After the flower arranger has taken the scissors and snippers to the plants in the garden I recommend you give your plants a thankyou! Flowers and shrubs will respond again if they are treated properly.

Help Plants After the Flower Arrangers Visit

• Tidy up the plants from a gardeners point of view. Prune again to reshape shrubs and encourage new young growth. Open up the centre of plants to let in air and light.
• Water, mulch and feed the woody plants.
• Water in a liquid feed and or foliar feed after flowers have been cropped to perk up the plants for a further flush.
• If the plant is exhausted or unlikely to provide a second crop, dig it out and turn it into compost asap.
• Propagate new plants of favoured selections, the flower arranger is bound to return.
• Consider deadheading all the flowers that were not up to the job for the flower arranger.

Tips for Selecting Woody Plants

• Chose plants everlasting plants or thoses that grow rapidly and regrow even after severe and frequent pruning.
• Select plants that are harvestable early in life.
• Pick plants that grow numerous stems borne over a long period of time.
• Desirable features include stems at least 18″ long, retention of flowers, berries and foliage with a good vase life.
• Boxwood, dogwood, forsythia, Eucalyptus, holly, hydrangea, jasmine, lilac, pussy willow, and corkscrew willow have long been popular in the floral trade.
• For woody stemmed flowers increase the surface in contact with the water by cutting on a slant or crushing with a hammer.

Credits
Flower Arrangement by lrargerich CC BY 2.0
Flower Arrangement by theclyde CC BY-NC 2.0
Flower Arrangement by dannnnnnny CC BY-NC-SA 2.0