Wonderful woodies for florists
For years, church flower arrangements have relied on imported blooms and plastic mechanics. Now, a big shift is needed to adapt to more sustainable alternatives. Here, I suggest four fast-growing shrubs, one for each season, which planted in the church grounds, would provide a ready supply of long stems to create some homegrown material.
My selection is
not fussy about soils or site. (We grow on top of a windy moor in the Scottish Borders).
readily available from garden centres and cheap to propagate from hardwood cuttings.
vigorous, producing abundant stems of half a metre or so, each season.
will tolerate growing in grass - so for easy maintenance, plant just wide enough to get the mower in between.
For Spring. Try the humble flowering currant, (ribes sanguineum). Lots of similar varieties available. Pink flowers.
For Summer. My selection has to be the buddleia. Often maligned as a weed growing on waste ground and even derelict buildings, the flowers are scented and come in a range of colours - pinks, mauves and whites. Adored by butterflies.
For Autumn. Try fuchsia. Graceful arching branches with red, white or pink flowers.
For Winter. Go for dogwood here. Cornus sanguinium, the red stemmed dogwood is one of the best, but any variety will give you masses of coloured stems to team up with evergreens. You could leave a few stems unpruned ( see below), and these would give you useful white flowers in the following summer.
By cutting the stems for flower arranging, (cut right at the base even if you have to shorten the stems for your arrangement) you are effectively hard pruning each shrub. And that is exactly what is required to maintain a constant supply of cuttable stems. Basically, you are coppicing - cutting all stems to ground level (or thereabouts) to encourage fresh new growth. The timing is important!
RULE Ensure that all stems are cut to ground level AFTER THE SEASON OF INTEREST.
So, for our flowering currant, it flowers in Spring. Therefore any stems that are left should be cut to ground level in Summer. New growth will shoot up during the autumn months, ready to cut the following Spring, and so the cycle continues. Like wise the buddleia should be cut to ground level in Autumn, the fuchsia in Winter. and the dogwood in Spring. Don’t be too disheartened if your shrubs provide you with only a few cuttable stems in the first years. Like many plants, they will take a little while to establish.
In time, these four wonderful ‘woodies’, one for each season, will give you a supply of tall, homegrown stems, all ready to place in a vase, jug or urn and thereby give your church a truly sustainable floral display!
P.S. And if you feel like doubling up, try
- the yellow flowers of forsythia for spring. Looks great with flowering currant, (the rhubarb and custard of the spring garden!).
- glorious scented flowers of mock orange (Philadelphus) for summer.
- silvery foliage of senecio for autumn. Many different kinds here. The one you want is senecio ( now called brachyglottis ) ‘Sunshine”.
- and another coloured stem for winter, try Salix alba ‘Britzensis’ a type of white willow, so called because of the pale colouration on the underside of the leaf. You could go one step further with this one - the bendy stems are perfect for creating Christmas wreaths. Now there’s a thought.
Happy flower growing! Bridget.
