From roses to ranunculus: Nostalgia blooming big in backyard gardens (2024)

While backyard gardeners typically aren’t chasing trends when they’re out turning dirt, here’s a tip for those simply curious about what flowers are hot. If your grandmother grew it, it’s probably in.

Nostalgia is fresh. Just about anything snipped from garden is chic.

Trish Snyder chuckles at how different that vibe is from the situation in 2001 when she started the business that is today an East Earl flower farm and event venue called Flourish.

“Even to do flowers for weddings with what I was growing (back then) I was a little bit, like, ‘Ahhhhh, I hope this is OK. I didn’t buy this from a wholesaler. I grew it in my garden,’ ” she says. “It was almost like a little undercover, because the local movement wasn’t really happening yet.”

It is now. She’s seeing more and more flower growers join trade groups each year.

“I think that’s an indication that people are loving the garden flowers — the ones that have been around, but maybe haven’t been appreciated,” she says.

READ:A look at the 2024 Philadelphia Flower Show, plus 5 things not to miss

Snyder buys from wholesalers during the off season. But throughout the growing months, her 1-acre garden supplies plenty of options that could be labeled nostalgic. Those fill the Flourish flower bar but could just as easily fit on high-fashion runways of late, or pages of magazines like Architectural Digest.

Consider the March issue. Zinnias add zing to actor Sofia Vergara’s Los Angeles home. A big bouquet of baby’s breath sits on actor Maude Apatow’s New York city kitchen counter. And Laura Kim, co-creative director at Oscar de la Renta, is watering flowers on her Manhattan rooftop while wearing a dress covered in hibiscus — a flower that Southern Living once dubbed one of “7 flowering plants that will take you back to Grandma’s yard.” (The others were: camellias, crepe myrtles, dogwoods, magnolias, gardenias and roses.)

In addition to hibiscus, Oscar de la Renta’s spring 2024 collection incorporates a lot of lily of the valley. Flower wholesaler WholeBlossoms featured that bloomer on its blog last month, noting that florists are pairing its dainty bells with a variety of textures and colors.

“This juxtaposition showcases how the lily of the valley has evolved from a traditional emblem to a versatile element in modern design, mirroring the dynamic fusion of historical reverence with current trends,” states the WholeBlossoms blog.

Poppies also punctuate Oscar de la Renta’s 2024 collections. Ariana Grande wore one of the fashion house’s poppy dresses in pictures posted on her Instagram page two weeks ago — a probable nod to “The Wizard of Oz” from the singer who plays Glinda in the upcoming “Wicked.”

Toss in the fact that Poppy — along with Violet and Iris — appeared on some lists of popular baby names for 2024, and that’s quite a lot of attention for a flower that simply pops up unassisted each year along many sunny Lancaster County fence rows.

READ:Make a resurrection garden, take a spring wildflower walk: 94 things for plant lovers to do in March

‘A fresh look’

The oft-maligned carnation also appears in both this month’s Architectural Digest and Oscar de la Renta’s pre-fall collection. So much for the infamous early-aughts rant from “Sex and the City” character Charlotte (who ended up naming her babies Lily and Rose) about how carnations are nothing but filler flowers.

Or maybe not.

“We still get a lot of people coming to us saying we don’t want carnations,” Snyder says. “And I am not usually a carnation person because it reminds me of very stifled flowers, very stiff, because I feel like that’s how they’ve been used.”

But flower breeders are coming out with some unique new colors for carnations, she says.

“They’re very far removed from red and white and what people typically think of. So if I have a soft spot for carnations, that’s it,” she says. “Maybe because … it kind of gives you a fresh look on something that has been a traditional flower for a long time.”

There are a lot of new zinnia shades out now, too, she says.

“You have maybe this untraditional blush color and people are thinking, ‘Oh, that’s not my grandmother’s red zinnia, but I love the color so I want to grow zinnias now,’ ” she says.

Last month Flourish offered a class on more nostalgic blooms — the ranunculus and anemone. Those can be tricky, Snyder says.

“They remind me of a cottage garden ... They’ve been around for a while. But people haven’t really known how to grow them in their garden,” she says. “But now there’s more information around so I feel like they’re making a comeback.”