Published: Thursday, July 15, 2010

Susan Bish, Master Gardener
Madison Beautification Board
Madison Weekly
Madison, Alabama’s Hometown Newspaper

Fresh-cut, home-grown flowers transform a house into a home! For gardeners, the ultimate delight is to be able to cut flowers from their own garden to bring indoors or to give away to friends and family.

Many also love to have homegrown blossoms, foliage, and seed heads handy for fresh or dried floral crafts and cooking. However, the problem is always that picking flowers from the garden reduces the floral show in your yard.

It is always a tough decision whether to cut flowers for indoors or leave them on display outdoors. The perfect solution is to start your own cutting garden. Then you can have your flowers and pick them too!

Fill your cutting garden with plants that produce the flowers and foliage you love. Use it as an area to experiment with new plants and colors. Place it where it is not on public display, and indulge your imagination. You can even consider making it part of your vegetable garden.

This is a production garden; created to be cut down, so you do not need to worry about design correctness.

Create a cutting garden much the same way you initially establish a flower garden. Choose a site that receives generous sun and prepare the soil so that it drains well. Add humus in the form of compost, peat moss, or chopped leaves to improve clay or sandy soil. Create one or more beds of whatever size and shape accommodate the available space. They can be tucked into sunny spots along the back boundary, in a neglected corner, or behind the garage. By their very nature, they are temporary, so they are easily changed or reconfigured next season, if necessary.

A cutting garden is a special area in the garden that is devoted to growing flowers and foliage plants that are intended to be cut to bring indoors for arrangements. While cutting gardens often look beautiful at the peak of the season, this is incidental. Because they are not intended for display, a purely practical layout makes the most sense. Then once they are established they are easier to maintain and require much less attention. For this reason, cutting gardens usually resemble traditional vegetable gardens. They are typically planted in widely spaced rows that are easy to move through and between while planting, thinning, fertilizing, deadheading, and, of course, harvesting.

Where you plan your cutting garden will determine the plants you will be able to use. Check the location to see how much sunlight it receives during the day. If it is sunny in the morning but shady by noon, all but the deepest shade plants will thrive. Hot afternoon sun locations are best for the sun-loving plants. Note if the area holds water or if it drains quickly.

Step 1: You will want to locate your cutting garden in a space that is accessible from the house, yet maybe somewhat hidden as your cutting garden is not made so much for its beauty as it is for practicality. Ideally, it will be big enough to have some full sun and some shade so you can grow a large assortment of flowers with different lighting needs. Shaping it so you can reach any part of the garden easily will make cutting the flowers easier.

Step 2: Most flowering plants will appreciate a well-draining, rich, organic soil. An easy way to control and care for a cutting garden is to build a raised bed.

Step 3: Group your favorite plants by light, soil and water needs rather than color or appearance. In fact, you might just want to plant your flowers in rows so they are easy to harvest and each one gets plenty of room to grow healthy and unblemished. You want each plant to be beautiful so it will render lovely flowers and foliage. The beauty of the garden itself is not important.

Step 4: Grow plenty of plants from bulbs and rhizomes. Many of these plants produce the best cutting flowers, like daffodils, tulips, and irises. Let the foliage die down naturally (even if it isn't pretty) to produce more bulbs for next year. Here's another reason you won't want your cutting garden to be something you have to fuss with for beauty!

Step 5: Also consider including some interesting foliage plants. A good cut flower arrangement is enhanced with some interesting foliage. Try the colorful strap leaves of New Zealand flax for some vertical design, the feathery leaves of fennel, the dark green of a fern, or the soft fuzziness of Lamb's Ear to set off your flowers.

Step 6: It's an enjoyable project to make a cutting garden and one that gets you thinking about gardening in a slightly different way than normal landscape work. Choosing the plants can be much of the fun. You can grow annuals as well as perennials. And the best part of all is going out early in the morning and finding all those perfect blooms opening up ready to be cut and brought inside to be enjoyed all day long. Growing your own cutting garden will give you a sense of satisfaction and it will save you all that money that buying half-faded arrangements elsewhere would cost

You may use annuals, flowers that only last one year, in your cutting garden as they bloom the entire season which is a great way to fill in with the perennials.

However, perennials form the backbone of any cutting garden. The plants live and bloom for years but their blooming season is often counted in weeks instead of months. When you begin to plan your garden, don't forget to check when the plants bloom. Be sure to add spring, summer and fall bloomers to your cutting garden. By staggering the bloom time, you will have plenty of flowers to grace your home.

Summer suggestions for flowers for your cutting garden: Cleome, Coneflowers, Daisies, Salvia, Cosmos, Black-eyed Susan, Lavender, Yarrow, Verbena, Statice, Snapdragons, Sages, Phlox, Carnation, and Aster

Summer Annual suggestions: Cockscomb, Anemone, Sunflowers, Sweet Peas, Zinnias, Dill, Cosmos, Dianthus, Baby's Breath, Strawflower, Sunflowers, and Stock

Foliage Suggestions: Asparagus Fern, Coleus, Dusty Miller, Eucalyptus, Flowering Cabbage and Flowering Kale