At the outset of starting a cut flower garden, deciding what flowers you want to grow should be your primary priority. Most blooms require fertile, well-draining soil in full sun with plenty of space available.
Consider planting perennials and annuals together, as well as flowering shrubs with attractive foliage and extended picking season bulbs such as tulips or hyacinths to increase diversity and lengthen harvest season.
Location
To maximize ease of harvesting, a dedicated cut flower garden is preferable to picking from beds or borders – particularly if your perennial flowers need to return each year. Choose a site with easy access for watering and weeding so that blooms can be cut without depleting plants.
An ideal location for most flowers is sunlight, while wind breaks may offer protection in windier regions. Consider how best to arrange long linear beds so as to facilitate planting, weeding and harvesting as efficiently as possible – long linear beds provide space to move easily around and cut flowers with ease.
For an eye-catching garden, include tall annuals and perennials with varied heights as well as filler plants like Achillea (Yarrow). Mixing focal flowers with filler flowers extends your harvest season and ensures you can find blooms to pick throughout.
Soil
Contrary to popular belief, cutting gardens require rich soil with good drainage and plenty of organic matter for proper growth. Full sun sites are best, although perennials and annuals that thrive under partial shade conditions are still good choices.
No matter if you are adding flowers to existing perennial beds or creating a dedicated cutting garden, ensure easy access for weeding and harvesting. Planting wide rows is traditional; but you may prefer planting by height and bloom sequence or smaller plots that make carrying water in buckets or cutting stems simpler.
Consider including flowers with eye-catching foliage, such as Queen Anne’s lace or rudbeckia, to add texture and depth to bouquets and wreaths. Also, fragrant long-lived blooms like lilies or eucalyptus could add fragrance.
Water
Watering gardens with mulch helps retain soil moisture and decrease evaporation, while hand watering with a hose or watering can can provide deeper soil soak time, encouraging deeper root systems while helping prevent fungal issues associated with wet foliage. Watering early morning helps minimize evaporation and allow flowers to dry before darkfall arrives.
When adding cutting flower plants into existing beds, plan out their layout carefully on paper so as to prevent leaving noticeable gaps in the final bed design. It is beneficial to plant in rows since this makes weeding, staking and picking easier. Cut flowers thrive best in soil that contains rich nutrients – amend with compost or leaf mold prior to planting for best results.
Pruning
Establishing a cutting garden makes harvesting your blooms as they mature much simpler, rather than depleting beds and borders. If space constraints prevent this option, consider including flowers in other gardens that attract pollinators as part of an integrative design plan.
Group plants with similar growing conditions and flowering times to reduce time-consuming watering and weeding tasks. For instance, consider grouping hydrangeas, snapdragons, tulips, and irises together, while grouping those which need staking such as dahlias or those which benefit from netting such as sweet peas together for easy maintenance.
To help ensure the longest possible vase life for your flowers, cut them on an angle to increase surface area and maximize water absorption. After harvesting, immediately place stems into a bucket of cool water in a shaded location until it’s time for arrangements.
Harvesting
Cut flower gardens can be separate areas or part of an overall landscape garden, but when dedicated exclusively for cutting flowers it requires special consideration in regards to weed control and watering requirements. When watering specifically designed for this task it should receive priority over other parts of your yard.
For easier harvesting, create a layout that makes it simple for you to access each plant without trampling over others. Also group flowers of similar height and bloom time together so you have both focal flowers and fillers available to select from.
Once harvested, cut stems at an angled cut and remove any foliage below the waterline to extend their lives. Also keep buckets, vases and tools clean as dirt harbors bacteria that could potentially clog stems; refresh water in vases every few days while changing out solutions in order to extend vase lifespan.
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