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Perfect for gardening enthusiasts at any level, this podcast is your companion to cultivating success and beauty in your own backyard or flower patch. Hosted by Jane Westoby from Fuchsia Blooms Florist and The Hampshire Seed Company.
Each episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, expert advice, and insider flower farming guides designed to help you sow and grow with confidence and harvest with pride. Whether you’re dreaming of rows of neat vegetables or cutting flowers for bouquets all year round, we’ll walk you through every step.
Let’s grow together!
Top 10 Foliage Plants Every Flower Farmer Should Grow
Jane Westoby (00:02)
Hey there, flower friends, and welcome back to the podcast that believes that flowers should be local, seasonal, and grown with love, not wrapped in plastic and flown halfway across the world. I'm Jane Westoby, and I'm the founder of the Hampshire Seed Company, and I'm also a flower farmer florist who's gone from wedding chaos to seed packet chaos these days. I also help other growers to build blooming good businesses. So whether you're planning your first tray of cosmos,
or you're scaling up for serious sales, you're in the right place.
whether you're planning your first tray of cosmos or scaling up for serious sales, you're in the right place. And today I'm talking foliage because a bouquet is only as good as the greens that hold it together. That aren't always necessarily green, but we'll talk about that in a second. So no filler, no background noise, not stuff you forage from the garden. That's not what I'm talking about. So no fillers.
no background noise. Stuff you forage from the hedge and hope that no one notices.
So not filler, not background noise, not the stuff you forage from the hedge and hope that no one notices. I'm talking about intentional bouquet shaping, scene stealing greenery, the kind that makes your flowers look expensive and your stems stretch that little bit further and also makes your customers swoon. I'm going to share with you my top 10
favourite foliage plants. These are the ones that I grow on purpose and I cut by the bucket load and I absolutely couldn't live without. there's a trap that a lot of flower growers fall into. They sow all the flowers, they sow all the showstoppers and all the crowd pleasers, all those flashy colours and then bouquet time hits and there's nothing to
to build the bouquet up with. No structure, no contrast, no movement and no magic. So what happens? Panic, foraging, cutting down your own garden because you need something to fill. But foliage is the backbone of every good arrangement. It can absolutely be as profitable, beautiful and as essential as the blooms themselves. And yes, some bouquets, they do require minimal greenery.
but just a few stems can make all the difference. Covering up those mechanics, the armature, a plastic pot here and there, or some chicken wire. So don't think about them always as a showstopper. They're more camouflage, but there are some foliage that I do grow specifically for colour, which are showstoppers.
and the colour on those is really, really important. So it might be lime green or it might be burgundy, something that's going to make the other flowers pop. let's get into my top 10. these are all deliberate, design worthy and bouquet building plants that work really, really hard. firstly,
Let's just start with the obvious star and let's just get her over and done with really, because this is Eucalyptus. Okay, it's not sexy, but it's a must. And really it's that grey-green colour that just works with everything. as a flower farmer florist, you just can't not have it. And a few different varieties are really, really useful so that you can get a real mix of leaf shapes.
It does need to be cut at the right time, so not when it's too young because it will wilt if it's too young. So early in the season is not good, but it needs to be mature enough so that the leaves are just perfect, but they haven't elongated. you can't necessarily use eucalyptus that's two or three years old because the leaves will elongate and the whole thing just droops down, which isn't a great look.
that's when you know that your eucalyptus does need a major trim and that will encourage some fresh new better shaped growth. you could buy plants in the garden center. They're not cheap, especially if you need quite a few of them and they can get quite expensive. So you can sow them from seed and I grow all of mine from seed and that's perfect. You can grow them kind of February to May time.
or can also grow them September to November. they do need some cold stratification. So sowing in September and November is perfect because Mother Nature will do that for you. And then you can get them through the winter and then they'll grow. It will take a couple of years for them to grow to a decent size, maybe two, three years for you to be able to start cutting. I'd say if you're a new flower farmer, you'd probably want to do a couple of things. you'd probably want to buy yourself a couple of ready
ready bushes that are already a couple of years old and then you can actually start to cut from those from the first year that you plant them and then I would say sow seeds straight away and then you will then be able to build up some stocks. so that's Eucalyptus. Glad we got that one done. my next favourite is Ninebark. So if you haven't grown this yet like literally stop what you're doing. Those deep
burgundy leaves, gift bouquets, contrast and elegance. it's woody, it's reliable, it cuts like a dream. The flowers, now it actually flowers in May and the flowers are just so pretty as well, but you can't grow it from seed. So you do need to buy a bush and then take cuttings from it if you want to increase your stocks. But that's a fabulous one. I grow so much of it.
I love using Nineback. my next one, a little bit easier, raspberry foliage. So one of my favorites, we've got raspberries that pop up all over the place. I think the previous owner here just never ever pulled them out. they're literally everywhere, but I love the texture. Those little vein leaves and that kind of fresh garden look. and if you've already got canes for fruit, then you're kind of halfway there. You can just let them go a little bit mad, a little bit wild, and then use them for cutting.
then whatever's left you can then eat the fruits. almost in the same ilk we've then got blackberry foliage too, a little bit more rugged with a bit more edge. I use this one I want just a little bit more of a wild romantic kind of hedgerow vibe and I grow a thornless variety especially for cutting. The fruits are also really nice but the leaves are a kind of fabulous pointy shape.
and they can come out with a little kind of burgundy trim to them as well, which is really lovely. And I can use that all summer long. And I also use the emerging fruits as well before they ripen, of course, because you don't want to get blackberry juice on anyone's dress. so when they're still kind of green and maybe just turning red, but they haven't gone soft and burgundy yet. So that's great. Love using that. My next one, Smokebush. So, so similar color to Nine Bark.
But if Nine Bark was velvet, Smokebush is like chiffon. It's got soft, hazy, smoky plumes with like this purple tinted leaves and the flowers are kind of this golden yellow color, but not a bright golden yellow. It's quite a pale yellow. I use those too, but I love the dramatic, moody.
foliage. It's completely underrated and it grows like mad so you don't need a lot of it. You can propagate it if you want to but I literally only have one smoke bush. It is huge and I cut from it every year and it grows like crazy. it's a fantastic one to have, really really reliable. my next one, Lepidium. Okay so
I know it's not technically foliage, but the seed pods kind of act like it because they're green. it's really light and airy. It's a brilliant filler. adds great movement and has this kind of just picked from the meadow charm. So I sow mine direct. It's one of the very, very few things I do sow direct. And I sow it every month. So then I just get a continuous supply and the seed pods are great to use. So that's a really great one.
you guessed you can say it from seed and you can grow it all year round as well. my next one and probably not one that you've thought of or maybe you have don't know but Dahlia foliage. I grow certain dahlias just for foliage so you know that moment just before your dahlias start flowering when they're just really big and moody if you pick the right varieties that have that
deep bronze foliage, it is lush. And I use Bishop's children that you can grow from seed. I don't like the blooms. I actually can't stand the blooms. They're bright red and bright yellow. I detest them. But I never actually let it flower. I just cut the foliage and it just comes back time and time again. So that's a really good one. Maybe if you don't have the room for a smoke bush, then this is one that you can just grow from seed.
pop it in with everything else and then just cut, cut, cut and just never let it flower unless you really like the flowers but that's another one I use. my next one, number eight is Alcamilla mollusk. with fluffy kind of foamy chartreuse blooms that really act like a filler but it's leaf shape is just so interesting and really helps to soften a bouquet. So you compare it with either pastels or brights.
And it just never gets in the way. It always looks great. It makes everything just pop. The bonus here is that slugs don't like it. They hate it. I've never had any slug damage. The deer unfortunately do like it. So I have had quite a lot of deer damage. But anyway, we're trying to keep the deer out.
You can grow it from seed in autumn and it will self seed like freely, literally all over the place. And I just dig up those little seedlings that self seed everywhere and then I just move them to where I want them into a seed bed or into a cutting bed. So that's a really lovely one. And then my number nine is grapevines. really big, bold leaves with a real satisfying twist. Amazing for really large scale arrangements and like
archways, you know, if you're having to make something really big, you don't want to be, you know, attaching lots and lots, know, thousands of tiny, tiny stems, you can literally just cut four or five really big stems and attach them to an archway. And it works like a dream. It's like Tuscany in a bucket. I have this really large grapevine that just grows down the side of my house.
And it needs trimming a few times throughout the summer. I'd say maybe like three times or so. It's literally just started to explode at the moment. It's mid-June right now and it's literally starting to explode. I'm going to have to cut it. I'd say within the next two weeks, it's going to need a trim because blink and it will be huge. and I always try and time it with a wedding so that I can use the foliage. I don't like to waste it.
And you can also cut the fruits as well. that will give a kind of a real Italian charm, kind of wedding feel as well. So that's a really, really lovely one. And again, it's because it's perennial, it will just come back year after year. It's just, it's great. It's, it's, yeah, kind of does its thing. So the next one, we've got hops. number 10 hops, trailing, textural, a little bit feral. I use it for some height, a bit of whimsy.
And it always makes customers ask, what is that? And the flowers look really sculptural and they'll always wow guests. that's my number 10. Okay, but hang on a minute. Okay, if I did have an extra one, if I had a number 11, I think I would add in Cineraria. I use this a lot for boutonniers. It works really, really well for boutonniers. I don't grow...
buckets and buckets and buckets and buckets full of it. I literally have like maybe 10, 20 plants a year and that's it. I don't use it throughout all of my arrangements. I literally practically only use it for boutonniers. Sometimes if I have some really long stems, I might use it in a bouquet as well. And I say fresh seeds every year, every spring, but I also keep last year's plants because they do come back again. They need renewing each year or every couple of years, but...
I do keep last years and then I'll dig them up after that. So that's my 10 plus one. You've got an extra bonus one there. if you really want to make foliage kind of really work for you, then you do need to grow it intentionally. You can't just hope that it's gonna show up. And then my other top tip would be prune it regularly so that your plants do get bushier and better the more.
you cut, so something like eucalyptus and ninebark, you know, they will get more and more bushier and you'll be able to get more and more growth from them as well. And then don't forget to condition them, like a florist, strip the lower leaves, dunk them in cool water, give them time to hydrate before arranging, don't cut them too early. Another great one that I'm going to have to mention now is rosemary. I love using rosemary as well. I always have a couple of rosemary tucked away in the back, but okay, that's another bonus one for you.
if you want the full foliage list, I've put this all together in my blog post for you and I will link to it in the show notes so you can go and have a read. And that's it for this week's episode of the Blooming Garden Podcast. So if this just made you rethink how you grow some of your greens, then please, please do tap that follow on your podcast app.
because it really does help me to make more episodes and bring you more magic, more gardening insights. please do do that for me. And until next week, keep sowing, keep growing and give the foliage the main character energy that it deserves. Bye for now. See you next week.