Local cut flowers are hot stuff these days as farmers and small-scale growers cash in on the popularity of fresh bouquets, and home gardeners continue a trend that caught on during COVID-19 cocooning.
Cutting your own flowers is as local and fresh as you can get, which explains why so many gardeners have been planting cut-flower beds of such classic favorites as daisies, zinnias, dahlias, baby’s breath, and sunflowers.
But there’s another class of vase candidates beyond traditional annual and perennial flowers, one that most yards already have.
These are shrubs that also produce cuttable, showy, and vase-worthy flowers.
Think hydrangeas, lilacs, forsythias, viburnums, and florists’ No. 1 ace in a vase, the rose.
Roses are the classic and best known example of how “woody” landscape plants are useful in cut-flower bouquets.David Austin Roses
All of those are common landscape “woody” plants that live for decades and churn out a steady supply of flowers each year.
Many of these flowers are bigger and showier than annuals and perennials, and some of them are fragrant as well (lilacs, viburnums, and mock orange in particular).
Woody-plant stems are also generally longer and sturdier than annual-flower and perennial-flower stems, allowing for more impressive arrangements or at least height variation with garden flowers.
What’s more, flowers aren’t even the only potential payoff from a landscape shrub.
Cut stems of just foliage can make good bouquet fillers, especially the dark leaves of shrubs such as ninebark, weigela, and diervilla or the fine, ferny foliage of shrubs such as willows, Lemony Lace elderberry, and Mellow Yellow spirea.
Many other shrubs offer color from clusters of berries. Holly and winterberry holly are the best known, but you also may be able to gather fruiting clusters around the yard from such shrubs as nandina, viburnum, beautyberry, and coralberry.
Even many landscape evergreens are good fodder for bouquets. Examples are the silvery-blue berry-like cones of junipers, the variegated leaves of some boxwoods and euonymus, and the blue-tinted needles of cypress, spruce, and cedars.
Cutting from landscape shrubs is no big loss for the plants – and often easier for a gardener to do than cutting a prized peony.
As author Dr. Allan Armitage reminds gardeners who are reluctant about “stealing” from the landscape: “Cutting is not murder. Half the fun of a garden is taking the flowers in with you or taking a bunch along for friends.”
For one thing, many shrubs need to be size-controlled via pruning each year anyway. The plant won’t miss a few flowers cut prematurely for vase duty.
For another, most shrubs are big enough and dense enough that you can easily remove several selected flowering stems without causing bare spots or “holes” in the plant.
If you’re concerned anyway, take your cuttings from the rear of the bush or other least noticeable area.
In the summer, woody cuttings make good partners for flowers that happen to be in bloom at the same time.
Have a walk around the yard and clip whatever pairs color- and texture-wise with the flowers you’re finding.
Also consider starting with a woody cutting as the centerpiece of a summer bouquet since their stems can easily be cut to 18 inches or more.
The new hydrangea Eclipse is an example of a hydrangea that offers cut value from its flowers as well as its dark foliage.Bailey Nurseries
Hydrangeas with their huge blue, pink, purple, or white flowers are a top choice in this situation.
”Hydrangeas are a classic for cut arrangements,” says Ryan McEnaney, author of “Field Guide to Outside Style” (Cool Springs Press, 2022, $30). “With re-blooming hydrangeas, cutting flowers for an arrangement won’t clear out your garden, since it can put out multiple rounds of flowers each season.”
The large, round white or pink flowers of viburnums, the wispy/smoky pinkish flowers of smokebush, and really any rose also are ideal choices for center-stage treatment.
Woody plants also make good choices outside of summer when the annual and perennial options start to slim.
Those berry clusters are most often available in fall when they pair nicely with the fall foliage of ornamental grasses and late-season bloomers such as mums, asters, and goldenrod.
Evergreens and the red cut stems from red-twig dogwoods and coralbark maples can go into bouquets throughout winter when they can be accented with a few forced bulbs or other color plants from the garden center.
And even before a new season begins, stem cuttings from early-blooming shrubs can be plunged into warm water to “force” them into bloom inside – usually within two to four weeks.
These forsythia stems are being snipped and prepared to be “forced” into bloom inside over winter.Susan Weigel
Good candidates for such forcing include Cornelian cherry dogwood, forsythia, fothergilla, witch hazel, crabapple, flowering cherry, lilac, magnolia, PJM rhododendron, quince, serviceberry, and willows.
“When planning a cutting garden, make sure to think of all four seasons,” says McEnaney. “Any plant that can give you multi-season interest deserves a place in a cutting garden.”
To do the deed, here are some woody-cut-flower tips from the National Garden Bureau and Iowa State Extension:
1.) If it’s been dry, water the plant the day before cutting so the flowers and stems are well hydrated.
2.) Do your cutting early in the morning before sun and heat sap plant moisture.
3.) Use sharp pruners to make clean cuts, not crushed or ragged ones. Ideally cut to just above a node or side branch.
4.) Disinfecting pruners regularly helps head off bacteria that can clog the cut ends of the stems and hinder water uptake. A study by Washington State Extension horticulturist Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott found that the best pruner disinfectants are common household cleaners, such as Lysol and Pine-Sol.
5.) Select flowers as they’re just opening. If you wait until flowers are fully mature, they’ll already be on the down side on day one in the vase.
6.) Strip the leaves from the lower part of the stems immediately after cutting. No foliage should be underwater in the vase.
7.) Submerge stems in clean water as soon as you cut them to encourage water absorption. Then make a second clean cut as you begin arranging the flowers.
8.) Use a clean vase with clean water, and add commercial floral preservatives, which help keep the water clean, reduce bacterial growth, provide carbohydrates and sugars to the developing flowers, and extend the vase-life of the flowers. Iowa State says that sugar, aspirin, tea, pennies, rusty nails, bleach, citric acid, and other home ingredients do not work as well as a floral preservative, if at all.
“If you don’t have a floral preservative, skip it,” according to Iowa State Extension. “Clean water without additives is second best.”
9.) When the water level gets low or it starts to get cloudy, dump it and replace with clean, fresh water and new floral preservative.
“There’s no need to re-cut stems as long as you are reasonably quick,” says Iowa State.
Read George’s column on growing your own cut flowers for bouquets at home for more information.
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