When the 68th Annual Butler Farm Show gets under way Aug. 8, Mary Lehnerd of Jefferson Township will be there to defend her title. For three years in a row, she has won first place in floral exhibits for her wild flower arrangements.

“I’m going to try,” she said. “Sometimes I fail and sometimes I do OK.”

“It’s just entertainment for me,” said Lehnerd, who will turn 81 in August.

She doesn’t know what will be in her arrangement this year.

Lehnerd will search fields and valleys to find flowers for a potential prize-winning arrangement, and she will take advantage of the yards of her seven children.

“It’s strictly whatever I can come up with,” she said. “The whole family keeps looking now.”

Not everything she finds works. One year she wanted to use some blue flowers she found along a road. She picked them the day before making her arrangement and put them in a big bucket. The next morning only the greenery was left. She discovered those blossoms only last a day.

“You’re pretty safe with daisies,” Lehnerd said. “They just have to get through the first day (at the fair).”

She puts daisies and other thin or floppy stemmed blooms between other flowers that will hold them up.

Janis Harbison, an event florist in South Buffalo Township, Armstrong County, sometimes uses a ball of chicken wire in a container to hold flowers in place.

“That’s the old way of flower arranging,” Harbison said. “You had to be pretty inventive.”

She said morning is the best time to cut flowers for an arrangement.

“During the night they’ve been hydrated,” she said.

Harbison doesn’t add anything to the water to make the flowers last longer but she said, “Keep the water fresh and keep the leaves out of the water. The leaves will rot and make the water go bad.”

Harbison wants her arrangements to look natural. She uses ferns, leaves, ivy, hosta or other green plants and puts them in the container before she adds the flowers.

Golden cypress is a summer evergreen that she uses in arrangements. She said herbs add a pleasant scent and interesting shapes.

“If I have some straight stiff flowers, I like to see something soft with it,” Harbison said. “I always like them mixed. I like to put some soft greens with it to color it and give it a finished look.”

Tall snapdragons are among her favorites for arrangements.

“The more you cut them, the more they bloom. They like to be cut,” Harbison said.

“They have a lot of movement,” she said. “Zinnias are tall and are nice in the center of the arrangement. But you need something around them to give some movement.”

Harbison cuts Cosmos, black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace too for arrangements. She said transplanting Queen Anne’s lace from a field can be successful. In the garden, they will come back every year.

“I also like geraniums,” Harbison said. “They’re really lovely as cut flowers. They’re a big bang for the buck. They bloom all summer long.”

Christine McMeekin, vice president of Quality Gardens in Valencia, said it’s not too late to plant things to cut in August.

“You can plant anything now, it’s just a matter of watering,” McMeekin said.

She especially likes a full-sun white blooming variety of hydrangea available as plants 1 to 3 feet tall. They are just about ready to bloom and will need sun and space. Some of these hydrangeas become 6 feet tall.

“You can plant them now and they bloom through August. I love them. They’re amazing for arrangements,” she said. “Before the blooms are spent, cut them and use them for inside the house and that would be the pruning for the season.”

McMeekin said Echinacea is a perennial flower — it will come up every year.

“They are a good drought-tolerant one so they put up with the dry soil a little bit better,” she said. “If you get them in the ground this year, they will almost double by next. As long as they are happy they will grow really, really well.

“You can do varieties of Salvia,” McMeekin said. She uses the annual variety of this blue flower for cutting.

She also likes Sedum in arrangements, especially ones with tall stalks.

“They hold up really well if you cut them. They are a later bloomer,” McMeekin said.

McMeekin suggested several other flowers to plant next year for arrangements.

Pink, white and purple Cleomes, also called spider flowers, can go in the ground as seeds or as small plants and grow as tall as 5 feet.

“(Dragon Wing begonias) have arching stems,” she said. “They have cool leaves.”

Nepeta, also called catmint, has long plumes of blossoms.

“It has a beautiful soft blue flower on it. It is a little airy. It has a very long bloom period. It starts the end of May and it will bloom probably until the beginning of September.”