There is absolutely no doubt about it: I love flowers! I love growing both flowers and foliage. And I love flower arranging. If I didn't have my current job, I might become a floral designer. Then I could own one of the many interesting flower shops in New York City that provide other flower lovers with magnificent arrangements and bouquets for their homes and offices and for special occasions.

My love affair with one of nature's loveliest creations began when I was a small child. My father taught me how to grow from seed myriad cutting flowers. I started to plant tulip and hyacinth and narcissus bulbs. I developed patience by learning how to sow long-germinating snapdragons, the seeds of which are so minuscule that I wondered how anything so microscopic could turn into anything important. I discovered the difference between iris rhizomes and begonia and dahlia tubers. I puzzled at the fleshy, sometimes hairy, and sometimes dark and knobby shapes. They miraculously sprouted green shoots that would leaf out and send up sturdy stalks of perfumed bearded beauties and fluffy dinner-plate-size show-off dahlias.

When I grew up and began establishing my own houses and designing my own gardens, I always included a cutting gardens, a separate area where I would plant a succession of flowering plants to provide me with blossoms from April to October, from tiny lilies of the valley and muscari to huge dahlias and chrysanthemums. Then I would place vases on every table, windowsill, and chest of drawers.

As my skills as a grower improved - and, for sure, the results some years were infinitely better than others - I realized that some flowers were much better suited than others for arranging indoors. Some plants that are grown principally for their luscious foliage displays - either in outside containers (alocasias, coleus, geraniums) or as mass plantings in the shade garden (hostas, rheum, hellebores, Jacob's ladder) - are equally well suited to serving as dramatic accents, or statements on their own, in vases.