Kids’ Valley Garden

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 materials 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 taking 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 make excellent fillers.
  • Cedar and pine twigs look interesting but 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 materials 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 on roadside 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.

showing

 

flowersveggiesshrubsherbsplantingcaringshowingglossary contactlinkshome