“PANSIES: HOW TO GROW, Reimagine, and Create Beauty with Pansies and Violas” by Brenna Estrada is a love letter to a flower that has been capturing hearts for centuries. Once a favorite flower of nobility and fashionable society in the 19th century, by the mid-20th century falling interest had diminished the once-flourishing bloom to “old-fashioned” or a squat, seasonal “color spot” with giant red, blue or yellow blooms. There’s so much more to this enduring flower.
Estrada fell for pansies while working for a local flower farmer who introduced her to a different face of the common bloom. These days, along with her husband and three sons, Estrada tends a farm of her own, Three Brothers Bloom (threebrothersbloom.com) on Camano Island, where she’s spent years trialing hundreds of different pansy varieties. The busy flower farmer and author pours everything she’s learned into the pages of her beautiful new book.
In the preface, Estrada declares, “This book is a heartfelt plea.” She’s convinced that the pansy is ready for a comeback in the garden and in the vase. “While (pansies) are one of the most common flowers cultivated, they are rarely grown to their full potential and have not been for many years,” she writes.
The book opens by peeling back layers of the pansy’s “curiously hidden history,” tracing the flower’s development in England, Scotland, France and Belgium, from show-bench bloom to the darling of florists. The idea of growing pansies as cut flowers with suitably long stems was a revelation to me, even though Estrada maintains that the practice “is not a new trend or a recent discovery,” and that pansies have been “grown avidly for this purpose from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century.”
Estrada devotes an entire chapter to successfully growing florist-worthy pansies in the home garden. At the farm, starting from seed, she grows pansies in raised beds and in companionship with other garden plants. Except for those hybrids that have been bred for compact growth, most pansies have a trailing habit that takes well to training upward, producing long stems for a vase. Estrada suggests tucking a row of pansies at the foot of a row of sweet peas, among garden roses, or even trained alongside a caged tomato in the vegetable garden, where the plants can clamber up supports.
Full sun promotes flowering, but the plants require cool, moist soil, especially in summer, to develop strong, deep roots, which Estrada explains is critical. At the farm, the soil is supplemented with fully composted manure, bonemeal and seaweed; plants are boosted with a weekly feed of compost tea or liquid seaweed fertilizer. Healthy plants are more resistant to leaf spot and powdery mildew, but slugs and snails will decimate your pansies in one night.
Pansies are eager to bloom. Early blooms, however, divert energy away from root growth, and sometimes the plants can flower themselves to death before they become established. “I have found that deadheading is almost as essential for health and longevity as keeping (the plants) well watered,” Estrada advises.
With petals ruffled like a petticoat or smooth velvet blossoms with contrasting streaks, blotches or whiskers, there’s a pansy for everyone, and in chapter three Estrada profiles her favorite varieties. Some are available only by seed from specialty growers; others, such as plants in the Delta and Frizzle Sizzle series, you might find at your local nursery. As you’re browsing shelves filled with fresh spring plants, keep watch for Imperial “Antique Shades,” a confection of apricot, peach and soft linen. Violas in the Sorbet series are petite and available in a range of colors, all of which are so cute you’ll want to pinch their cheeky petals.
Estrada is partial to blooms in “metallic and earthy” shades of bronze, copper, toffee and mahogany brown, colors typically found in older varieties. And black — Estrada loves black pansies. And then should we talk about scent? Yes, some pansies are fragrant. Estrada likens the perfume of some pansies to inhaling deeply while standing in a chocolate shop: “I’ve heard others say they smell like almonds, but I stand firm that they smell like chocolate.” The book concludes with a look at pansies in stunning seasonal arrangements; at the table on cakes, salads and cocktails; even floating in a dreamy bath, fulfilling the author’s “heartfelt plea” to elevate pansies to their proper and prominent place in our lives.
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