Plant Materials
This is the part where you get to use your imagination!
- Keep your arrangement’s theme in mind when selecting the flowers, filler and foliage for your arrangement.
- Some of the best plant material can be grown right in your own garden: calendula, candytuft, cosmos, dahlias, zinnias, asters, baby’s breath, chrysanthemums and roses.
- Fillers are plant materials and foliage used to hide plant stems, the container’s edge and most importantly, the oasis.
- You can use seed pods, grass heads, berries, interesting-looking branches from shrubs like spirea, juniper, honeysuckle or anything else that will look good in your arrangement.
- Remember to ask permission first before you take plant material from your parent’s garden. Ask them to show you how to prune the branch that you wish to take from a shrub.
- Even carrot greens and asparagus fern leaves will make excellent filler.
- Cedar and pine twigs look interesting but they can cause some flowers to wilt. If you intend to use them put them in a jar with a couple of spare conditioned flowers for a few days to see if they react to each other.
- You can also find great flowers and plant material in fields and along the side of the road: Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod, white yarrow, sweet clover, daisies and buttercups.
Four Rules When Searching for Plant Material
- Ask an adult to accompany you along roadsides searches.
- Watch out for Poison Ivy and other toxic plants.
- Always wash your hands thoroughly after handling wild plant material.
- Never put any wild plant in your mouth.
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