Flower Cutting Gardens
Photography by: Sarah Cosca
A garden can serve many purposes. It can be a place of beauty and contemplative relaxation, a draw for birds, butterflies, and other wildlife, and a productive space for growing food and flowers. If you’d like to create a garden perfect for flower-cutting, here are some tips from our planting designers to keep your garden vibrant and your vases full.
Planning the Garden
Photography by: Sarah Cosca
Part of designing any successful garden is planning for the change of the seasons. This is especially important for a cut-flower garden, as you will want showy and seasonal blooms to be available for your use year-round. Think about what you’d like to see in a vase each season. Are you a Spring Tulip-lover? Or are Irises more your speed? Does Summer mean Sunflowers or Hydrangeas to you? Or do you love a wild Summer bouquet with wildflowers and grasses? For the holidays, perhaps a shrub that produces beautiful red berries or has a beautiful evergreen leaf will be useful for your winter arrangements. As the seasons transition, the garden will change. Narcissus will fade and roses will take their place. Make sure that a nice variety will always be blooming in any season, so you will have plenty to choose from!
Color Coordination
Photography by: Sarah Cosca
As with any garden design, your cutting garden should be an aesthetically pleasing part of your landscape. This may mean exercising some restraint, especially if you have a more formal landscape or a strong color scheme already in place. Unless your style is that of the colorful cottage garden, maintaining a theme of two or three main colors is often a good idea, keeping in mind the incredible range of shades that a single color can produce. A garden themed with blue and yellow, for example, could range from the palest blues and yellows to deep blue-violets and golds. Foliage can also be a color element. Eucalyptus leaves, with their blue cast, would be lovely in such a garden, as would chartreuse foliage, tawny summer grasses, and shrubs with gold autumn leaves.
Flowers for Cutting
Photography by: Sarah Cosca
While many factors go into a flower arrangement, there are different things that make a ‘good’ cut flower. As far as what flowers work well, nearly anything you see at the florist is a good bet! Flowers with sturdy stems and long-lasting blooms are especially popular, of course. In designing a flower-cutting garden, remember that what makes a beautiful arrangement (and a beautiful garden) is variety. Having a selection of large, ‘focal’ flowers and small accent or ‘filler’ flowers creates a great effect.
Greenery
Photography by: Sarah Cosca
Just as important as the flowers are the fresh greens that will fill in a bouquet. Many ferns and asparagus ferns, leathery-leaved shrubs such as Myrtle, Pittosporum, Laurel and Eucalyptus make excellent cutting greens. Easy to work into any garden plan, greens offer lovely contrast and structure to flowers both in the yard and in an arrangement.
A Florist’s Tip
Photography by: Sarah Cosca
When it comes to harvesting flowers from the garden, it’s best to cut them when it’s cool out, in the morning or evening hours. The plants are under less strain during this time, and less likely to wilt after cutting. Cut flowers with sharp scissors and place immediately in water. When you do cut them to size for the arrangement, it’s best to use a sharp knife, which protects the stem from being crushed.
Flowers are just a portion of our design plans, but the right combination packs a perfect floral punch. We feel that there is nothing better than coming home to a space that brings you joy. That’s what our work is all about, after all!
