Cut flower corner - dried seedheads and foliage

Cut flower corner - dried seedheads and foliage

Dried foliage and seedheads used to have a dusty image, but a new breed of florists is using them to create bouquets with a fresh contemporary feel.  

Using ornamental grasses such as miscanthus with its silky flower plumes, fluffy Calamagrostis brachytricha flower heads, stipa (Mexican feather grass), panicum and delicate quaking grass (Briza maxima and Briza media) are a great way of adding volume and airiness to a floral display.

Blowsy and romantic dried hydrangea heads add volume, as do solid rich brown sedum seedheads.  Alliums with their star-shaped seedheads are wonderfully sculptural (spray paint them gold for extra sparkle) and the pearly seed discs of honesty (lunaria) have a translucent, ephemeral beauty, lightening up the whole display.  Other perennials to look out for when you roam the garden with your secateurs in hand, include pretty umbels such as fennel, delicate sanguisorba and fluffy clematis seedheads.

The overall idea is to embrace naturalism and imperfection so it’s a case of ‘the wilder the better’.  Making your own arrangements from garden material that would end up in the compost is perfect for these gloomy winter months when fresh blooms are hard to come by.


Modern heroes of horticulture - Tamsin Westhorpe

Take a little bit of Gerald Durrell, a pinch of Felicity Kendall from the Good Life, and a slice of Mini the Minx, and you’ll have a good idea of...
Read More

Plant folklore - snowdrops

It’s surprising for a plant that has become so entrenched in folklore that snowdrops are not actually indigenous to Britain.  While the precise date of their introduction remains a subject...
Read More

Wildlife in the garden - winter migrants

We always celebrate the arrival of our spring and summer migrants such as swallows, swifts, cuckoos and nightingales.  Less celebrated and often creeping in under the radar are our winter...
Read More