‘Unexpected scent sensations’

A book excerpt from “The Flower Farmer’s Year: How to grow cut flowers for pleasure and profit”

Editor’s Note: The following is an edited excerpt from “The Flower Farmer’s Year: How to grow cut flowers for pleasure and profit.” The portion of the chapter selected, “Herbs,” explains the various ways gardeners can use herbs to enhance flower arrangements. The DIY cut flower trend is growing, especially in the wedding industry, and herbs are often forgotten in traditional flower arrangements. Capitalize on both the edibles and DIY cut flower trends by marketing this sometimes overlooked use of these fragrant plants. Portions of this selection have been edited for space.

Herbs are often forgotten in a cut-flower scheme, and yet I know that florists love them, so don’t overlook these valuable plants — they will complement the rest of your crop.

For fabulous foliage fillers and unexpected scent sensations, not to mention medicinal value, I recommend you create a herb patch in your cut-flower garden. Herbs are difficult to get hold of for florists, and so they will often be happy to buy from a local grower if they can’t rely on their wholesaler for these. Herbs don’t generally travel well out of water, and are often easily bruised, which makes them expensive to import.

Ask a bride whether she’d like fresh herbs as ingredients in her bouquet and you’ll see by her reaction that it is a good idea to grow them. If you’re growing in a confined space and you want to make every stem you produce count financially, then herbs are a good crop. Imagine the lovely furry apple mint in a bouquet with garden roses; the bicoloured pineapple mint as a striking filler in white wedding flowers; the delicate steep white spikes of their cousin melissa’s flower contrasting with sweet peas. Think too about herbs whose flowers you don’t usually see because the leaves are cut too young for the plant to produce flowers or seed: parsley, sage, marjoram or thyme for a buttonhole.
 

Which herbs to grow?

Consider the following list with a little circumspection. If space is limited, you may simply decide to have a low hedge of herbs around your cut-flower patch. Angelica, for example, is a space-greedy plant, and so [it] might be one to grow if you’re planning a bigger herb area. A hedge of lavender will give you a low windbreak as well as flowers for cutting. Think about the options and choose what will suit you.
 

Recommended herbs

Even in a small cut-flower patch I particularly recommend you start at least with a little mint, some rosemary and a lavender or two. You can expand your collection as your business and growing customer base demands.

Angelica: With giant round heads of tiny white or pale pink flowers on green or dark red stalks, this perennial herb is an impressive flower to sell by the stem, and extremely useful for large arrangements at events or weddings. It smells of gin and tonic when cut. Collect seed in autumn and sow straight away, as it germinates best when fresh.

Bronze fennel: Cousin to the dill, bronze fennel is a short-lived perennial and freely self-seeds for us. It has a more mustardy-coloured flower than dill, on bronze stems. The aniseed scent is gorgeous to me, although some people dislike it.

Catmint: This is an excellent, useful perennial to use for foliage as well as flowers. Cut back after the first June flowering to encourage a second flush in the autumn.

Comfrey: While not one to grow as a cut flower, this perennial is necessary for making comfrey tea to feed your garden in the second half of the summer, or to chop up as a mulch for your beds. It also feeds the bees.

Coriander: An annual to grow every year. Let some of your coriander go to seed, for gorgeous umbellifer heads of soft white lacy flowers.

Dill: This bright yellow lace-capped annual flower is extremely useful for floristry. Check seed suppliers for ‘flower arranger’s dill’ — a slightly bigger, taller variety than common-or-garden dill, though I like the small heads of the ordinary flowers too.

Feverfew: The tiny daisy heads of this annual chrysanthemum are incredibly useful in posy making, I find, though I’ve had clients who’ve turned their noses up at this smiling little plant as a “weed.” It will seed itself everywhere, but you soon become adept at recognizing seedlings and either rationalizing them into one place or composting any you don’t need.

Hyssop: Not only good for keeping moths out of your woollens, flies out of your kitchen, and growing a short-lived perennial hedge as a windbreak in your plot, hyssop is lovely cut: a true blue for late-summer bunches.

Lavender: There’s a great market for it for everything from lavender bags to herb teas, from cooking to soap, from floristry to essential-oil making. Lavender is calming to a nervous bride, a spot of real blue in a bouquet or buttonhole, and dries beautifully for remembering the day.

Lemon verbena: A perennial, shrubby plant, lemon verbena is very tender, so bring it in under cover for the winter if you’re gardening in an exposed spot, but the incredible lemon scent is amazing in bouquets. It won’t last a minute out of water, so don’t ask it to stand for long in flower-foam-based arrangements. As a foliage plant it has a short season, but it repays the time and space you give it a hundredfold with that stunning scent and its attractive, pointed, acid-green leaves.

Melissa: A close cousin to the mint, melissa has lovely tall spikes of white flowers in the summer. Its scent is subtly lemony, a delicious addition to a cut-flower mix. We grow it in dry shade, but it will tolerate damper conditions.

Mint: The scent of mint in a cut-flower arrangement is unexpectedly delicious — like a sprig of mint on a ball of ice cream, with a chocolate pudding, or with raspberries. Mint will bully its way about a bed where it’s planted, but its roots are shallow, so plant in blocks of its own kind and separate with shallow barriers across and just under the soil surface.

These three are fine mints to try:

1. Apple mint: has soft, furry leaves
2. Pineapple mint: an attractive variegated colour
3. Buddleja mint: for tall spikes of flowers.
    

Oregano: Very useful as a little scented purple cushion in bouquets, this perennial herb likes dry conditions and will self-seed about in a path or a yard. We grow it in pots, on a path and in the herb garden, and it flowers at different times and for longer/shorter periods, depending on the summer we’re having. I wouldn’t be without it for its insect-drawing abilities either. It’s very similar to marjoram, and the two are often confused, though marjoram has a slightly sweeter, gentler flavour.

Parsley: Sow flat-leafed parsley as a biennial and you’ll have lovely tall greeny-yellow lace-capped flower heads in late spring the following year.

Rosemary: For funerals, weddings (it is traditionally associated with remembrance, and so a bride will often ask for a sprig in her bouquet in memory of a beloved grandparent), for winter greenery and Christmas wreathing – many customers have a special fondness for rosemary, so it’s worth growing. ‘Miss Jessopp’s Upright’ is the tallest.

Sage: This lovely herb, with all its variety of colours from purple to silver, makes wonderful foliage for cut flowers. Grow the variety ‘Hot Lips’ for a burst of blinding pink flower spike to add to dahlia bouquets at the end of the summer, and the classic ‘Victoriana’ for pure blue spires, which go beautifully with the rich yellow of a sunflower and the mustard of bronze fennel.

Strawberry: Not strictly a herb, but the flowers of the wild strawberry plant are beautiful in bouquets, though very fragile, so better for a bride than for a bouquet designed to last a week. Wild strawberry varieties shoot longer stems than the fatter, domesticated strawberries. I use both in floristry.

Thyme: Thyme is good for buttonholes, brides’ bouquets and jam-jar-style wedding arrangements, but isn’t really tall enough for everyday bouquet work.