05/27/2025
Hello and happy new week with a big job that had to be done: reviving my perennial ivy with a good, deep chop!
Top tip: Never buy commercially grown ivy as a cut foliage for floristry! It’s limp, spindly, and is generally sold by length. This means you easily pay obscene sums for many feet of length bearing but a few paltry leaves. That’s expensive, disappointing, and unnecessary. Instead, grow your own!
English Ivy, in particular, is so easy to grow that I raise it in more varieties than I often count. Large and small leaves, yellow variegation, white variegation, deep green, limey yellow-green, leaves with fat points and thin, sharp tips and round, and on, and on, few foliage plants provide such high visual interest and swept-from-the-garden impact in floristry for such low cost of money, time, and labor.
However, having gorgeous, lush ivy about now, when the rest of our cutting plants are coming into Summer season, requires cleaning up and cutting back ivy in early Spring, as you see pictured here. From eight enormous planters, I pruned out about fifteen gallons of spent ivy. A bare few weeks later, I’m easily harvesting 50 long, strong, leafy stems per week for floristry (more, when necessary), and my homegrown ivy lasts and lasts (and lasts) in the vase!
THAT is good gardening, great floristry, and excellent business, all at a value that can’t be beat. Even for reluctant gardeners, give growing your own ivy a try. Mix it into your floristry too, and please let me know how you fare in Comments, below.
For a deeper dive, click link in bio to visit my website. From the Main Menu, select Learn Online, and check out my class on Cutting and Conditioning Flowers and Foliage for all the details on preparing your own homegrown AND bought plant materials to use in floristry without fear. Simply use my techniques, and your fresh-cut materials will never fail!
