Early Spring Cut Flowers: Golden Branches for the Cutting Garden
Early spring flowers with golden cut flower branches including: Kerria japonica, Forsythia x intermedia and Acacia dealbata
These early spring flowering branches will lift your spirits and make gloriously golden additions to your spring cut flower garden. They are fantastic to cut in support of more delicate spring blooms such as tulips, ranunculus and anemone. In addition they add structure to dormant perennial cut flower beds throughout the winter, then diversity to your cutting garden in the early spring.
Forsythia x intermedia (forsythia)
Oleaceae
There is something hopeful and very welcome in the riotous display of bright yellow flowers that appear on bare, structural branches in early September here in Dunedin. A nondescript deciduous shrub with mid-green leaves, Forsythia x intermedia can be considered a weed by many but it’s vigour make it ideal for spring cut branches. With its galumphing habit, it can reach up to 3 m in height and 3 m in width, and makes a fantastic backdrop shrub or informal deciduous hedge.
If you want to encourage beautiful, clean flowering branches for cutting and keep this beasty beauty in check, prune regularly, directly after flowering, as forsythia flowers on the previous year’s branches. Remove older growth to encourage new, vigorous flowering branches in the following year. For an extended vase life, cut the branches mostly in bud. As a bonus, the foliage can be picked for autumn colour in shades of yellow and purple-red, making it a dual-purpose cutting shrub!
Forsythia x intermedia blooming on bare branches in early spring. Different cultivars vary in bush and flower size.
Hamamelis mollis (witch hazel)
Hamamelidaceae
Witch hazel flowers in August here in Dunedin and looks like a bonanza of tiny yellow or orange exploding fireworks decorating bare branches that carry a fresh and pleasant scent. Witch hazel is slow-growing, but this just makes them all the more precious when you do cut them sparingly. They have a beautiful flat, vein-like branching habit that gives a lovely structural sweep to the back or side of an arrangement, or to the back of a planted bed.
Grafted shrubs have a tendency for the rootstock to take over the grafted cultivar. If it looks like you have two varieties in one, this is often why, so pruning back the rootstock lets the grafted cultivar thrive – the grafted cultivar often has more beautiful flowers for spring cut flower branches.
Hamamelis mollis (witch hazel) cultivars vary in bush and flower size, and blooms can range in colour from soft butter to bright orange, flowering in late winter.
Kerria japonica (Japanese rose)
Rosaceae
In September, Kerria look like tiny, deep-yellow pom-poms adorning bare branches on erect stems directly from the ground. Serrated, simple, bright-green leaves emerge after the flowers.
Kerria are a delight to children for their novelty of pom-pom wands. They are vigorous and easy to grow – perhaps too easy often forming thickets up to 2m tall. Watch that this one doesn’t run via basal suckers and layering. Its vigour justifies a good hard prune when it is flowering and makes gorgeous cut flower branches! Cut in the cool of the day, then rehydrate and condition well before using with your early spring flowers.
Kerria japonica (Japanese rose) produce beautiful arching stems of bight yellow petal filled pom poms in early spring.
Cornus mas (Cornelian cherry)
Cornaceae
This is a lesser-known dogwood, that has tiny flowers that look like fireflies adorning bare, craggy branches. Probably the earliest of these golden beauties, it flowers through August here in Dunedin and is a truly beautiful start to the new season.
It is a hardy, no-fuss small tree with spreading branches that also produce some lovely autumn tones and red berries. It is beautiful as a feature tree in a small garden, generally growing up to 5 m.
It makes beautiful cut flower branches for structural winter arrangements. Just ensure the stems are well hydrated somewhere cool before you bring them inside.
Cornus mas branches in a farewell casket spray in late winter.
Acacia sp. (wattle)
Fabaceae
This predominantly Australian native genus has multiple species and cultivars that provide beautiful, bright-gold cut flower branches for floristry. Though not long-lived cut flower, if picked at the right time wattles can provide a beautiful display, especially good for installations and large arrangements (though they need to be in water).
Acacia dealbata (silver wattle) is a fast-growing small tree with silver feathery foliage and bright yellow pom-pom-style flowers.
Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea’ is also a fast-growing small tree with beautiful purple new foliage that fades to blue-grey and yellow pom-pom flowers in profusion.
Acacia pravissima (Ovens’ Wattle) is a hardy evergreen large shrub to small tree, with triangular leaves along the branches and abundant yellow blooms in early spring.
Acacia should be harvested in the cool of the day when the blossoms are just in full bud to just opening for the longest vase life. You can pick them for events at a more open stage for impact, but the vase life will be limited and blossoms may shed.
Make clean cuts into water and lightly split or cut up the stems at the base to help water uptake. Keep branches in warm water in a cool place overnight before using them. In the sun, spraying the flowers with water can help reduce wilting.
Form the left: 1. A boot load of Acacia pravissima (Ovens’ Wattle) picked in bud for bouquets. 2. A close up of Acacia pravissima (Ovens’ Wattle) in full bloom. 3. Acacia dealbata (silver wattle) in full bloom.
Add any of these golden beauties to your cutting garden, for glorious flowering branches that add structure and diversity to your early spring cut flower garden and flower arrangements.
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