Edible Plants & Flower Arrangements | Creative Ideas for Your Spring Garden

Welcome back to the Spring Series! In this episode, I’m joined by my talented friend Leslie from Terrain, who’s an expert horticulturalist and plant stylist with a wealth of knowledge about edible flowers and herbs.

Leslie walks me through planting a kitchen-friendly edible flower garden –from choosing the right blooms to creating both large and small planters that are not only practical but beautiful. These edible flowers add flavor, fragrance, and charm to everything from scones and salads to teas, cocktails, and baked goods.

Together, we talk flavor profiles, recipe ideas, and how to create stunning planters right outside your kitchen door. Leslie even shows how to turn simple blooms and branches into thoughtful gifts and centerpieces, including a charming forsythia basket and a wild-foraged floral arrangement from her backyard.

Whether you love gardening, hosting, or just want to bring beauty and freshness into your home and meals, this episode is full of ideas and inspiration.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
– Which flowers and herbs are safe (and delicious!) to eat
– How to design a planter for beauty and function
– Creative ways to use edible flowers in everyday recipes
– Simple floral arrangement ideas for gifting or table decor

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[Music] [Music] [Music] Welcome to the spring series. Okay, truth be told, this might be my most exciting one that I’ve done up till now. And now that I have my new friend Lesie, we’re going to be doing multiple of these over the summer because she is unbelievably qualified in what we’re getting ready to do and she might be one of the most creative people I have ever met. Um, just wait till you hear. But she’s come over today to help me do some pots. Help me prepare some edible gift baskets. Absolutely. And uh, tell me how to candy flowers or what was the other word you used? Oh, we’re going to candy flowers and then we have some that we can pickle as well. Pickle. Okay. So, here we are. Take us away. So, today what we’re going to do is everything that I have brought to the show is all edible. So, we’re looking into edible flowers and edible greens for spring. So, we have some lilacs here. We have tulips which are edible. We have some dalas, some pansies, dianths, and we even have some fiddle uh ferns. Okay. So, hang on a second. I knew like nersia was I mean that might be the only thing I do know that that is edible, but I didn’t know tulips were edible. I didn’t know. So, when you’re saying edible, are you saying the flower portion of these or the greens as well? That’s a fabulous question. So, I did a little bit of a mix um in your assortment. So, down here we have tulips, which the flowers are edible. You only want to really be eating the petals. Okay. And each color tulip will have a slightly different flavor, which is something super fun. Obviously, the bee is interested in it as well. Um, pansies are edible. Dalia, um, they’re edible as well. You can actually eat the flowers and the tubers. So there are tons of recipes where you’re actually eating the roots of dalas as well. So a lot of times if the deer want to eat it, you might want to eat it. You can eat it. Well, and I think it’s so beautiful. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed on some salads when people will put flowers on salads. And so so when spring Oh my goodness, this is so much fun. In spring, one of my favorite things to do is actually make a flower salad. which you can have just basically flowers and some edible greens like dandelions in there. There’s a green called sorl which is a lemony flavor. Okay. And um you can make the whole thing out of flowers and it has tons of nutrients in it. Lots of vitamin C. Oh wow. Um you know it’s great for you to eat. So you went actually you got a lot of this on your on your own property. Absolutely. So tons of it I got from my own property. You’ll see this on the side of the highway lots of places. Oh yeah. I think it’s a giant weed actually when I see it. Exactly. So it’s actually mustard. I know. Isn’t that cool? So you can look at the tops. We should do a double episode right now. All right. Go ahead. The tops kind of look like broccoli. See that? So it’s a wild mustard and you can eat the leaves and the flowers. Um each flower has a taste. Some of them taste amazing. Taste it. Oh yeah, absolutely. And some of them taste like radishes and some of them will taste like spinach. Right. So, this one’s not so good. But if you try this one, that’ll be great. Wow. Isn’t that amazing? Yeah. What do you usually do with your lilac? So, with my lilacs, I like to do a few things. So, I like to make a simple syrup. Okay. So, you can make a cocktail with it if you want to do that. Um or I actually mix the simple syrup and the flowers into a scone, which is really delicious. So, I have a bunch of I hope you’re making notes because I need you to remind me all the things she’s coming back to make because we didn’t have those on the list for today. But, we’re going to make lilac scones. They’re so good. I make lilac scones and then I’ll actually make um a traditional tea and I’ll fold cherry blossoms into the tea and some other flowers. So, you’ll have floating floral tea with your floral scones. Okay, I’m blown away right now. Okay, what are we going to do with this? So, right now we’re going to um do a beautiful edible arrangement for whether you want to do it for Easter or for just spring in general. You can give it to Mother’s Day. For Mother’s Day, give it for Mother’s Day. If you just want to be in your garden and smell and eat things, this is the kind of thing you want to do. Okay. So, what I love Do you need me to open this? Sure, we can open that. Okay. And then what I love to do when you have a tall pot like this is it’s really tough to fill this whole thing with soil. If you are somebody who likes to constantly rearrange your patio like I am, depending on the event I’m having, you don’t want your pot to be super heavy, but you want it to be heavy enough so it doesn’t fall over. So, she says that because I had a pot that kept falling over until it Well, it only fell over once, but it smashed. And so, we were just having that. Yeah. Exactly. So, what I like to do is I like to take the biggest thing out of the pot. So, we’re going to take this out. Okay. Okay. And then I like to take this and flip it over. Now, we have some chicken wire in here left from our winter arrangement we did. So, you can either use chicken wire if you want to use that. Just something to make sure it’s up a little bit. And I’ll actually take this wire and move it around the bottom of the pot just to hold everything in place. Okay. And then we’ll So, then we’ll put this in. Now, something that I always consider whenever I’m doing my arrangements for my clients are where the flowers are sitting, the shape of the plant, and where you will be viewing it most. Okay? So, you’re going to be viewing it most from your house, right? And maybe from this table. So, we don’t want this massive green facing that way. Right? So, we want to take this and flip it around and tuck it towards the back. Oh, so it’s not in the center. It’s in the back. It’s going to be in the back. Okay. Perfect. So, with my pots, I typically like to do a thriller, a filler, and a spiller. So, okay. She said that to me earlier. Can we repeat that? A thriller. So, you have your thriller, a filler, and then a spiller coming over. Exactly. So, that’s going to give you a lot of It’s kind of like I learned and I put it in my books, sleep, creep, leap. Yes. Yes. Okay. Exactly. So, and then we’ll go in and we’ll take the tag off. Okay. Now, if you’re like me, I uh I need to keep it. I keep it. I keep all my tags. And I’m actually that nerd that makes a spreadsheet. Okay. Of everything she owns because our property is on um we’re working towards becoming an arboritum. Oh wow. So you actually have to file keep all of these and file where you got it. What you have, but I’m also a collector and I like to have one of everything. Yeah. So we’ll keep this tag. Can I So she came at Christmas time and helped me. I I have to tell you, she took out of uh is it grape vine? The the antler head you made? Yes. She took grape vine and created an antlers head that she hung on the outside of the barn. It was uh Yeah. The talents beyond. Okay. And and can I say one other thing? She just had a baby. This is her very first outing since having a baby. What’s your baby’s name? Finn. Finn. I love it. So, thank you so much for doing Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. It’s very lovely to get out of the house. I’m sure I’m like in between nursing like what are we going to do? All right. So, what’s next? So, next right now this is our biggest thing and it’s sitting at a really good point in the pot. So, now we want to kind of fill in a little bit of the dirt. That way things can grow into it. Okay. And what I also like to do, I’m very seasonal about my planters. So, I like to refresh them every six weeks. Oh. to two months because I always want them to be kind of peak looking. Yeah. Um so I plant with things that are mostly perennials. Me too. I don’t like annuals. Exactly. So I’ll do kind of an 8020 rule. Okay. Where I’ll plant 80% perennials and 20% annuals. That way I have made an investment in the future of my garden. Yeah. So when this is done looking peak Yeah. I take it and I find a spot to go plant it. And one of the best things that you could do is you’re planting in a little collection or what I like to call a plant family. Okay? Right? So all of these things would like to grow with each other out in your yard. So as they grow together, you can just actually take them out and move them and move them and you have a whole miniature garden. Oh wow. So if you do all your pots at the same time, then you literally can take each one, dig out a garden bed, put them in, and you have an established garden already. Already. Okay. And you can do that for each season. So then we’re going to do tulips, which like we said are edible as well. So um you want to eat the petals off of these and they’re great in a flower salad. Do you literally just take off the whole You could take off the whole thing. You need more chicken wire. Well, you know what? What we can do Oh, is turn that upside down. And the best part of these are they have drainage holes. So, this will make sure that your pot can still have a lot of drainage, but also that the roots can grow in. Oh, wow. The only thing is if you are going to take this out of the pot and plant it in your garden, you just want to wiggle them out, right? We don’t want plastic in the ground. Okay. Do you have to break up? You can if you want to. What I usually do is I’ll start it as as a clump, which you can kind of stick right in there. And then we’ll see how it looks with the rest. And then we’ll wiggle it around. Okay. Um, so another fabulous edible flower I brought are violets. Wow. So, violets, I brought these from my yard in two different colors. So, a lot of people have these growing as weeds. Yeah. In their garden. Um, you know, weeds are in the eye of the beholder, right? So, I love these. I love them as a ground cover. They um are much better than other weeds. Um, and they taste great. So, this is something that I love to put in a salad or a drink. Um, you can make like a blueberry lemonade and just put them in the top and they’re beautiful. And, um, we can stick these in as well. Blueberry lemonade. Oh my goodness. Oh, yeah. Do you want this one? So, we can tuck that in towards the back. Okay, there we go. Okay. Just add some depth to your planter. So then pansies are one of the best ones to candy. You’ll see them on wedding cakes. Um you’ll see them on cookies. Uh fkaca if you wanted to make like a a floral scene of all like I have a fabulous friend who I work with and she makes amazing fkaca and she’ll do like whole scenes. So she’ll do like a meadow hillside with flowers. She’s oh my word incredible. So that is um these when you say candied um you’re saying you dip them into brush them with an egg white and then a super fine sugar on them and do you just sprinkle the sugar and then shake it off and a lot of people will use um a sifter a sifter right over it. Okay. So then we can stick this under as well. You’ve I always wondered like how are we filling these big pots? But yeah, this is like a miracle. Um and then you know a lot of soils going down, you just like I said, you want to wig make sure you’re wiggling out um some of the pots if you’re going to plant it in your garden. So whenever you’re buying something like this from the garden center, you’re going to see it’s pretty pot bound, which means that you have a lot of roots that are around. So, I basically go in with my annuals and some of my perennials, and you just want to break those roots up, okay? Because you want this plant to be able to shoot the roots out. Okay? So, we’ll actually stick this a little lower. And then sometimes if we don’t have enough room right away, which we will cuz we’re going to turn this guy over. Okay. I got it. Perfect. So, then we have a little dalia, which the petals and the tubers are also edible. And then we’re a little flower heavy right now. So I’m going to add in some ferns. So you always want to have some greenery going on as well. Um these are absolutely fantastic. They’re ostrich ferns and you buy them at the grocery store as little fiddles which you can see. You buy them at the grocery store. So these Yep. So what you do is you want to wait till they’re about this big. Okay. Then you cut them. Okay. And you don’t have to worry like this thing will survive an apocalypse. Okay. My ferns do the same thing. Like they could burn down and then they’re coming back. Exactly. So you want to cut them when they’re all wound up like this and then you blanch them for about 5 minutes. So blanch them in boiling water. Boiling water. 5 minutes. Cold water. Uh you don’t have to. You can put them straight into a saucepan with I like to do butter, lemon, and a little garlic. Um and they’re absolutely fabulous. They taste like a mix between spinach and asparagus. Oh my goodness. But this way you can always be eating out of your garden. So, we’re just going to kind of tuck this in. So, so you can send your kids outside. Can you pick me some of that fern? Absolutely. Pick me. This is incredible. And it’s such a great little hunt. I mean, I grew up that way. You know that I live next door to my parents. We all live on a little farm of edible flowers and greens. That’s incredible. And um you know, I was always sent out in the yard. Need some extra dirt for that back there. Oh, yeah. Sure. That would be great. Um my husband’s from Germany. Same thing. His Oh, these are onions. Oh, these are these are grape pieces. Oh, so you can also grains and they taste Here I have a little taste the prettiest. Just a little bit of berry. A little berry. These taste like they’d be fabulous in a salad. Yeah. Oh, exactly. So, um my husband’s from Germany. Same thing. His grandmother would be like, “Go out, go pick berries, mushrooms, and flowers.” I love it. So over here we’re going to do another little group of three. This is beautiful. And already that’s coming together. Here we go. I love lilaces. Ah, they’re the best. Mhm. And they’re all different kinds. One of my favorites is actually our Russian lilac. Oh, really? Which is a double blooming white lilac. They smell so good. They do. They’re just divine. Okay, what’s this? So this is dianths. This is another one you will frequently see candied. Okay. On top of cakes. So you candied to put them on cakes. Otherwise, just put them in salads just regularly. In salads. You can have them in drinks, whatever you want to do. Um I like I said, I love a flower salad. Um but you certainly can do um it in drinks as well. Okay, this is so beautiful. And there you go. That is awesome. You have your spring [Music] planter. So, sticking with the edible flower theme that we have going on, I wanted to do two separate planters. So, we are going to do one that’s planted. Um, just with some cute flowers and then we’re going to do another one that’s branches. Okay. Um, so forthas have edible flowers. They kind of taste like radishes. So, I can walk up to a FYIA and eat it and you can eat it. Okay. If I’m going to the hospital tonight after I eat, I’ll take one with you. Okay. Okay. So, what I say is sunflowers just taste like spinach. Yeah. This is one of those ones that it’s just like a a little bitter but a little bitter but great in a salad. Yeah. Um if you want to make um a flower salad with a little bit of sweetness um a blueberry vinegrett, a fig vinegrett, something that will tie into the flowers that you’re using. So we have magnolia. This is star magnolia. Now this is a fabulous fragrant edible flower. M. So the only thing I would say is this one when you eat it, it’s a little soapy. Okay. Right. So if you’re going to use it in a salad, I definitely would suggest that vinegrett. Vinegrett. Okay. But um what you can do with these are pickle them. So you can use a rice wine vinegar. Um any kind of vinegar. Uh pickle them, come back to them next year, and they’ll taste they’ll lose their soapiness and they’ll taste like a little bit of ginger. Oh my word. Yeah. Which is amazing. So, if you want to just do a branch arrangement, you can start off with soil or a lot of people will use uh floral foam. I’m not a big fan of floral foam um because it’s a little toxic. So, I typically either will use soil or I will use um spagnum moss in the chicken wire. Okay. And make a brick. And make a Okay. Yep. And then we can go in and you just look at the structure of the branches. Uhhuh. and just start to play. Um, these are red buds. This is a I love red bud trees. Pennsylvania native. Um, this one is from my weeping red bud. Um, actually this one’s from my re weeping red bud. This one is from a red bud that I trash picked from a garden center. Um, hey, they get rid of stuff at the end of seasons. They do. And you know, this one is actually 10 feet tall at this point and looking fabulous. But this one actually tastes like radish. Okay. So, you could take a little I mean, I am gonna go around with a whole different appreciation. And it has like slightly a lemony flavor as well. So, I like to kind of go asymmetrical with a lot of my branch arrangements. Um, you saw the one I just made out of magnolia at the store. Um, that’s what I think of when I think of magnolia. Oh, yeah. This one’s fabulous. So, this one’s called Butterflies. Okay. It’s a yellow magnolia. Um, they’re just I think I have them in every color to be honest with you. I have a bit of a magnolia problem. I love I think we’re going to put in a few magnolia trees this year. Oh, fabulous. All right. Now, do you put flowers in front of it or is it just sticks? So, if you want to do this in a vase, it can be just sticks. We can do flowers. It is completely up to you. It’s beautiful. Depends on um each individual and what they want to see. Because we’re doing it in soil, we can certainly add a few flowers. So, something else I like to do with branches is actually wrap them around the base of the pot. So, because I just picked these, they’re going to be flexible enough where you can just kind of tuck it in. This one broke a little, but that’s okay. We’ll just tuck it in. And then you just kind of weave it around. And then you can take it and weave it around itself. That is gorgeous. Right. So, you make a little rim. When I said she might be the most talented person I’d ever watched, I mean, yeah, you are. So, here we go. We have this beautiful rim going on. I’m actually going to tuck some of it in as well. So, we have just some of these hanging out. Then, we’ll bring this up and through. You can braid it. Um, when it’s fresh, you really can honestly do anything so much with it because it just kind How long will it stay? It’s going to be very shortlived. So, this is something you do like when I do my uh charity baskets out of cherry, I will it’ll be for that evening. They will have to come pick it up that day. It’s for auction. Yes, it’s filled with a bunch of cute gardening supplies like gloves and watering cans and you know that way people have How long will these stay? So those actually will stay for much longer. So um they can last if depending on the condition for up to a week. Do you water the soil at all? You water the soil if you’re having it um inside. I would do this in a vase. Okay. I wouldn’t do it in soil. Um, but if you’re giving it as a gift as an indooroutdoor container, then feel free. So, let’s tuck some a little bit of living ones in there as well just to have these little cuties. You make it seems effortless. That’s what I love. It’s like, oh, when she leaves, I can do this again. Absolutely. Or you can call me. Yes, exactly. You’re in a pinch. So, that one’s super lovely. And we can stick that kind of right in the front and nestle that in there. Wow. You always have leftovers. Anytime you’re doing a planter, you’ll always have some leftover goodies. Um, so a terracotta pot is perfect for a little leftovers. You can always give it away as a gift. But what we’re going to do with this one is we’re going to make like a fun little basket. Love it. Your spring basket. All right. Okay. So, we have our soil in. So, then we’re going to use just the most colorful leftover pieces. We have some denths we’re going to plant in there. And I am just because I tend to forget things primarily eat the flowers unless you’re the fern. Eat the flowers. The the only ones that you can really eat um the greens are um are this mustard green. You can eat the greens, the ferns. Um the mint obviously you can eat the grains of that um which is delicious and we’ll do that in the drink episode as well which will be amazing. Yes. Which will be a blast. All right. So you just want to tuck these in. Mhm. We’re just making like a cute little flower basket. Lots of bright colors. Did you always know you wanted to do this? You know what? I didn’t I didn’t always know. I um went to college for music. Wow. But that’s the creative side of you. And um you know, always was raised playing piano, guitar, singing. And um but my this is what my parents did. And they said, “You don’t want to go into this.” And I worked in a nursery. I worked at Potters, okay? Uh in college, which is a local nursery. And um knew everything. just loved it and was like, you know, this is this is really where I want to be. Exactly. So, I just kind of stayed, which was lovely. Um, and I’ve been doing it ever since. And now you design. And now I design. Absolutely. Well, you know, so I I grew up doing this at my parents house because they had a fresh uh flower garden um farm. So they did floral edible florals and teas uh for local restaurants. Oh wow. So you grew up with this? Oh I grew definitely grew up doing it. Um so back in the 80s there weren’t many place people that were doing fresh herbs. No. Um so that’s what they did and I grew up helping them. Um and just loved every second of it. So, now that we have the planting done, put one more little guy in there. And this is just a fun little basket. We’re going to take this, which everyone has foria right now. Everybody’s got FYIA. It makes a fabulous hedge. Um, I have a neighbor that lives down the road from me and they shape their FYIA into a shape. Um, which is lovely. So, we’re just going to take this and we’re going to form a basket. We’re going to form a little basket handle. You were serious about basket. I was serious. I thought, oh, a pot must be a different word for basket. So, you can take it when it’s fresh and you can literally just stick it in, wrap it around, and then you’ve got your cute little handle. And then if you wanted to make like a little cloch out of it instead, all you would do is add them all over. And then you would have a little cloch, which we can add a tiny bit of. Um, but I love doing these little additions because they just elevate the piece. And it’s okay if they break because you can actually just kind of use the fresh bit to wrap around and nobody will even notice. Tuck it in. This is unbelievable. Here we go. And what a cute little basket top. And then the rest, you know, we need a little more heavy floral one on that side. So, we’ll tuck this guy in there. And most of them have a nice curve, so you don’t have to worry about it kind of like making the shape, if that makes sense. Because it’ll automatically go in. Yeah. And then we have this nice little back. And we’ll just wrap it around here on the edge and kind of tuck it in. And it’s a perfect gift. And it’s a perfect gift. And then if you want, you can also take some bigger pieces. You can do it with floral wire if you want, but if you wrap them, then you can actually make go around the pot as well, which is on the outside. Exactly. A floral ribbon, if you will. Okay. So, you are going to be excited because she is coming back all throughout the summer and we’re going to have fun ideas. I mean, we’re coming up with an entire list of just Yeah. fantastic ideas that you can integrate into your own home. So, thank you. This was incredible. This it was incredible. Thank you so much and congratulations on on your baby. I’m so happy and I’m so excited that we got to be the first thing you went to. Yeah, me too. Thank you. And happy happy spring. Happy spring. [Music]