Cutting Edge
Grow your own
bouquets with a
trendy, productive
cutting garden.
Story by Mary Lahr Schier
Photos by Michelle Mero Riedel
Zinnias are an inexpensive,
easy-to-grow annual for the
cutting garden.
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O
A rustic barn provides a backdrop to Sue Miller’s pollinator-friendly cutting garden.
One happy consequence of the local food
movement is a trend toward local cut
flowers, too. Books, such as Slow Flowers
(St. Lynn’s Press, 2013), encourage people
to buy flowers from local growers at farmers’ markets or even join community-supported agriculture flower farms, where
each week participants receive a bountiful
arrangement.
But fresh flowers can be as local as your
own backyard with a cutting garden.
Different from a perennial bed or annual
flower display where you may cut a bloom
or two, a cutting garden functions more
like a vegetable garden. Instead of harvesting tomatoes or green beans for the
table, you’re picking blooms for the centerpiece.
While cutting gardens may look attractive in the landscape, their purpose is the
harvest. Some proponents of cutting gardens even recommend that you put your
cutting garden in a place you are not likely to see from the house. Then, if it looks
ragged after a few blooms have been
taken, no harm done. And, if it looks
beautiful, you won’t be tempted to stop
cutting.
Cutting gardens can be any size. Last
year, I grew cutting flowers in a 4-by-8foot raised bed and produced bouquets a
couple of times a week for almost two
months. Sue Miller, a Stillwater beekeeper, has a half-acre cutting garden, filled
with hundreds of blooms. She begins cutting in May and continues until frost.
During the season, Sue donates flowers to
her church, provides bouquets and corsages for weddings, fills her house with
blooms and always has flowers to give to
garden visitors. Her most important garden visitors are winged, however.
“The best part of the cutting garden is
enjoying all the pollinators taking a sip or
collecting pollen,” Sue says. “As beekeepers, we try to provide plenty of pollen and
nectar plants for the honeybees and other
pollinators and seeds for the birds when
the blooms are spent.”
What to Grow
Sunflowers come in a variety of sizes and colors.
Simple flowers make striking arrangements.
From tulips through late-blooming zinnias, many bulbs, annuals and perennials
look good in garden-grown bouquets and
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Cutting Edge
are appropriate for cutting gardens.
Michelle Mero Riedel, who took the photos for this article, uses perennials such as
black-eyed Susans, delphiniums, blazing
stars, beebalms, tithonia and Siberian
irises in her arrangements.
But summer-blooming bulbs and
annuals grown from seed are the backbone of most cutting gardens. Sue collects seeds each year and digs the tubers
of her dahlias and gladioli. “We have
been harvesting the seeds for about 20
years, so the cultivars have received a bit
of tweaking from the bees,” she says.
“The glads were first put in by my
father-in-law, in 1985. Each year, we
smile when remembering his joy at the
first spray of glads.”
Sue also likes cleome, which despite its
thorns, is a stunning flower in arrangements and a prolific bloomer. New varieties, such as Senorita Rosalita,® are
thornless. Showy annuals with unusual
textures, such as coxcomb, love lies bleeding (Amaranthus) and celosia, bring
unusual qualities to your bouquets.
Sunflowers brighten any late summer
or fall arrangement, and many newer
varieties have smaller heads, including
‘Lemon Queen’, a tall plant with many
small flowers, and ‘Teddy Bear’, which
has an unusually fluffy flower. Or, try
red, orange or bi-colored sunflowers for
an unexpected display. ‘Junior’ is a petite
sunflower that works in containers and
produces 3- to 4-inch blooms for
arrangements.
Zinnias are another cutting garden star,
coming in dozens of colors and bloom
types. The chartreuse-flowered ‘Envy’ zinnia adds depth to any arrangement and is
a favorite of many cut-flower growers. Its
blooms sometimes look cream-colored so
they complement other flowers in the
vase.
While flowers are the focus of a cutting
garden, consider other plants that will
add greenery and blend well with your
bloomers. Herbs, such as sage, rosemary,
dill and basil, give texture and scent to
arrangements. You can also choose greenery from your shrubs or other garden
plants that may need pruning. Leaves
from the dark-colored ninebark, such as
Diabolo® or First Editions® Little Devil,™
add color contrast. Variegated false
Solomon’s seal, ferns or hosta leaves complement many flowers.
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Cleome and zinnias bloom prolifically in Sue Miller’s half-acre cutting garden.
‘Queen Red Lime’ zinnia
Resources
• The Easy Cut-Flower Garden, (The
Gardener’s Workshop, 2011), by Lynn
Mason Ziegler
• The Cut-Flower Patch, (Frances
Lincoln, 2014), by Louise Curley
• The Cutting Garden: Growing and
Arranging Garden Flowers, (Frances
Lincoln, 2013), by Sarah Raven —M.L.S.
‘Aniko’ dahlia
‘Ludwig Helfert’ dahlia
The Cutting Garden
While you don’t need a lot of space to grow
cut flowers, you do want plenty of sun. Site
your cutting garden in a spot that gets at
least 6 and preferably 8 or more hours of
sun a day.
Soil should be loose, airy and humus-rich. If
soil is compacted, use a garden fork to loosen
and turn it as you add compost or manure.
Lynn Mason Ziegler, author of The Easy CutFlower Garden (The Gardener’s Workshop,
2011), also recommends adding additional fertilizer, such as an organic kelp-based fertilizer,
at the beginning of the season.
Plant seeds or tubers according to package
directions and don’t be afraid to thin the plants
to give them good air circulation.
When plants are 4 to 6 inches tall,
mulch the cutting garden area with
chopped leaves, straw or another organic
mulch to keep weeds down and retain
moisture around roots. A 3-inch layer of
mulch is ideal. If you are concerned
about taller plants flopping over, add
plant supports. Plastic netting with 6inch squares can be placed over plants
and attached to stakes around the garden. Flowers will grow through the netting and stand tall.
Now here’s the most important rule
for cutting gardens: Cut the flowers! Cut
them early; cut them often. If it helps,
set a schedule for cutting—once or twice
a week is fine for a small cutting garden.
The more you cut, the more the plants
will bloom, especially annuals that have
a survival imperative to set seed.
When it’s time to cut, bring a bucket of
clean water and a sharp, clean shears to
the garden. Cutting in early morning is
best, but whenever you cut, place the
plants immediately in the water. Look for
blooms that are about to open. Harvest
flowers that are just slightly open to
ensure the longest bloom time in the
vase. A flower that is fully in bloom will
still look lovely, but only for a few days.
When making arrangements, mix a
batch of water with flower food in it
according to directions on the flower food
package and use that in your vases. If you
don’t want to use flower food, use fresh
water only and check the water every day.
Change it every two days. Other additives
(bleach, lemon-lime soda or aspirin) don’t
seem to work as well as either plain water
or the commercial flower food. Be sure to
strip off any foliage that will be underwater to prevent scummy-looking water and
prolong vase-life.
At the end of the season, let some of
the flowers in your cutting garden go to
seed. You can harvest the seeds for next
year’s plantings, and birds will be happy
to eat those left behind. “A cutting garden is easy and economical when using
the seeds over and over,” says Sue.
If your flowers are a little sparse one
week, do what Michelle does and buy a
few blooms from the local farmers’ market to fill out your vases. More likely,
you will have more flowers than you
have room for in your house. That’s an
easy problem to solve: give them away.
Neighbors, local residences for the elderly, libraries and churches are usually
thrilled to receive a beautiful bouquet.
Tell them, it’s local—and trendy
Northfield-based Mary Lahr Schier is the
editor of Northern Gardener.
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