@tanya53 Hi tanya, I think that was really brave to use the skin modifier for this!
And as to what you tried, it should work, but as far as I know, you’ll need to apply the Skin Modifier before you add the Particle Hair.
Then use a small branch as Object for rendering in the Particle Settings.
And put another Particle System (Hair, Render Object ‘leaf’) on the small branch.
You’d get something like this:

Probably not the best way for making a bush, but it might be useful in other situations, like making a tree from scratch…
I hope you find this helpful;)