But the more I thought about it, I realised what a unique place designers are in to promote growing and cutting flowers from gardens.

As a garden designer, at consultations I’d ask about where one might hang washing outside, water taps, compost heaps, bins and more. I never asked about where clients bought their flowers. Whether they’d consider cutting from their own garden. Yet, invariably, flowers would be in a vase in the kitchen, and other spots around the house. I don’t think I ever have seen a fresh flowers cut from their garden, displayed in their home.

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It blew my mind a little bit, and like most new ideas, it takes a time to turn my mind around the information and digesting (ahem) until I begin to add the process to my routine.

Now it’s an essential part of our daily life, at home and in the gardens.

So whilst now chopping up veg peelings and the slops of cereal bowls is as routine as morning coffee, I will aim to adopt a beginners mindset assuming that you may have heard of this, and there is not as yet, a bag of bran and industrial catering buckets outside your back door.

The reason this process has become ingrained, is simply that it really works. Adoption of such appeals to my values of connection and synergy, with the circular system whilst increasing microbes and adding nutrients back into my soils.

What is it?

Bokashi composting is a way of taking your kitchen scraps and leftovers, and turning them into a sweet smelling, highly nutritious compost ingredient. It means ‘Fermented Organic Matter’.

You know how your kitchen food bin can smell totally gross, no matter that you slosh it out every week? Well bokashi compost smells actually really nice. Really.

At one point, the dirty rats had got in through a cracked bit of the council food bin (since it was thrown down by the dustman) and started having a party. Tossing the stuff they didn’t want to eat, to get to that they did. Vermin also liked to enjoy the peelings in the heap as a lovely place to nest. We haven’t got either of these problems now.

How I use the pre-composted material.

1. Adding to my compost heap as an accelerator. Already partially composted and ‘effective microbes’ in action, this kicks off the rest of the heap decomposing. And as I say, vermin are no longer attracted to the material, despite it still looking somewhat as it did when it was first added to the bucket.

2. Adding to my (new this year, homemade) wormery

3. Burying into sweet pea and runner bean pits

4. Lasagne composting in situ.

How I make bokashi compost.

(with non ‘that company’ links and videos!)

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Tables here are heaving with plants still desperate to be in the ground. What on earth is there left to sow?

I promise you’ll feel both smug with forward planning and thrilled when they are in flower.

If you haven’t got them in your seed box already, I have some handy links of some of my favourites to order today, now, and sow asap.

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They are not green poo as someone once guessed (no, not me) but plants that you grow, either in bare soil or as a companion crop beneath other plants, to enrich and improve soils.

I haven’t bought in any other material (mulches or composts) since late autumn 2021 when I think the material that I did use caused some issues for me. For nearly four years, I have entirely made my own composts for seed sowing and potting on, and only used green manures to ‘mulch’. This has hugely reduced costs and labour, and I believe, better more resilient plants.

Green manures usually grow fast and are exceptional at driving roots down to find water and nutrients whilst either binding or loosening soil structures. Sounds great doesn’t it?

I for one am convinced.

There is a green manure for pretty much any soil type or problem.

• They prevent weeds by smothering them.

• Prevent soil erosion

• Feeding the soil.

• They also look pretty and some of them I cut for flowers.

• I’ve noticed more diversity in pollinators and beneficial insects.

Some can be left in place for several years.

Let me tell you how I use them, and what benefits i’ve seen in growing them.

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In no particular order, my own ‘cultural life’:

1. Visiting the National Garden Scheme ‘Yellow Book’ Gardens

2. Princess Diana’s Wedding1

3. Smash Hits Magazine and Top of the Pops

4. Kettles Yard

5. The Clothes Show

6. Not the Nine O’Clock News

7. A Radio 1 documentary about how Bob Geldof came up with the idea for Live Aid up to the day of the recording2.

8. The huge and maybe first of the super shows at the V&A on William Morris3 in 1996

9. Diarmuid Gavin on Home Front from 1998

Quite the cacophony of inspiration there, but it all weaves into my interests, both at work and play, still. Whilst I’d love to tell you all about them all, alas I am not being interviewed by John Wilson, so for now, I want to tell you about Kettles Yard, how it still inspires me with how important cut flowers are in this world renowned home of Jim and Helen Ede and the remarkable art collection there.

There are many interesting things about the house.

I first visited as a child, maybe 9 years old and it felt like a special place then, we’ve returned over the years, just drawn to revisit. If you’ve been, I am sure you know what I mean. It still reads as a home, with made beds and house plants, and fresh every week, posies and vases of flowers.

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Visitors can sit on the chairs and read any books on the shelves, encouraged to soak in the atmosphere. The art collection is arranged in interesting ways, for instance paintings hung under windowsills, so spotted from a chair at just the right height to enjoy.

Objects converse with each other, which is especially notable with the lemon on a platter which speaks to the Miro painting near it.

Kettles Yard has become an influential space. Where art is arranged with the same importance and deference as natural found objects such as pebbles, feathers or skulls with floral arrangements.

Nothing in this house is frivolous or accidental. Every item has it’s place and role.

The posies are mostly diminutive, always in the same positions, but never the same. Flowers are chosen to be as seasonal as possible, often cut from the equally brilliant gardens at the Murray Edwards College, and for some time, I delivered buckets of flowers too.

The art works and natural objects stay in their place, always but the flowers are never the same. This seems to be so important to this space that it is worth repeating. Take anything away from those rooms, and the exquisite tension that is created between the objects would be broken.

In static images, postcards collected from the shop or in print, the juxtaposition of elements are so special, but in person, when in the space as a visitor, I am certain it it the arrangements and the dance of light that bring the rooms to life, that can only be experienced in person. The flowers are a subtle anchor to the month, time of year. Even if you don’t know which flowers are truly of that season, by cutting naturally grown flowers, we feel that truer connection. To the place and time.

The rooms are alive in a way that makes them accessible to both in a historic context of their being lived in by Jim and Helen, and of today. As if they are still yet lived in.

In the extension part of the house, there are no flowers but plants. These spaces are museum like. Windows open to the sky, you could visit on any day of the year and have no idea what month it is. But it is the main house, the original cottages that I feel more drawn to because of that connection to the natural world and the dance between all those elements.

I return to this time and time again. How we often buy the flowers as a finishing touch to a room to be welcoming and homely. The amount of flowers sold through supermarkets speaks to that desire to have flowering stems blooming in our rooms.4 I believe to have that same feeling, a connection to the natural world that brings life to a space. At Kettles Yard, a bunch of pink roses in January would be entirely wrong; I think we’d all notice that, even if we can’t quite put our finger on why that is. But pieces of holly and dried stems in the winter, or bright daisies in the summer quietly but firmly speak of that season, making that room ‘right’, safe and lived in.

When Ai Weiwei visited Kettles Yard, this was the sole image he posted on his instagram.

I am sure it was this house and the way that flower arrangements are pivotal in the visitors experience is part of what inspired me to grow flowers. Over looked and reduced to frivolity, this renowned yet simply decorated home, despite all the priceless works of art, seems obtainable. There are elements that we can all take, should we aspire to, to replicate in our own homes. Found treasures, images that delight us and vessels of materials cut that very week.

Corners of beauty in our homes and gardens connect us to something that is far greater than ourselves, which brings much safety and peace, anchoring that immersive experience in that time. Never to be replicated.

Cutting a stem of two says so much, that there was some leisure time to be outside, at any time of year. We noticed what is around us, took time to prepare and arrange some flowers or branches, placing somewhere we will notice and enjoy their beauty, if only for a few days before they wilt or die back. Just because. If only for ourselves, especially if only for ourselves.

Might be easy for me to say with flower gardens. But if you are close to parks or woodland, hedgerows, there will always be something to take a few pieces of as a souvenir to being outside. Right now, stems of wild garlic, emerging hazel and willow, primroses, cherry blossoms with budding branches. I am even wanting to cut nettles for their vibrant greenery which feels so welcome on these bright spring days.

Please drop me a ❤️ and even better, tell me what inspires you to grow and cut flowers yourself.

All the images have been taken from Kettles Yard’s instagram except Ai Weiwei’s linked post.

With light levels rising, there is a tantalising glimpse of what’s to come.  The ground remains very cold and the air still, so I’m going easy with seed sowing; only starting hardy varieties right now.

Most farmer florists and certainly flower farmers of scale, grow seeds in trays. Either to prick out and transplant, or in separate modules. I have tried this numerous times but it’s never as good as my slightly unusual method.

You see, when I began growing cut flowers, in 2015, I didn’t have a polytunnel or greenhouse. I grew everything on my cottages narrow windowsills.

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Eight years ago, I planted shrubs and trees in the field plot. One of the three ‘plots’ I grow cut flowers and foliage to cut from. The ‘field’ (tiny really) is open, no running water and has an electric fence to jump over, giving protection from the muntjac.

Now, those that I did plant all that time ago are fully productive and so useful. I wish I had planted a lot more. It’s easy to forgot this every single year until you remember that you didn’t plant them!

The winter is the perfect time to plant

The next couple of months are the best time to plant shrubs and trees (from November to March). Not only because they are cheapest, often being root balled (without a pot, wrapped in hessian) or bare root (without soil). These are field grown, lifted when dormant so far easier to grow for the supplier, less resources required to keep alive. Best though, they are quicker and more reliable to establish.

As I look out onto a bleak winters day, the snow retreating to slush, it is the shrubs in my garden and on the plots that create the visual structure but also the habitats. I take them for granted most of the year until now when planting has reduced and the backbones of borders are revealed.

It’s not just the evergreens that are crucial either, the deciduous plants have their structures revealed now which creates a different visual perspective. I like the juxtaposition of those with bright coloured stems of dogwoods or green shrubs and the textures revealed.

Essential Cutting Garden Plants

Grasses, annual foliage and perennial plants are the main elements of your cutting garden. But ideally about a third of your cutting space would be made up of shrubs; it’s the foliage that really takes an arrangement from good to brilliant.

Even in a diminutive posy or right through to large sculptural installations, woody foliage give wisdom and maturity about a selection in a way that arrangements with just fast growing light annuals can’t achieve.   Arching branches, emerging young leaves or buds or twisting stems create movement and definition; a richness.  And it is the interplay between the different types of material that brings depth and excitement to floristry.

Some clients consider that foliage is cheaper and can be used to make the flowers go further. They aren’t cheaper. A shrub takes longer than most flowers to grow and done well, I consider it is foliage that elevates any arrangement rather than ‘fills’.

And all the more important for creating that support for the pretty soft ‘focal’ flowers. Once established, they take little care and reward handsomely. Far, far less resources and attention than annuals. They create wind barriers, and protection in your garden, giving shape and structure even before they are cut. Far far less than an annual. I need to grow more. We all need to grow more.

So I’ve convinced you to plant shrubs - as a backdrop to your garden borders, informal hedging to an allotment or rows and rows of them on a field plot.

Which ones are worth investing your time, space and money on?

Narrowed it down to snappily fit into Twelve shrubs1 for twelfth night - perfect to order and plant now. These are my favourites,

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Currently my absolute go to for dahlia ordering is Halls of Heddon1 and their catalogue is enormous. Where on earth do you start?

When I was first grew dahlias, I’d print off photos of flowers and move them about working out combinations between them, balancing shape and colour. I flipping love Dahlias, but they are big, all one texture of petal and frankly they are not enough; they need the supporting chorus of perennials, bulbs, annuals and foliage to really shine. Don’t fill all your available space just with dahlias, be rigorous in your edit and choose plants that will perform as stars in your arrangements and compliment what you already have growing in your space.

I am choosing next years dahlia plants right now. This year I lifted all my stock and replanted without buying any new ones. I have serious envy coupled with some of my favourites not making the transfer so well. The best time to order any plant is just as it is going over. If you wait until you need them, they will have sold out of all the good ones.

Nurseries show great pictures of individual flowers, and whilst a vase of single variety flowers will always look chic, mostly, dahlias look best mixed; shining best when they are very much the minority player in a display. I like mixing them with grasses, persicaria, crocosmia, salvias, coreopsis together with the foliage of physocarpus, cotinus and cornus. So how do you choose which ones that might work well in combination?

I have a rule when choosing dahlias and this is it.

Dahlias must fit in to one or both categories to be worthy of planting;

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The best way around this dilemma is to book holidays from December to February. That makes much more sense.

But sometimes we have to go away. As you read this, I have had to go to France for a coastal wedding weekend.1

But I still have seedlings in trays maturing to root through so I can plant them out. This is critical time. Warm drying days, and still plenty of flipping slugs about this year to feast on them.

It is a universal truth that in order to go on holiday to rest, you have to work 3x as hard in the week running up to it.2

I have become well versed in executing ‘Operation Exit’. In fact, I probably get on top of things so effectively that I ought to go away every weekend. I mean, I even scheduled this post.

So this is what I do…

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Perennials are utterly brilliant. I weeded around the plants a few months ago, lifted and split a few that looked like they could do with it then left them well alone. The border looks brilliant right now with alchemilla mollis, echinops and asters verdant and about to flower; but I’m thinking that’s great for June, but what about late July and August? Every year that bed looks great now but then I cut it all back to await for another performance in September. If only I could manipulate the flowering to go on for longer.

So when I was watching the Chelsea Flower Show this week, I was reminded of a brilliant technique to prevent this hiatus and delay some of the flowers by 4-6 weeks.

Yes, you got it…

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Once cut from the stem, sweet peas don’t usually last long in the vase, and they certainly don’t travel well. One of those cut flowers you really need to grow yourself to make sure you get the best of them on your bedside table, or gifted from a generous neighbour.

I didn’t grow them for a few years, thinking that they were too much effort and the flowers didn’t last long enough to hold their place on a flower farm. But I’ve developed a tried a tested method, learnt how to cut them and now won’t be without.

Here is my process for germinating, growing and cutting them for maximum pleasure. *EDIT* and by popular request, suppliers, fav varieties and winter flowering bonus!

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Not perhaps for the reason you think though.

Not for the growing so much, but for the lovely sound the rain and wind makes on the polythene in the winter and early spring months. In fact it’s comforting for most of the year. Well, until about late May. Then I avoid it after 7am until 7pm or maybe later. It is too damn hot.

Tunnels and greenhouses aren’t perfect but they do extend your growing space. For a long time, I didn’t have a greenhouse or polytunnel. And I didn’t know how to use the cold frame I eventually got; I put it where the midday sun beat down on it hard, frying all my precious seedlings.

In 2015, when I set up ‘Anna’s Flower Farm’, I’d grown few annuals; for a couple of years there was only my back garden and certainly nothing to protect seedlings.

When I speak to visitors or anyone enquiring about growing cut flowers, on the usual comments is that they ‘don’t have a greenhouse’.

I tell them what I am going to tell you.

Don’t let that stop you

Here are the three ways to grow without a greenhouse -

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The highlight of the session for most of the attendees was to cut their own flowers, but in the middle of the day. In August. In a hot field. It took all I could to stop me from not letting them!

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Why?

The first rule of cutting flowers is to never cut when the sun is on your neck.

The second rule is never cut when the sun is on your neck!

For our class, flowers had been cut the day before and conditioned in deep water, over night, in a cool barn. This way, after some spa ‘rest and relaxation’, they were fully ready for showtime; to perform in the vase. You can imagine what the flowers looked like moments after cutting in the middle of the day? They were starting to wilt. The leaves first transpiring and dropping. Everything going a little soft. It still is a lovely thing to do, and much can be learnt from having that experience. But ideally, we’d cut first thing in the morning. Everything cut from the fields was popped into buckets of water and taken home to arrange. Even if they did condition, their vase life was reduced from the stress. This is why so many think garden grown flowers don’t last! They certainly won’t if cut like that!

My top tips for summer cutting and conditioning with special notes on some of my favourites -

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This is about how far forward a flower grower might be thinking. In August, that is April; the spring bulb klaxon has been ringing for a month or two.

This year was great for tulips. A flower that is both a big risk and a big investment, it paid off this year. My thoughts on that another time. My Narcissus weren’t so successful this spring. My thoughts on that here.

If you plant anything for the spring, I’d always suggest Narcissus. I adore them. Let me count the ways -

1. There are varieties available from January through to late May.

2. Plant once and they come up year after year

3. Multiple flowering stems

4. Scented

5. Long lasting in the vase and in the border

The same can’t be said for most tulips, especially if you cut them! That’s a bit mean about tulips. But I feel burnt from loving them. The tulip craze is still very real. Turn away from those images and come to the other side.

I’m not talking about the characterless plain yellow bulbs sold in supermarkets, whilst they have their place, if that’s all you know, you have no idea what you are missing!

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They are not green poo as someone once guessed (no, not me) but plants that you grow, either in bare soil or as a companion crop beneath other plants, to enrich and improve soils.

They usually grow fast and are exceptional at driving roots down to find water and nurtrients whilst either binding or loosening soil structures. Sounds great doesn’t it? And reader, I can confirm after only a year of using them, that they are, and I am convinced.

There is one for pretty much any soil type or problem. They prevent weeds by smothering them, stop soil erosion and keep feeding the soil. They also look pretty and some of them I can’t cut too for flowers!  I’ve also noticed more diversity in pollinators and beneficial insects.

Some can be left in place for several years but I’ve only been trying since last easter so come back next year to find out more.

So far I have used them to feed and keep beds full when waiting for another crop to go in or to underplant - particularly clover with the roses, buckwheat and mustard with dahlias, and earlier this year whilst waiting to see if dahlias did emerge (they did), phacelia across the beds.

If you do some research, traditionally green manures are dug back into the soil to put those nutrients right back in there but I have been pulling ours as I’ve let them mature, and then added them to the compost heap. This is working well for me so far and I’m literally growing material for the compost heap along with nettle's and comfrey. It also means I can turn beds around to plant into quicker. When green manures are dug in, one usually needs to wait 4 weeks before sowing any seed into the soil. I prefer rip, pull, clear and plant method!

They have certainly reduced the weeds where I have used them and I am sure improved the soil. We have very dry sandy soil. The structure does look better; it isn’t quite so dry and its darker in look, rather than pale and crusty like it was this time last year. I haven’t bought in any other mulch since late autumn 2021 when I think the material that I did use caused some issues for me. I’ve bought different potting composts but mulched only with my own compost or sown green manures. So far so good.

I’ve just pulled plants, not worrying too much whether I pull the roots or not (they will continue to feed) and planted in the stubble left.

Green manures are best sown between April and August, with a few happily sown right into November including rye and field beans. I might try some of those this winter. Ideally I would clear beds in late September and get mustard and phacelia in then to over winter since they are particularly good on fine sandy soil. I imagine they could be a bit more difficult on clay soils, and having to clear or dig them. Then and only then would I be relying so much on lots of organic matter over the winter.

You see soil microorganisms need carbohydrates to be active, and therefore feeding fungi and keeping the ‘world wide web’ of the soil exchanging water, nutrients and minerals. If the ‘sweeties’ are not made but a plant growing above the soil, sending sometimes up to 75% of its carbohydrates down, then they become inactive until the moment they receive them. So by having a green manure growing at all times, the soil bacteria, fungi et al is active, worms feeding on rotting vegetation and all sharing working together. I certainly have noticed plants are quick to settle in and I would put that down to the improved activity since growing green manures.

I don’t think I have managed to improve the fertility as much as I’d like yet; on my sandy soil, nutrient is lost quickly and plants are quite small. I am adding a thin layer of homemade compost and I think plants will be better later on in the season now. It takes time to improve fertility so I expect the next few years will show development as we go. I reckon growing winter rye, beans and lupins (all special green manures) will certainly help that.

There are still weeds but certainly less and when I have underplanted, dahlias, roses and eremurus, the flowering has been better than ever. I have hardly watered too. Have they helped that I wonder? Or would my plants be twice as tall if I had.

I sow green manure either as a mix, depending on what and when I am sowing it, or as an individual plant, at a very low rate. It is supposed to be about a gram per square metre but I don’t manage that low! I sprinkle it over the soil, tiffle* it a bit so the seeds are mixed and under the soil then water a little. Best if you sow just before a rain fall. Ideally you take out big weeds and stones too!

I was really convinced about green manures when I heard the Land Gardeners speak. They hardly spread mulch instead using green manures to exclusively feed and cover their soils, using the ‘crop’ as compost material. Their compost is used to grow plants in. Makes so much sense doesn’t it! Green manures are usually the domain of the vegetable grower, but as I maintain, great crops come from growing a great diversity of different plants feeding the soil. Grow veg and flowers to have great harvests of both. The land gardeners have a great list and notes for green manures in their book ‘cut flowers’ which makes the cover price worth it just for that.

I buy my seeds from Tamar and green manures both are great. And for small amounts from chiltern seeds.

I hope I’ve convinced you to try them. Or do you already use them? How have you found them?

*tiffle is my technical word for shaking the top layer of soil together with the seeds. I might use my fingers in small areas, between plants or a clawed rake style hoe.

When showing these techniques, I’m met with surprise by how much effort I make to prepare material. When one has nurtured plants for months, if not years, why wouldn’t we take such care for that moment of flowering?

I often work with an event florist and teacher who buys from all the local growers. Cissy from Wildstems and I spoke often of ‘the art of the cut’. Referring to the knowledge and skill of the picker.

How this makes all the difference.

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“How they made time” as the cover says “and got to work..whether by amphetamines or alcohol, headstands or boxing.”

I. am. obsessed.

I reckon I am not the only one. Time, how we measure it and spend it has been a theme in my inbox recently.

Alex Rushmer shared the 23 seasons in their Restaurants’ Newsletter. (Subscribe to book dinner and stay for the links. The links!) and Austin Kleon wrote about writing to the moon. Alice Vincent about reflected on ‘The Watch’; the middle of the night when feeding her newborn. How in ‘ye olden days’ people would sleep in two shorter bursts between dusk and dawn, using the middle of the night for socialising and all sorts.

Regular readers will know that I have been growing with the moon cycles for several years now. I really enjoy the rhythm. There is an ebb and flow to the month, or to be precise, 28 days. Half of the cycle is the moon waxing and the other, waning. Essentially for gardeners, the effect of water rising through the roots, stem, leaves and flowers of plants and back again. It has made a difference. But then biodynamic gardening is about noticing and working with the soil rather than imposing my wishes on it. That simple attention could be more than enough to improve your practise.

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Pretty much anything can be sown now, inside and out. There is around 6 weeks until the end of the frosts which is about the time a plant takes to grow from seed to planting out. For many tender plants like cosmos, sunflowers and zinnias, this gives you just the right amount of time to sow and tend a plant until it is ready to be planted out as night temperatures stay above zero.

If your focus is on growing flowers, I’d like you to also consider growing some different vegetables and fruit amongst your flowers.

Growing a wide variety of different plants from seed is one of the keys to excellent soil health. We are beginning to understand how important this is but did you realise that actually growing food for yourself and flowers for the table actually improve the soil? And in turn improves our environment. The best part, it improves the taste (and no doubt your own gut health too!)

We grow a lot of fruit and vegetables here, mostly for meals on the farm for classes, workshops and farm days. Food comes a very close second to the flowers here. But I also used the decorative blue flowers of peas, herbs and tendrils of beans in arrangements. Though, much more than feeding us and my creativity, these plants also contribute to a healthier soil and better plant health all over. A classic win win.

As all plants grow, they take in carbon dioxide, actively removing it from our atmosphere, converting it into carbohydrates for food for themselves and also sending a huge amount out into the soil for the microrganisims to consume. In return, fungal networks respond to plants needs by exchanging water, minerals and nutrients. This mutual exchange and symbiotic relationship is essential to healthy soil and healthy plants.

One does not exist without the other.

And the more variety in the garden, allotment, and farm, the more variety of microbes and fungi feeding those plants and protecting them from pests and disease. It is utterly mind boggling and wonderful to know all this is going on beneath our feet. All we need to do is make sure we don’t do anything to kill the microbes in the soil. That includes not using any chemicals, keeping the soil covered with plants (even weeds will take in carbon and keep the soil alive) and occasionally add some homemade compost to stimulate microbial activity.

That’s why I would encourage everyone, to sprinkle seeds in among the shrubs and perennial to create colour this summer and food for your plate. We are growing kale among our sweet peas, calendula and sunflowers around our tomatoes and radishes between the cosmos. I can’t wait for the plots to be buzzing with insects, scents and productivity.

The soils are being warmed, weed growth and self sown seedlings are germinating which means that the soil bacteria is being stimulated again. At last.

This weeks top tasks on the plots -

1. Transplanting a huge amount of seedlings sown in March and sowing much more for successional sowing. One hit wonders like nigella, many sunflowers and bupleurum need sowing every few weeks for a continual crop of plants.

2. Edging the beds surrounded by grass paths in the walled garden. Over the year, the grass encroaches into the beds, reducing the width. We edge them once a year and save all the turf cuttings. These are laid upside down for the grass to decompose and use for our homemade potting compost recipe.

3. Planting out late summer bulbs such as nerines, acidanthera and ixia.

I’m harvesting -

• Narcissus, hellebores, fruit blossoms, scilla, tulips, fritillary, anemones, hyacinths and amelanchier.

Edible Flowers -

• Primroses, tulips and hyacinth

  

Already, here in the Northern Hemisphere the day is longer than the night.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller

The keen eyed amongst you will have noticed that I am riding on yet another new year.

Firstly, there is the Horticultural New Year, in September. Giving ‘back to school’ vibes. We plant out biennials, hardy annuals and perennials all for flowering next year. Plants by now have been growing already for well over 6 months if not longer. Their life began a long time ago so I consider their ‘new’ back in another year before, back in September. When after gemination, we give them a ‘nursery’ planting out and then a long period of root growth and establishment in the soils before emerging to mature and flower in this calendar year. When growth is cyclical, spiralling upwards in all ways, in nature there isn’t a hard start line. Then we have the Calendar New Year.

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From this plot, my single most important lesson learned there was:

Foliage from shrubs takes your arrangements up a level.

But they take time to mature enough to cut from.

There are no short cuts to achieving this.

Ideally, they were planted them 7 years ago.

The next best opportunity is doing so this winter.

Grasses and annual foliage, even perennial plants are incredibly useful for cutting - ideally about a third of your cutting space would be made up of these plants, but it’s the shrubs that separate the good from the plain excellent.

Even in a diminutive posy or right through to large sculptural installations, woody foliage give wisdom and maturity about a selection in a way that arrangements with just fast growing light annuals can’t achieve.   Arching branches, emerging young leaves or buds or twisting stems create movement and definition; a richness.  And it is the interplay between the different types of material that brings depth and excitement to floristry.

Some clients consider that foliage is ‘cheaper’ and can be used to make the flowers go further. Of course, a shrub takes longer than most flowers to grow and done well, I consider it is foilage that elevates.

And all the more important for creating that support for the pretty soft ‘focal’ flowers. Once established, they take little care and reward handsomely. Far, far less resources and attention than annuals. They create wind barriers, and protection in your garden, giving shape and structure even before they are cut. Far far less than an annual. I need to grow more. We all need to grow more.

So I’ve convinced you to plant shrubs - as a backdrop to your garden borders, informal hedging to an allotment or rows and rows of them on a field plot.

Narrowed it down to snappily fit into Twelve shrubs* for the twelve days of Christmas - perfect to order now. You might find them bare rooted which is even better - cheaper and quicker to establish. Or root balled. Either way, plant between now and early March.

I’m going to list in order of how brilliant these shrubs and trees are - 1. Is the first day of Christmas and just one plant will do, right through to day 12, the star and plant as many as you can.

Here we go.

1. Rosa fillips ‘Kiftsgate’

Any rose with rosehips is going to be a winner for your cutting plot - flowering during the summer  and into winter, adding hips in autumn arrangements with dahlias and chrysanthemums. For Christmas they add that cheery rounded spot.  I need something vigorous to ramble all over a long exposed fence. I reckon this will do - once established, it is huge and those tiny hips will be so pretty for Christmas. A ‘kiftsgate’, famously huge means one will be all you need.

2. Malus sylvestris - Crab Apple

A couple of crab apple trees would make a lovely arch or frame for a garden entrance, or eventually to hang a hammock off. Like most on this list, crab apples have two brilliant uses - blossoms in the spring and leave enough on the tree, they’ll be crab apples into the autumn and winter. Again, lovely for Christmas wreaths and decorating. I love both the rosey red ones and bright chartreuse green ones. Look up trees at the National Collection at Brogdale and see if you can find a tree native to your area and bring these back home.

3. Sambucus - Elderberry

I’d got for one classic green hedgerow elderberry and two dark ones - Sambucus ‘Black Lace’.  The native elder has the most beautiful green and pink emerging foliage as early as January in some hedgerows and looks so pretty with snowdrops and hellebores. The flowers and berries can be useful, but I like the skeleton fingers of the branches when the birds have had their share.

4. Abelia x Grandiflora

A classic garden shrub and for good reason. Easy, reliable and bursts with flowers for the whole summer long, usually evergreen and scented to boot. Plant lots of these for essential branches to enrich summer bouquets of annuals.

5. Hydrangea ‘Annabelle’

Once established, these pump out the flowers. Prune hard in the late winter for smaller, more manageable flowers than one might usually find on a hydrangea. These are lovely as focal flowers - think more delicate, lighter airy versions of alliums, and very good dried too.

6. Lilac

This position in the list was a tricky one. When reflecting on the best ones, which is tricky in snowy December, I came up with at least 20. The first 5 in the list are essential basics, real useful ones. The next 6 are my favourites. Desert Island Shrubs for the garden and for cutting. This middling spot could have had a host of options. I’ve gone for the lilac - mostly for the flowers which the shape and scent is almost unparalleled . Buddleja comes close but a poor long lost cousin. In late May when we reach that tricky gap between the seasons, lilac is wonderful.  I like it emerging, smaller and easier to work with, with some half open. The flowers are edible too. Pretty in ice cubes and on cakes. It slightly pipped another 10 shrubs to slide into this spot because of it’s very useful flowering time.

7. Lonicera x purpusii 'Winter Beauty’ - Winter Honeysuckle.

One of my absolute favourites, not a climber but a semi evergreen sprawling shrub with gorgeous mid green foliage for most of the year. It’s true jewel is the scented delicate flowers produced all winter. Utterly exquisite.  Just a few branches of this in the house will delight. A really great plant for the whole year.

8. Lonicera tatarica

This is quite unusual, but so useful in the early in the season. Bright green leaves in mid spring, much earlier than most shrubs and trees, and small, manageable for cutting and arrangements to work with bulbs and rancunulus. And the pretty dark pink blossom is just a bonus. I cut almost every stem I can on these. I could do with more plants…

9. Amelanchier

One of the most useful plants, in the pretty spring blossoms, lovely light foliage over the summer then warm complex colours in the autumn. It doesn’t grow vigorously, so I have to be parsimonious with cutting it. More plants would be useful, but you can only take a little at a time. Grow it anyway, so the special bouquets and visitors. You won’t regret it.

10. Cotinus

Ten of these wouldn’t be enough! Grow a spread of varieties, ‘green fountain’, peachy maroon ‘grace’ and the very dark ‘Royal Purple’. The foliage is wonderful to work with but when it flowers and ‘smokes’, there are beautiful airy shapes that can be used to fill that space in an arrangement. Like a netted veil across a demure face or misty morning, it airbrushes and blurs between stems in an arrangement. Bridging together colours and shapes.

11. Physocarpus

This would be number one as it is so useful in the summer and autumn months, but really only then, and for it’s foliage. A beautiful shaped leaf, and if pruned hard in late winter, sending up a lot of stems. But it’s not a diverse shrub with lots of uses, just great colours in almost all the plants. I love the dark red ‘diablo’ and lime green ‘dart’s gold’ which is gorgeous in the summer months and usual.

12. Cornus ‘midwinter fire’

Ahhh my number one. I don’t think I could have too many shrubs.  These get cut to nothing each year. Right now, the branches that are left, are brilliant roaring fires of creamy yellow, through to peach and dark pink, making them lovely to use even on their own.

In winter arrangements, carrying climbers like clematis cirrhosa, with hellebores, or perhaps holding rosemary and artichoke leaves.  In the summer they slink into the background waiting for their moment, and come September, BOOM! The leaves start changing, right into October and November. Leave them as long as you dare and they become buttery in colour with splodges of browns and tiny holes. Sounds awful, but mixed with almost anything at this time of year, they add an unmatched autumnal texture that will be used across bridal bouquets, in vases and then into wreaths. Plant at least a dozen and try to leave them alone for a few years to mature!

Do yourself a favour and plant some shrubs this Christmas, support your local shrub nursery or try on line with British grown, local Beeches Nursery, Ashwood or Burngoose. There are so many others.

*11 shrubs and a tree actually. Let’s not split hairs.