Elly West explains the exponential benefits to dedicating part of your garden to growing cut flowers…
There aren’t many people who don’t enjoy a vase of fresh flowers providing colour, fragrance and a slice of summer. One of the many joys of this time of year is the opportunity to pick armfuls of flowers to brighten up the home. These ‘free’ pickings are so much more satisfying than choosing a bunch of often imported, over-priced blooms wrapped in cellophane from the supermarket.
A visit to any allotment site is proof in point. Alongside the rows of beans and potatoes, there will be multitudes of blowsy dahlias, sunflowers, sweet peas and more, grown for cutting.
The concept of growing flowers amongst the vegetables is nothing new. Traditional cottage gardens from the 18th century onwards used every inch of space to grow flowers, food crops, fruits and herbs, all jostling for space in a happy medley of colour. The emphasis was on practicality and space was at a premium in terms of providing sustenance to support a family. These were essentially gardens of self-sufficiency for the rural poor.
But it’s a romantic ideal that persists today. Many of my clients asking for a new garden design aspire to the cottage garden, albeit a modern version – an informal, apparently artless style, with traditional planting that includes roses, lavender, foxgloves and peonies. Borders can include space for cutting material, but I’ve also found more and more clients are asking for areas that can specifically be used to grow flowers for cutting, often in raised beds or tucked away with the produce, and I’m always happy to oblige.
If you have the space, there are big advantages to dedicating part of your garden just to growing cut flowers. You’ll avoid depleting your flower beds, and you don’t need to think too hard about what will go well with what in terms of shapes, colours and sizes. Treat your flower patch like you would a vegetable plot and plant or sow in rows or blocks. Taller plants will need support, and if you’re not worried about the appearance of the bed, simple canes and string will probably suffice to stop plants flopping.
Choose a spot that gets plenty of sun, and improve the soil if necessary so that it’s fertile and weed free. Organic compost or well-rotted horse manure will improve the structure and help to retain moisture. Raised beds are a good option as you can fill them with quality topsoil improved with organic matter, and they’re easy to maintain.
When choosing plants to grow, there aren’t really any limits. Evergreen shrubs and those grown for their interesting stems, such as corkscrew hazel and colourful dogwood, will provide invaluable pickings in winter and early spring. Pittosporum and Eucalyptus gunnii produce ornamental foliage all year round. Bulbs will also extend the season with daffodils, hyacinths and tulips in spring, followed by lilies, crocosmias, gladioli and dahlias through summer and into autumn.
The bulk of your cutting garden though, is likely to be annuals sown from seed. These require the least financial outlay and many can be sown directly into the soil where you want them to flower. Look out for those labelled as ‘hardy annuals’, which include sunflowers, nigella, cornflowers, poppies, marigolds and sweet peas. ‘Half-hardy annuals’ require a little more work as they’ll need starting off under cover in early spring in a greenhouse or on a sunny window-sill. Nicotiana, cosmos, snapdragons, phlox and zinnias fall into this category. Then there are perennials that die back in winter and re-emerge in spring each year, such as peonies, delphiniums, aquilegia, echinops and asters.
Take time to plan, and you can have constant colour to bring indoors for the best part of a year. Maximise your space by taking the time to work out how many plants you can squeeze into each row or block. Successional sowings of seed, planting every two or three weeks, will keep the flowers coming, and cutting your flowers will also keep them producing more and more blooms. Never leave dead flowers on the plants as this will halt their flower production and they’ll shut down for the season as they turn to seed. Dead flowers will also attract pests and diseases, so cutting also increases the health of your plot. It’s a win-win situation.
When harvesting your flowers, you can increase their vase life by taking them in the morning or evening and avoiding the heat of the day. Have a clean bucket of cool water ready to put them in. Cut the flower stems at an angle to increase the water uptake. Put your flowers in a cool shaded place until you’re ready to arrange them, and keep the water topped up once they are indoors. A tablespoon of sugar added will also make your flowers last longer, while a spoonful of white wine vinegar will inhibit bacteria growth and help stop the water turning green. Change the water regularly and recut the stems each time.
Plant of the month: Dahlias
These showy, exuberant flowers have had a relatively recent resurgence in popularity, and will light up the late-summer border. They are perfect for cutting, with flowers in all different colours, sizes and shapes held on long stems. The more you cut them, the more flowers they’ll produce. Many have a hot, tropical vibe that combines well with lush foliage plants such as cannas and ornamental grasses. They’ll also look great alongside other late-flowering, daisy-headed blooms such as rudbeckias and heleniums.
Dahlias grow from bulb-like structures known as tubers that are not fully hardy, so will generally need lifting and storing over winter to protect them from frost, unless they are in a very sheltered position. They can then be potted back up in April and planted back out in the ground in May when no more frosts are forecast. Most prefer rich, well-drained soil in full sun, but the more compact varieties are also well suited to pots, which can then be placed in a greenhouse over winter.
