Discover how to design and build your cutting garden, as well as the plants to include.
If you adore flooding your household with vases of freshly cut flowers but feel from gardener’s conscience whenever you cut off the heads of your exquisite bedding plants, it’s time to establish a garden specialized entirely in cutting flowers.
“As gardeners, we’ve been educated to resist the desire to trim blooming plants instead of allowing them to perform out.” Nevertheless, when you have the delight of picking armloads of flowers right outside your door, your approach to cultivating them will shift quickly.”In Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden, expert flower producer Erin Benzakein adds.
Cut flower gardens too are beneficial for the environment. By producing your bouquets and skipping trips to the florist, you reduce the carbon emissions generated by the production and distribution of greenhouse-grown blooms.
WHAT IS A CUT FLOWER GARDEN?
Regard a cutting garden to be a flower farm intended for production and harvest, similarly to a meal garden. “Unlike a mixed border or showy flower bed, whose work to give a beautiful and perfect show, the fundamental responsibility of a cutting garden is to provide a profusion of cut flowers all season long,” Benzakein notes.
WHERE CAN A CUT FLOWER GARDEN Be Sown?
Most flower plants need direct sun, so plant your cutting garden in a location that receives at least six hours of bright sun each day. Another criterion is to find a place that is safe from heavy gusts, which might overturn your flower-laden plants and enhance moisture loss. Many flowers appropriate for cutting may well be grown in planters on a sunny deck or balcony if you have a gloomy garden or short distance.
Also, research the specific requirements of your favorite cut flowers. Some flowers, for example, prefer dry soil over damp soil, and acidic soil over alkaline soil, which will affect what and where you plant.
How Else to Design A CUT FLOWER GARDEN
“A cutting garden should be planned with efficiency and effectiveness in mind, with a narrow, rectangular hollow that is simple to maintain and harvest,” Benzakein adds. She advises choosing a bed width that allows you to reach the center when standing on either of the long sides, while also establishing paths between beds for easier access. Growing your flowers in raised garden beds also makes planting and harvesting easy.
Another idea is to distinguish perennials, which return every year, from annuals, which must be removed in the fall and replanted in the spring.
Who SHOULD A CUTTING GARDEN HAVE?
When growing flowers for cutting, the aim is to pack as many plants as practicable into the given room. Yet, you don’t need a big garden plot to reap a plentiful bounty of flowers. Even a modest cutting garden could be surprisingly profitable by growing plants with long stems and spacing them tightly together. Vining plants that can be cultivated vertically on a trellis, such as sweet peas, are great space savers in private gardens.
Is that capable of growing cut flowers in a vegetable garden?
Absolutely! Growing flowers and crops together has had several perks, as long as the plants have the same growing requirements. Flowers, in addition to adding color to the vegetable garden, can serve as organic pest control by repelling certain pests. Marigolds, for example, can help to keep tomato hornworms, nematodes, and squash insects at home. Discover more about companion planting.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD-CUT FLOWER?
A cutting garden can include a broad variety of annuals, perennials, bulbs, and shrubs. Plants with strong stems, a long vase life, and a high yield produce the best cut flowers but consider the colors, the exact flowers you love, and the rooms you want to fill with your floral designs too though. You might also want to incorporate flowers that give perfume to a bouquet, such as lavender or growing tobacco (Nicotiana).
TIPS About CUTTING GARDEN DESIGN
Start planning for all 4 seasons. A cutting garden, when well designed, will keep your vases full of blooms all year round. Plant spring bulbs along with a selection of perennials that will bloom in succession from early summer through fall. Include a tiny shrub with bright berries, such as winterberry, in winter. Grow flowers that can be dried for year-round arrangements too, like celosia and globe amaranth (Gomphrena globosa).
Grow cut-and-come-again flowers. Boost the output of your cutting garden by including flowers that bloom once more after being cut, such as zinnias. Cutting the stems of these flowers stimulates the growth of new stems and more blooms, giving in an abundant harvest throughout the season.
Cut-and-come-again flowers are especially useful if you have a small cutting garden with limited space because these enable you to plant fewer plants even while receiving a bumper crop.
Planting times must be spaced. According to Benzakein, succession planting can offer a steady stream of blossoms for annuals that don’t rebloom reliably. You can also keep up with the pruning if you stagger the bloom times throughout the season. Depending on your location, she advises resting for 3 to 4 weeks between plantings.
Aim for variety. Choose plants with a variety of flower textures, sizes, and forms to keep your floral arrangements seeming boring. The most intriguing displays will be created by combining spiky (as salvia), globe-shaped (such as alliums), and (such as yarrow) blossoms.
Plant similar colors alongside. The most exciting floral arrangements utilize a variety of colors, but the greatest outcomes occur once those colors complement one another. Purple and yellow flowers, for example, are dependably a beautiful combination, both in the field and in a vase. Monochromatic color schemes that blend both light and dark tones of the same hue may well be extremely desirable as well. Learn more about how to utilize color in the garden.
Don’t forget about foliage plants. “One of the biggest errors rookies make is picking only attractive flowers and not having any green to mix them with,” Benzakein adds. Her advised ratio is to devote half of the garden to flowers and the other half to stalwart foliage and filler plants which may give material for the base of your fresh flower arrangements.
Alternatively, look around your existing garden beds for intriguing materials to add to bouquets, such as fern fronds and hosta leaves. Alternately, tried snipping a few scented herbs, such as rosemary and sage, to use as fillers in your arrangements.
Go native. When arranging your cut garden, don’t outlook native wildflowers including bee balm and black-eyed Susan. Native plants are not only durable and easy to care for, but they also give a home to native wildlife. Although planting hybrid flowers designed to be larger seems tempting, They usually produce less pollen and nectar than native species.
