Twelve Shrubs for Twelfth Night

My top foliage for cutting

It takes years for shrubs to grow enough to provide structure in a garden, to protect boundaries from wind or to cut freely from for arranging with cut flowers.

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,