What to Do with The Old Flowers, Clippings, and Old Plants from Your SoCal Yard

Written by Kelsey W.

Part of keeping a beautiful garden is keeping up with responsibilities like cutting back dead branches, clipping away old blooms, and refreshing the soil whenever it gets packed down and becomes tough for plants to use without putting up a fight.

After a while, you might build up a collection of various pieces of old flowers and plants that you might automatically assume just belong in the green bin outside your house once a week. While this option is certainly a valid way to responsibly take care of your old clippings, there are actually some other interesting ways you can use these old plant parts for the benefit of your home.

Not only can you create beneficial things like compost out of those old geranium cuttings, but you can even repurpose old flowers and such into completely different items. You may want to pursue a “zero waste” strategy when it comes to your gardening, which will not only benefit your yard but may even save you some money here and there.

Here we’ll explore some of the fun ways we can use the old parts of our lawns and gardens using simple methods that don’t really require a lot of effort but come with big rewards.

Turn Your Old Flowers into Potpourri

One of the magical things about flowers is that they don’t lose all of their beautiful scents just because you cut them off their parent plants or because they wilt and start to fade away. One of the best uses for old flowers, particularly those where you love their smell, like roses, jasmine, and gardenias, is to make potpourri.

One fun aspect of making potpourri is that you can use other items you may already have around the house or that would end up going into the waste bin anyway, like citrus peels. Making potpourri is usually pretty simple, too,  so you don’t need to purchase a whole kit or anything to get things going.

Some potpourris do include up to a dozen essential oils mixed in with the dried flower bits, but you definitely don’t need to go that far when creating it. A really simple blend requires nothing more than your dried flowers, some citrus peel, a few cinnamon sticks, and some cloves.

Tip: After you make your potpourri, you can keep the scent around longer if you add some water every so often after it dries out. The water will rehydrate everything and reinvigorate the scent for many months.

Make Natural Confetti Out of Flower Petals

Confetti is something that’s fun to throw at parties and celebrations, but it’s often paper mixed with plastics that don’t biodegrade easily. Plus, it can get a little pricey when you’re trying to throw a bunch of confetti at a big party.

Rather than buying paper confetti (even if it is a biodegradable option), use flower petals instead. If your garden has some flowering plants, just pluck the petals off the flowers after you cut them each week. Eventually, you’ll have a nice pile of petals that you can crush up into little pieces and toss at a party.

Native California flowers like lavender (Cleveland sage) and yarrow dry extremely well and make excellent confetti.

Create Healthy Compost for Next Season’s Vegetable Garden

Compost is probably the most valuable thing you can do with your old plant cuttings because you can use those old cuttings to feed the next generation of plants, and the process doesn’t cost you anything but a few minutes of tossing the plant parts into a big heap.

Almost everything you cut down, chop off, or pinch away from your garden can go into the compost pile. The cuttings from your California lilac bush? Great for composting. Old bush monkey flowers? Excellent compost material. In fact, it’s easier to explain what you shouldn’t put in the compost pile than it is to make a list of what you should put into the heap.

For the most part, just about any old plant, cutting, or flower can go into the compost pile. You’ll want to avoid tossing big, thick branches into the pile because they’ll take too long to break down, and you’ll also want to avoid tossing any weeds that have seeds on them into your compost pile.

Remember that in creating a compost pile, you’re creating a big, healthy pile of plant-growing nutrients, so if you put some old weeds in there that are covered in weed seeds, guess what will eventually start growing in your compost pile?

Furthermore, you’ll want to avoid tossing anything into the pile that is chemically treated. So, if you decide to take apart some wooden boards on your deck, they’re probably not a good candidate for the compost pile, even if you cut them into tiny pieces, because they’ve been chemically treated.

Also, try to avoid tossing diseased plants into the compost. If you’re getting rid of a plant or cutting it down because it caught a disease and you felt it was safest to get it out of your garden, the one place you don’t want to place it is in your compost pile.

Tip: Make your compost pile “bake” faster by tilling it frequently (basically, turning it over on itself). You can get viable compost within just a month or so when you mix the compost pile almost daily. It’ll take about three months if you mix the pile a few times a week.

You Don’t Always Have to Wait for Compost

Making a compost pile is quite easy, but bear in mind that you don’t actually have to wait for the flowers, cuttings, and old plant parts to turn into compost. You can also chop up those trimmings into very small pieces and put them right back into the soil.

This process is known as amending soil, and it simply means you’re adding some beneficial materials to the soil that will help aerate it and improve its ability to absorb and pass on nutrients to nearby plants.  Over time, soil can get compacted, making it tough for roots to grow. Soil amendments help.

Furthermore, adding old plant material is a simple way to increase the nutrient level of the soil with natural materials. In the wild, old plants would naturally decay and make their way into the soil, adding nutrients over time. By adding your own cuttings, you’re just imitating a natural and beneficial process.

When you add soil amendments, the key is making sure that the pieces are small and that you mix them into the soil very well for maximum effect. If you want to make your soil amendments even more effective, you may choose to add perlite, vermiculite, or sand to the mix.

What If You Don’t Have Time for Creative Re-Uses?

Turning your old plants, flowers, and clippings into something useful is a rewarding activity, but sometimes it’s a little tough to find the time to dedicate to this activity. There’s no shame in simply tossing the jade plant cuttings and other compostable items in the green bin and taking it down to be hauled away once a week.

For the most part, the material you put in the green bin is repurposed on an industrial scale in facilities that turn all the old plant matter into things like compost. By directing biodegradable materials into compost rather than landfills, the landfills produce lower methane emissions.

Interestingly, some municipalities, including the City of Los Angeles, have introduced the option for residents to toss other items into the green bin beyond simple grass cuttings. These days, you can put just about every sort of vegetable, fruit, and even bread and eggshells into the green bin.

So, there’s no need to worry if you can’t accommodate absolutely all of the old plant matter your yard produces. If you have a grass lawn and a bunch of grass cuttings every week in the summer, you might not have the space to turn absolutely all of those cuttings into compost. Placing some of those cuttings in the green bin is fine and ensures they’re on their way to getting recycled.

Keep Your Garden Healthy with Help from Green Thumb Nursery

Whether you have a tiny plot of land or an expansive yard, Green Thumb Nursery is here to help you make it look vibrant and beautiful. Gardening is a rewarding experience, especially when you get to enjoy something you created. If you’re thinking about beautifying your yard, porch, or anywhere else that could benefit from some plants, drop by a Southern California Green Thumb Nursery location today for tips, advice, and materials.

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