Nine Spring Fillers and Foliages for Flower Farmers
Hello all you flower farmers! I hope you’re having a great year so far.
In what seems like to have been the longest month ever (sheltering in place nonetheless) the tulips, narcissus, poppies, ranunculus and anemones are all in bloom along with the lilacs, alliums and viburnums coming into bloom soon after.
This is great, because you have a wonderful flush of floral material for the first time in months after a long and cold winter without fresh flowers. Huzzah!
But next comes the question - what do I pair with these spring flowers? It’s too early for most stuff, even the ammi and daucus aren’t quite ready yet. So what’s a flower farmer to do if they want to make a mixed bouquet or subscription arrangement?
The answer: grow these nine easy and productive spring fillers and foliages to fill out your bouquets and arrangements! Most of these are perennials (with the exception of the poppies and wheat) so they are some of the earlier plants that pop up in the spring, and there’s no worrying or babying of seedlings to get them to this point - they’ll just come roaring out of winter with a bumper crop for you to harvest.
I’ll admit, there are times when I want to not grow any flowers and just become a foliage farmer - and this is one of those times!
Mint
We are crazy about mint here (growing several different varieties for floral design as well as for the kitchen) but our favorite for floral material is the old standby of spearmint, shown here. Vigorous with long straight stems, crisp crenelated leaves and of course the wonderful minty scent that lends so much pleasure and dimension to bouquets and arrangements, we use a lot of mint during the course of the year. Other mint varieties we use include the fuzzy large-leafed apple mint and the dark-leafed chocolate mint.
Mint is super easy to grow, is reliably perennial pretty much everywhere, and is easy enough to keep contained if you cut from it enough. Propagate from stem cuttings (which will root in just a few days) and you’ll have plenty of mint to supply you all season long. Check out our guide to growing mint here
Broadleaf Sage
This is broadleaf sage, Salvia officinalis - otherwise known as culinary sage, we enjoy the leaves when roasted with fall root vegetables and with poultry. Here it is also reliably perennial, forming into a shrubby, woody plant that makes long stems for cutting in the spring.
The silvery-grey leaves are a wonderful foil when combined with bolder colors, similar to eucalyptus or plectranthus. The lovely sage-smell is also great too, lending a heady herbal aroma to any arrangement.
You can even see the flower buds that are ready to open here - we like to cut it prior to the flowers already opening, but depending on your design esthetic you may want to use the flowering stems as well. Make sure that the stems you cut are woody and tough - the fresh green growth won’t stay hydrated no matter what you do - and believe me, we’ve tried everything.
Horehound
Horehound (Marrubium vulgare) was originally popularized due to its medicinal values - mainly in cough drops previously, having a flavor between mint and rootbeer. It’s tough as nails here, staying evergreen throughout the winter and putting on lush, fresh new growth in the spring. In fact, it’s one of the first materials that we can cut from in the spring.
It’s wonderful as a foliage material - the silvery-grey undersides combined with the wrinkled dark-green velvety tops of the foliage are a perfect color combination when combined with whites and blushes, but they hold up equally well with bold colors too. Make sure to harvest early in the morning to prevent flopping.
Poppy pods
I like poppies of all kinds. Icelandic poppies are of course my favorite due to their wonderful tissue-paper petals and glorious colors, along with California and Shirley poppies of all colors and types.
But nobody ever talks about the pods of poppies, which is a big shame. After all, even Icelandic poppies only last for a few days once harvested. The pods on the other hand? Last forever in the vase. There is no pollen to drop, there are no petals that can brown, there’s just that strikingly beautiful pod.
The glaucous blue-green coloration and smooth texture is really amazing when placed against other soft pastel colors, and helps to break up what can seem like the endless billowy frilly petals that we see this time of year.
I particularly like the pods of this poppy - the Turkish or tulip poppy, Papaver glaucum because they are so small and yet so numerous, but you can use the pods of any poppy that you would like. Some of the breadseed poppies, Papaver somniferum can get massive pods that are a couple inches in diameter!
Pea Vines
We grow a lot of peas here - snap peas for eating, field peas for cover crops, sweet peas for cutting, and perennial sweet pea vines as a colorful ground cover, and all of these peas are perfect for cutting long pea vines from.
While the sweet pea flower itself may not last long, the vines will last forever - usually a good two weeks in the vase when the water is changed frequently - and add so much character and movement and whimsy to arrangements. The perennial sweet pea vines (Lathyrus latifolius) shown here really help to bulk out bouquets and fill out vases and compote bowls as well as add air and elegance with their curved stems and curled tendrils.
You can also include flowers and immature pea pods on the vines too if you like the look of them - sweet peas tend to last a bit longer when they have some vine attached to them, and some of the purple-podded snap peas can lend a wonderful bit of color and interest with their dark seedpods.
Lamb’s Ear
I love dusty miller, especially the broad leafed ‘New Look’ but I hate the way that it is so floppy and unreliable when it comes to hydration. The silvery-grey leaves are invaluable for their high contrast against other more colorful or darker materials, so floral designers will still use dusty miller even when floppy.
On the other hand, I love lamb’s ear as a perennial plant in the garden as well as a cut flower material - I think it’s far superior to dusty miller! You have to wait until it starts sending up those flowering stems - which I’m not necessarily the biggest fan of anyway since the flowering stems brown quickly and start making the garden look a little bit dirty and unkempt. Cut those stems down at the base of the plant, strip off the leaves from the lower portion and place into water right away for the best hydration
Grass seedheads
The spring grasses are starting to bloom around here which mostly consists of the fescues here. What was originally a lawn, a portion of it has been left in the garden because it forms this lovely meadow effect with the spent seedheads of muscari and the new seedheads of the fescue grass coming up to create this hazy, floating vision.
Grasses are an invaluable filler and textural component for bouquets and arrangements, filling them out very quickly and adding wonderful movement when the arrangement is moved or jostled. if you don’t have fescue grass, you will most likely have another spring grass you can harvest from such as Melica or Calamagrostis.
Winter Wheat
Although we usually grow wheat as a cover crop to replenish our soils, we’ll leave some of our cover crops in place, like this winter wheat here. From just one head of seed, I have a large 12 x 12” clump of it that has at least two dozen seed heads right now, all waiting to go into bouquets and arrangements.
The seedheads are wonderful, being both extremely linear and vertical in their overall shape as well as adding wonderful texture with their beads of grain and the light hair-like projections coming off each grain. Perfectly elegant and oh-so-useful for arranging with.
Catmint
Catmint (Nepeta faasenii) is a ubiquitous perennial plant that is mostly grown for its little lilac-purple flowers and compact growth habit and non-spreading, non-invasive nature. It also works wonderfully as a flora material, mostly as a filler - the airy flower buds, the silvery-grey leaves and graceful arcing shapes of the flower stems work well into wedding work when paired with other fluffy flowers.
It can be hard to get upright sometimes because it grows so compactly - we’ll usually cut and prepare them, let them sit for a while standing upright and they will firm up and stand up a bit straighter for designing with later on. It can be harder to use when the flowers start to bloom - they have a very striking light-lavender color that can be difficult to work into certain color palettes, so if you’re afraid of that just harvest it earlier when the buds are just starting to form (and the focus is more on the shape and color and texture of the foliage).
As a plant it is absolutely rock-solid in the garden and on the flower farm. It is best harvested in the early morning before being rushed into water to prevent it from flopping and allow good hydration. My only issue is that you have to propagate it from cuttings like many perennials - but if taken now, the cuttings will root very quickly and will form a good-sized plant by the end of the season.
So there you have it
Nine amazing spring fillers and foliages for you to use and grow in your market bouquets, subscription arrangements, selling to florists and wholesalers or even direct to customers.
These aren’t the only ones however - take a look around your garden and landscape. Are there other perennial or annuals you can use? What is in bloom, what looks interesting right now? And if you’re unsure whether or not it will work as a cut flower material - just cut a bunch and see if it works or not. That’s how we best push our boundaries as flower farmers (and designers) and find happy new surprises when it comes to new plants and floral materials.
If you’re interested in learning more about becoming a flower farmer (or wanting to up your game as far as planning and designing and planting as a new-ish flower farmer) you can check out our eBook bundle on growing and marketing and selling flowers below.
