Flower Arrangements with Native Plants: Get inspired by your garden
Published by Nate Tietbohl Feb 9, 2025
There’s really something quite magical when, in a buzzing evening of the summer, you find yourself holding a freshly cut bouquet of flowers. A snapshot of that particular season in your hand. Fundamentally this is a moment in the life of the garden that will never present itself precisely the same again. And this moment is not just a particular spot in the garden – it is from the garden as a whole. Those ferns and sedges tucked in that dry shady corner, the fragrant goldenrod (Solidago odora) blooming brilliant yellows out in the open – all mingle happily, settling into a vase with their new companions.
This arrangement mixes native and non-native plants for a quiet, monochromatic composition
And so flower arranging can break horticultural boundaries – Sun and shade plants have a chance to complement and contrast with one another in ways that would never occur in any garden.
When we design with and plant native plants in their “right place,” as with any garden, we are inherently limited on what plants we can combine to create visually interesting landscapes by elements like sun level, moisture, and soil type.
As we prune out the various elements for a flower arrangement, that leaf, or seed head, or grass plume, is instantly a free agent – paint in the pallet, that will be brought together with whatever other elements we choose.
All that is to say: there are no rules! Do you want to try and use all one color and see how that feels? Select one plant from each different parts of your garden – maybe seed heads from your grasses mixed a vibrant explosion of colorful flowers?
Native gardening lends itself very well to flower arranging and having a great deal of fun doing it. I have come to believe this is for a few reasons –
The first is abundance.
In a yard where the lawn area has been reduced creating new space for native plants and where beds that were previously mulched are now filled with plant life, we find a multitude of options to choose from. We do not have to feel limited by the “availability” of cut flowers we might have previously just been growing in a few plants that bordered the lawn.
Secondly, when we garden in a way that is connected to a natural ecological cycles we ourselves become connected to those ecological processes at work in the landscape.
We see a particular plant peak out of the ground in the spring, flower in the summer. We see the bees and the wasps visit it for weeks – then it sets seed in fall and takes on its winter browns and greys. One day those hard dry stems disappear in a blanket of snow only to bounce back upright again as it melts. The birds take the seeds. Repeat.
And thus putting together flower arrangements, can be a celebration of the beauty of any one of these phases of the life cycles we have come to connect with and identify in the garden.
For instance, I will often use the leafy, un-blooming, branches of goldenrods (Solidago sp.) and asters (Symphyotrichum sp.) in flower arrangements I make in the early and mid-summer flower arrangements as “fillers.” I like to give some space between the flowers in the arrangement, I find that the extra room for “green” material helps to make the blooms pop.
I can do this for a few reasons. For one - I know that that goldenrod is a tough plant. It can handle being cut back hard in the early summer and will still bloom in the fall, just at a shorter stature. And besides, removing a few stems here or there, will hardly affect the overall impression of a mature goldenrod.
Above, a wide array of foliage and perennial stems helps the cone flower and hydrangea blooms stand out.
Different presentations of flowers can have a dramatically different effect on their viewer.
What about the seeds?
One very interesting thing I have found when flower arranging with native plants, is that there is a wide spectrum of the time a particular plant will hold its petals or how long it will hold it seeds.
If you Google around I am sure that you can probably find a list of what are the “best native plants for cut flowers” but I can assure you – I have had a lot of fun trying to figure it out over the years and would encourage you to as well. I make note of some of the things learned from different arrangements in the captions on the photos on the side of the page. Importantly though, there is no “right native plant” for flower arranging, some just might last longer than others in a vase.
I love adding seed pods, tips of grasses and other “non-flower” elements into flower arrangements. These elements provide a seemingly unlimited supply of textures and forms. They have unique reds and browns and tans; streaks of color exist in a blade of grass; you can find things that are spikey or floppy. I’ll admit it is easy to overlook them for the showier primary colors flowers offer but as you explore the garden try some new things out!
When using these non-flower elements, especially seed heads, it is important to get the timing of the cut right. Cutting “mature” seed heads means… well that those seeds are ready to be spread on the wind or spill onto the ground or get eaten by a bird. That is to say – in short order they will fall on your windowsill.
And while there’s no sense crying over a few spilled seeds that can easily be wiped up and tossed back into the garden – I’ll admit I certainly have been surprised by an unexpected drop of seeds before. However, cut early in the season Penstemon seed heads, for instance, make as lovely and long lasting addition to a flower arrangement as their blooms do earlier in the season.
Cutting flowers:
The only thing I haven’t touched on yet is the actual flowers. All I can say there is: Don’t be shy. Maybe a good rule of thumb is first year a plant is in the ground, leave some flowers for the bees and leaves for photosynthesis, but once native wildflowers are established, neither the plants nor the pollinators are going to mind a few missing flowers. Flowering plants and grasses have adapted over millions of years to occasional nibbling by herbivores and respond with a flush of new growth. We the gardeners with our pruners making flower arrangements, aren’t throwing these plants anything they can handle.
Here the reds of the Switchgrass seed heads (top right) combine well with the purples and yellows of the rest of the composition
Above: Showy and bold, the variety seed heads stand high above the flowers of summer. Below: The asters in the lower right of this arrangement can be seen in the first photo at the top of the page, having turned to attractive fluffy seeds after a week or so.
After a severe storm caused some stems to blow down over in to a path, I cut the plants back and saved the blooms for an arrangement.
In my own garden, and in the gardens that I design and install, I plant a diverse array of native plant species. All of these different and unique native plants create novel opportunities for flower arranging – some of these are not commonly found in the wild let alone ever found in florists’ shops.
Therefore, I think that it is important to celebrate these native plants with flower arranging. A robust native plant garden is a magical thing, and it is a wonderful source of both the inspiration and the materials for your next flower arrangement.
If you have questions about specific plants and their flower arrangement potential or are interested in getting your own native garden installed, please reach out here:
Stay inspired
Thanks for reading