BEYOND BLOSSOMS: Fresh + Dried Grasses, Herbs & Vegetables
Expanding Your Floral Design Menu
For fresh or dried floral work, classic blooms are only part of the palette. Ornamental grasses, grains, herbs and even some vegetables can play a big role in a diversified flower business. They produce plenty of useful material you can count on year after year, and they can stand in for, or add to, the focal and filler materials usually gathered from the landscape, like branches, rushes, sedges, cones and berries.
Below are some herbs, grasses and vegetables worth adding to your floral lineup.
Good for drying and crafts products
Broomcorn products
Decorative corn products
Decorative gourds products
Grasses for ornament products
Unusual pumpkins products
Herbs • For Texture & Scent
Herbs bring texture, form, fragrance and color to fresh and dried designs, crafts and other value-added products.
Some herbs cut better than others, thanks to traits like long enough stems, good vase life, or holding their color instead of browning as they dry. Basil comes in many handsome cultivars, for instance, yet just a handful last long enough in water to use in arrangements. Likewise for sage.
Blooms of 'Ellagance Purple' lavender hold their rich, deep violet-blue and appear in profusion on big, dense silvery-green spikes that last well in crafts and arrangements. Other herbs are packed with the aromatic oils that make the best potpourri, sachets and other scented products.
More herbs we like for texture and fragrance:
Ornamental grasses bring motion and contrast to fresh bouquets. Two standouts are Panicum 'Frosted Explosion', with light, glistening plumes, and Pennisetum 'Purple Majesty', an All-America Selections winner with tall, dramatic spikes.
Millet, barley, wheat and rye all work fresh or dried. Some low-cost cover crop varieties are pretty enough for floral work, or choose varieties bred for ornament from our ornamental grass selection among the flowers.
Ornamental Vegetables • An Element of Surprise
Artichokes and cardoon make bold, unusual statements as cut stems. Many kinds of peppers can be grown for cutting and drying, too. And plenty of summer flower buyers come back in fall looking for pumpkins, gourds, broomcorn and unusual squash for decorating.
A few kinds and varieties to start with:
Get Creative
Whether you sell to florists or grow for your own creative projects, you can raise plenty of fresh-cut stems and a variety of dried materials. For more suggestions and how-to steps, see how to air-dry cut flowers and other materials for arrangements and crafts.
