Foliage, fillers, and the art of the mixed vase

Most home-grown bouquets fail because they are all flower and no breathing room. Professional arrangers use a 60/40 rule: sixty per cent foliage and fillers, forty per cent focal blooms. In a small space, this is liberating — foliage is easier to grow, lasts longer, and often thrives in shade. A handful of lady's mantle (Alchemilla mollis), fennel fronds, or silvery artemisia turns three cosmos stems into a composition.

Grow at least two foliage plants specifically for cutting. Alchemilla mollis is the classic — acid-yellow flowers in June, then soft pleated leaves until October. One plant in a 25cm pot yields forty stems a season. Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii gives you architectural lime bracts from March to June; wear gloves when cutting, as the sap irritates skin. For year-round evergreen interest, box, rosemary, and sage all cut beautifully. Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Tom Thumb' has small purple leaves on wiry stems — one small shrub in a pot is a cutting factory.

Fillers are the airy, cloud-like stems that soften arrangements. Ammi majus is the champion (see Lesson 2), but also grow Orlaya grandiflora (a chunkier, longer-lasting cousin of ammi), grasses like Stipa tenuissima or Panicum 'Frosted Explosion', and herbs gone to flower — dill, fennel, coriander. Bupleurum rotundifolium 'Griffithii' is the lime-green filler you see in expensive bouquets; it lasts two weeks in water. Annual gypsophila (Gypsophila elegans 'Covent Garden') is old-fashioned but still unbeatable — sow a pinch monthly from March to July for continuous supply.