To fill your home with fresh flowers this year, plant a cutting garden. The National Garden Bureau reports that part of the fun and excitement of gardening is enjoying the beauty of the flowers. Plan this year to design your own cutting garden for one of a kind bouquets directly from your garden.
Planning Your Cutting Flower Bed
When planning, remember this is a cutting garden. How many times have you admired a flower in your garden but didn’t cut it and bring it inside because you didn’t want to spoil the look of your garden outside?
That’s why the best possible solution is to create a designated cutting flower bed. This new garden bed, if possible, should be in a sunny location that is farther back from your garden. It should be in a location from which you won’t mind picking the flowers, one that won’t be disturbed if you decide to make a design for your kitchen table. If you’re short on room for an additional bed, try planting large containers in a sunny location from which you can easily pluck a flower or two.
What Type of Flowers Are You Looking For?
Are you looking for large solitary blooms like sunflowers, zinnias, or coneflowers or a multitude of smaller flowers like Penta or Verbena? Whatever your look may be, don’t forget to include annuals as well as perennials, grasses, shrubs, and bulbs too. In this way, you should have more than one flowering plant in bloom at all times, and each will be a designer addition to your bouquets.
The National Garden Bureau introduced a number of new varieties from several growers this season. New varieties include Red Beauty Zinnia, Breakout Dahlia, Rip City Dahlia, Penhill Dark Monarch Dahlia, Utrecht Blue Wheat, Sunfinity Yellow Dark Center Sunflower, Sallie’s Double Pink Poppy, Sweet Mademoiselle Rose, First Editions® Virtual Violet™ Lilac, Pro Cut White Nite Sunflower, Sweet Dreams Sea Pinks, Queeny Lime Zinnia, Tartan Dahlia, and Torch Blue Lavender.
Poppy Sallie’s Double Pink from Harris Seeds is fully double with fluffy pink blooms. The breeder recommends not deadheading the plants and instead using harvest seedpods for a cut flower accent.
Zinnia Queeny Lime Orange from All-America Selections sports lovely, large dahlia-like blooms on a sturdy, compact plant. Its unique color evolves from dark coral/peach/orange to a light peach with a dark center as the flowers age. Zinnia Red Beauty features beautiful dep red double flowers with golden tips in the center. These flowers from Terra Organics, LLC grow to be 4” to 5” and plants are 3 feet tall.
Wheat Utrecht Blue is a Dutch heirloom grown in the Utrecht, Netherlands area. It features seed heads that keep their color even after drying. The seed heads also feature long black bristles. From Botanical Interests., Inc.
The Sunfinity Yellow Dark Center sunflower from Syngenta Seeds, Inc., offers non-stop blooming and multiple branches. While the Sunflower Pro Cut White Nite from Harris Seeds features gorgeous clean, white petals that surround a dark brown disk The tall sunflower produces a single bloom and this pollen-free variety will have no pollen dropping from the blooms to stain tablecloths and shorten vase life.
The Dahlias
Break Out from Longfield Gardens LLC features flower heads from 8- to 10-inches on stems over 36 inches. Also from Longfield Gardens LLC, Dahlia Penhill Dark Monarch features long, shapely petals that twist and turn to reveal shades of warm, sunset huts of peach and rose. Penhill Dark Monarch blooms relatively late in the season and offers 10” blooms
Dahlia Rip City is British dahlia enthusiast Sarah Raven’s favorite dark-hued dahlia. Bred in the United States by Longfield Gardens LLC, it features 5” to 6” blossoms that offer a mix of standard and quilled petals. Almost black in the center, the color softens to maroon and wine-red at the outer edges.