the Year contest. “Flowers tend to come in colors that complement or contrast blue instead.” Hydrangea and delphinium are the two flowers most often associated


with blue. Others tend to serve as accents, offering a pop of periwinkle, cerulean, or cyan in a variety of textures. Among them: hyacinth, muscari, cornflower, nigella, thistle, laceflower, and myosotis. In late 2023, Suntory Flowers launched BluOcean™ chrysanthemums, a line of pompon chrysanthemums, developed with the National


DELPHINIUM HYBRID Camflor


CORNFLOWER Camflor


‘LEVANTE BLU’ ANEMONE DVFlora


16 FLORAL MANAGEMENT | July/August 2026 | WWW.SAFNOW.ORG


MYOSOTIS DVFlora


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