Cheryl,
I use more greenery in the spring when there are few or no fillers available. At that time the only greenery available here are evergreens like arborvitae or yew.

In the summer I don't use greens as much but sometimes use mint, perilla, basil and perennial artemesia. I used sweet annie last year but I'm really allergic to it and didn't grow any this year. I also grow eucalyptus here as an annual and start using that late in the year.

I tend to use the greens more when I don't have enough flowers to make the bouquets look full. I am still experimenting with things - this is my fourth season doing this and I'm still learning!
Kirk

I don't have much greenery at all to use. I do use some forsythia branches, and this year I started using stems of my caryopteris Snow Fairy. (I really love this foliage, but I have to admit that it's not too great on my young caryopteris shrub, lol!) I use this in bouquets that have a more sophisticated "feel" to them, usually chinese asters, snaps, dahlias, roses, and in shades of pinks, purples, and whites. I tend not to use anything in bouquets with rudbeckias, sunflowers, zinnias - funny, now that I think of it, it's the bouquets that are made of reds, oranges, yellows etc., in which I do not use greenery. Of course, that's not necessarily because I don't like greenery, but because I just don't have any to use, lol!

:)
Dee

The greenery is easy -- I have trouble with FILLER! It shatters and drops petals and makes a mess.

Greenery -- I use Euphorbia, euonymous, curly willow & azalea. The euphorbia I have is wonderful with anything, but I have to sear the stem(s) for 18 seconds over the gas flame of my stove before I can use them. And it's not just the cut end of the stems, but the juncture of any leaves I pull off from the stem which would be under the water level, too. (Make sense? All the leaves I pull from the stem ooze some of that white stuff and it has to be cauterized.)

I read about 18 seconds in a book where they talked about boiling water or flame, but I have never figured out how to get boiling water for 18 seconds without burning myself with steam. The 18 seconds part it seems to be about right.

This year I tried to root cuttings of clematis and it has been green, in water only, for over 2 months! I figure that must mean it would make good greenery if I ever need something that hangs down. (That is how I found out my azalea lasts long as greenery -- I tried to root cuttings. It never rooted, but stayed green for over two months!)

Lime

Lime,
I guess my water wasn't hot enough on the euphorbia, I have tried that, but some took, and some wilted. It does make nice greenery. Aren't you cutting off next years blooms if you cut your azalea? I have used cuttings from my cottoneaster, but it doesn't work in every bouquet. I too tend to not use anything with the brighter colored flowers, suns, zinnias, ect., just use filler that accents the flowers like my crocosmia,(seed heads from crocosmia look good with suns too) zebra grass, celosia, purple majesty millet and things like that. I guess I'll just have to experiment with some trees and shrubs around here. I do need to find a place to buy some curly willow, I love the way that looks. Thanks for all your suggestions,
Cheryl

Cheryl,

This is just for my own use, but I mostly use Asparagus. I let one or two plants grow and cut off the feathery stems as needed. It really looks nice.

I think asparagus would look really nice too. Does it hold up well?
Cheryl

Cheryl, yes it does. I read about using it for greenery in a garden magazine. They were talking about when Asparagus was used all the time in the flower garden for the feathery look, back in the early 1900's I believe. They mentioned it was great to use in a bouquet. And since I live in the suburbs and have limited space, this was a great duel use for Asparagus.

Another great plant for a feathery look is Cosmos foliage - it holds up really well in a bouquet.

I had some Euphorbia this year that I cut a big bouquet of just my own use. I didn't sear the stems nor put them in boiling water - just into plain water and they lasted 2 weeks.

My favorite greenery is Amsonia hubrectii foliage. It's just great and holds up real well. It does emit a milky substance though when cut, so I first put it in water by itself. It doesn't need seared. The amsonia tabernaemontana foliage is nice also. I've also used Weigelia stems in my larger bouquets and they hold up pretty good.

oooh, that Amsonia hubrectii is neat...here's a picture:

http://www.directgardening.com/detail.asp?pid=7443

I had never heard of it before.

Oh, and I don't know that euphorbia has to be seared...I read it and assumed it was true. It does bleed a lot of milky sap if you don't hold it upside down! I have no idea how to put stems in boiling water -- the whole thing sounds weird because the steam rises & gets the flowers all hot.

My azalea is 7 feet wide and 6 feet tall. It has some soft growth that is completely straight & vertical. Are thse called suckers? They come from branches, not the ground, but they ruin the shape of the shrub, so I cut them off and use them as greenery. Not with zinnias, but in the spring with other flowers that seem to need "something". Maybe I am doing the same as Kirk & Dee without being able to put it into words as well as they.

Cheryl, the best place to buy curly willow is the florist! You know how willows have a reputation of rooting in water? Well, it's true. They also root in wet oasis. Just buy one and root it yourself in a vase or a vase with wet vermiculite. Buy one in Jan or Feb and root it in water, wet oasis, or vermiculite & water. It will have roots in 3-4 weeks. Pot it up and by April or May it can go outside.

My mom got an orchid last Christmas and it was staked with a piece of curly willow which rooted in the oasis. I was just getting ready to snag it from her when she let the whole thing die. (The orchid flower had died and she was bored with watering a couple of leaves.)

Lime

Oh, I also use parsley. It really is a multi-purpose plant. You attract black swallowtails to your garden, you can put it in bouquets, and you can sell it fresh. I also use curley leaf tansy.

I had been using tansy for greens. Not in all bouquets, just a few. For years it was growing out of control near a swampy area where I had thrown some old plants that I was trying to kill. All of a sudden this year it was gone. So, I haven't been using greens either. I did plant in a dozen ofr so new Leather Leaf ferns. Hopefully they will be big enough to use next year. Heidi

I had never heard of Amsonia. It's really gorgeous. I also hadn't thought of using cosmos for greenery but it's a great idea. I do use tansy leaves, and bronze fennel as well. Parsley is also a good thought. Thanks for all the great suggestions.
Cheryl

We use lots of agastache that we start from seed each year. It lasts really well and has a nice fragrance. We also use Mrs. Burns' lemon basil and African Blue basil. The African is beautiful, but you have to buy starts. It evidently doesn't grow from seed.

I think using some greenery sets off the flowers and you can appreciate them individually more.
Like some of the others, I use forsythia foliage. Hosta leaves are good until they get holes in them.
One of my main "foliages" is immature golden rod. When it has formed a triangle (some types have different shapes) and the flowers are very tiny, the whole thing is a greenish color and does the same job as greens. People are afraid that golden rod will give them the sniffles, but it isn't true. Instead of calling it golden rod, call it by its latin name, solidago. Florists use it and intergeneric hybrids all the time (e.g. solidaster).
I like the parsley idea.
When I was helping with a design course (a go-fer, not a designer) we collected common privet for greenery. It worked very well. I'm always looking for the common kind now, as I don't have any growing on my property.
Grasses are great as are some weeds. Don't forget cattails and millet. Peony foliage is good. Yes, I've used asparagus ferns also. Sage and oregano can work. Cinnamon basil gives a scent.
I have curly willow, but it always looked like it went through a car wreck to me.
Ann

All good ideas, and now I'm wishing I would have noticed the golden rod in that stage of small buds. I like the way it looks right now in full bloom, but I don't think my customers would. I have used peony foliage and that is very good, however I don't have enough shrubs to continue cutting from without doing harm to the plant.

Duh! I forgot that I also used hosta leaves in my bouquets! I always seemed to be drawn to the same hosta - I think it's Frances Williams - and everyone loved it.

I never thought to use goldenrod in that early stage either. However, I've been putting it into my bouquets the last week or so and I think it is gorgeous! In a bouquet with yellow and rust-colored rudbeckia, red and orange zinnias and sunflowers, it makes a great looking fall arrangement. I haven't had any negative feedback on it so far - maybe no one recognizes it in a bouquet, lol! Too bad this flower gets such a bad rap.

I'll also admit to using weeds in my bouquets. One is a cat-tail looking grass that has a beautiful form to it. I often wonder if anyone recognizes it as a weed, lol.

:)
Dee

I've always used a pale green weed called Penny Cress in early bouquets, when nothing else is available. It's a mustard relative that makes tiny white flowers, but the good part is the seedpods. They're round and green and carried all up and down the stems. Kind of like money plant, but paler green, annual, fuller, shorter, and easier to grow. I have no idea where to get the seeds, though, since I've never planted it. Here, it shows up anywhere the soil has been disturbed, like in ALL rototilled areas, for instance. It's easy to pull out of the plant rows. I suppose it's probably just a local thing. My other two wild favorites are aspen and snowberry, but that's definitely a local/mountain thing. They only look good early in the season, but that's when I need them, so that's okay! They're bug-chewed my midsummer, not enough to hurt them, but enough not to be pretty.

I use Bells of Ireland as filler and greens. Great stuff, I love everything but the smell. Most people aren't bothered by it, I guess I'm just unlucky on that. I use it anyway. It's one of the few annuals I'm still growing, just for myself, since I stopped selling flowers. There are very few annuals I'm willing to bother with just for my own use.

By the way, goldenrod's bad reputation as an allergen is mostly due to ragweed, which happens to bloom at the same time and is an AWFUL allergen. I like goldenrod's pale green bud stage much more than I like the opened flowers. Most of mine never make it to the open stage - by then I've cut most of them.

Jeanne

I have used scented geranium leaves, yarrow foliage and oregano seed heads in bouquets. I also use bamboo foliage for greenery - mine are finally getting big enough to cut a little from them.

I'm glad to hear others are using weeds in their bouquets. In the spring we have a native buckwheat with white flowers which is a great filler flower and lasts a long time - it gives the same effect as baby's breath. I also use some tall native grass seed heads - I like them because they add height to my arrangements - I used some with closed heads and others that had opened. Our native willow trees (not curly) are good for greenery. I have even used the foliage of cattails for greenery - it grows beside our highway. Along our irrigation ditch we have some horsetails or equisetum growing, which I love to use.

Yep, weeds are good sometimes. I have used the grass type if they have nice seed heads.The ones from rye grass are beautiful. I will be planting a fall rye for a green manure which will continue growing in the spring until it gets tilled under. I usually still get some along the edges of my rows that don't get tilled in and they have a bluish tinge to them which is beautiful with delphs and campanula.
Jeanne, I don't know what it is, but I CAN NOT grow Bells of Ireland! It never gets the height it's suppose to and looks very unimpressive in my garden. What's the trick? Do you remember when you start it? Maybe I don't get it off to an early enough start to get it's full potential. For whatever reason, I gave up on it last year but I do love the way it looks and could definitely use it if it looked like yours. Does it require a lot of water?
Cheryl

Now don't laugh, but I think that parsley and carrot tops look quite lovely in a bouquet. And the carrots need thinning anyway...

Carrot tops?????What a great idea. How long do they last in the vase. I don't use parsley because the smell is strong(just my opinion) HEIDI

Here's a good link re growing/cutting woody ornamentals. josh

Here is a link that might be useful: Woody Ornamentals

Does anyone grow eucalypus? I tried it a few years ago, I should have planted it on black plastic. It was a great ffiller/greenery. It is on my list for next year. Heidi

Cheryl, I've always started Bells of Ireland indoors, grown on in a greenhouse, and planted out maybe a week or two before last frost date, after hardening off, of course! They generally self-seed in the beds, since I rarely cut every single one of the flowering branches (the last few have too few bracts to be of much use). A couple of years ago, I let some of those grow, experimentally, but they were too slow to produce cutting-size stems, so I've resumed pulling the seedlings out of the bed and starting new seed indoors. I've found that fresh seed is absolutely essential. It germinates much better when self-seeded outdoors (the self-seeded ones) than when I start it, but I still get at least 50% germination in the house with fresh seed. I've saved seed from it for the first time this year, so I'll be anxious to see what happens when I plant them.

Seedlings can take a little frost when very small, if hardened off. At the other end of the growing season, the flower bracts (the part you want) are less tolerant of frost. The stems don't get as long here as the catalogs say they will, but they get tall enough to be very useful.

I work a little more manure than most plants get into the soil before planting, and water regularly. It's fine if the surface soil dries out between waterings. Mine has had very good drainage, but I've never grown it in wetter soil, so I don't know if that's necessary. Plenteous manure has made a big difference in plant size here.

I used two levels of support netting for it when I was selling, having learned the hard way that one good rain when the plants are a good useful size will cause them all to lie down. Their own weight, once they get big, can result in all lying down also, without rain. They grow upward from there, resulting in stems with a 90-degree bend that are awfully hard to use. Stems can easily kink, bend or break over the support if it rains and there is much growth above the support netting. This last year I didn't support them at all and got some that stayed straight up, some that lay down just a little and bent gracefully up from there in a big curve, and many that fell down and got the resulting 90-degree bend. My visiting mother-in-law fell in love with the curved stems and 90-degree stems. She put them in every bouquet she made, next to the rim of the vase, where they made a nice downwards curve, adding fullness and grace. Duh, why didn't I ever think of that???

After the first year, I always planted them only half the recommended distace apart, harvesting every other plant entire, for earlier-season greenery, when individual stems are still too short to cut. Climate has made a big difference in their size. When grown in my windy, cold-sink field, they just barely got big enough to cut, never big enough for any tall bouquets, whereas they got to two or three feet in my sheltered, warmer raised beds.

All of what I've written is based on my experience in a very-short-season, cold-nights Western mountain climate. Results anywhere else will differ. I imagine succession-planting would be best in a place with a longer season, but that's just conjecture, I have no such experience.

As usual, I've probably told you a whole lot more than you wanted to know!

Jeanne

Jeanne,
Your posts are like reading a good email from a friend, I like them. Thanks for the information, and I can see several things that probably went wrong here. Now that I have my greenhouse, I should be able to grow stronger plugs and I will definitely incorporate more compost into the soil for them. As for the windy field, well I guess I'll just have to plant them lower in the field and hope the deer don't like them. Thanks for all the suggestions.
Cheryl

josh, thanks for the link on woody ornamentals - that's a great list. It was great to review the list because there are many plants listed, which I already have growing, that I never thought of using for greenery and others I would like to grow.

I used Baptisia or False Indigo for my main greenery this year. The black seed pods are nice later on also.
Kim

I had my first successful crop of Bells Of Ireland this year by planting the seed directly in the garden in early March before the last of our frosts was past. I planted larkspur, nigella and Kiss me over the garden gate all direct seeded at that time and had terrific crops of all of them that have lasted up until now. The Kiss-Me and the bells of Ireland are still going!

Lizalily,
How do you control all the weed seeds that pop at the same time as your planted seed? I tried direct seeding nigella before and couldn't find them through all the weeds that came up at the same time.
Cheryl

I have a wedding end of October in upstate NY and bride wants greens down the center of the tables with flowers interspersed. Does anyone know what I can clip? I have fosythia and peonies on my property but worried about that time of year. Don't remember what those shubs look like that time of year.