Grow Your Own Bouquets: How to Start a Cut Flower Garden

Don’t worry about plant size, balance, complementary colors, and the overall design—simply plant what you like. These smart techniques will help.

Even a few containers can yield armfuls of flowers for homegrown flower arrangements. Mariia Boiko/Shutterstock

Fresh-cut flowers brighten the home, and spring is an excellent time to start a cutting garden that can be quickly planted and productive within a few weeks.

A true cutting garden, which can be set up in the ground, in a raised bed, or in containers, should also be low maintenance, with easy access to individual plants for harvesting, and a strong focus on maximized bloom output. It can be a single variety, such as spring tulips or daffodils, or filled with a half dozen or more annuals or perennials to choose from. It all comes down to personal taste.

Gardener’s Choice

Annuals

Annuals, which grow from seed and produce seed for next season in the same year, are a great choice for beginning flower gardeners.

Popular choices, such as bachelor buttons, carnations, cosmos, larkspur, nemisa, scabiosa, snapdragon, sweet pea, sunflower, verbena, and zinnia, can be started indoors four to six weeks before the last frost, or simply direct-sown in the garden between March and May.

Deadheading—cutting off the spent flower heads—will extend their flowering season. This is true for all seed-producing plants.

Perennials

Perennials are plants that live two or more years and may die back during the winter months.

Alstroemeria, calla lily, coreopsis, dahlia, daffodil, delphinium, gaillardia, hydrangea, Mexican sage, Oriental lily, and penstemon are just a few popular choices that make excellent cut flowers. They are suitable for a wide range of hardiness zones, from the resilient hydrangea, which is hardy from Zones 3 through 9, to the more delicate Mexican Sage that prefers Zones 9 to 11.

Want to grow a plant out of its zone? Plant it in a large container and bring it indoors during the colder months. It will add garden ambience to the gray of winter.

Biennials

Set between the ever-popular one-year annuals and multi-year perennials, biennials live for two seasons. Their first year is spent in vegetative growth (leaves, stems, and roots), during which they produce no flowers. They go dormant over the winter and then spring to life the following season to produce fabulous flowers, which will go to seed before the plant dies.

Black-eyed Susan, Canterbury bells, clary sage, euphorbia, forget-me-not, foxglove, hollyhock, nigella, stock, and sweet William are all biennials that create dramatic displays. Most will be hardy from Zone 3 to Zone 9, but check the seed packet or website ordering page to confirm, particularly with any unique varieties.

Valuable Fillers

Not all fresh-cut flowers need to be dramatically gorgeous. Fillers add bulk, color, shape, and texture to floral bouquets. Popular choices include easy-to-grow annuals, biennials, and perennials, such as dusty miller, young branches of eucalyptus, fern, feverfew, jasmine vine, Mexican sage, young branches of olive, passion vine, Queen Anne’s lace, and statice.

Effective Techniques

Most flowers require at least six hours of direct sunlight per day. Happy flowers also require healthy soil. Amend it with organic matter (compost, worm castings, cured manure, or peat moss). Use flower or bloom booster fertilizers when the plants get their first buds, and then throughout the season as directed.

Ideally, the chosen site should be near a hose spigot for hand watering. Use a water wand to water in the mornings at the plant’s base. Watering overhead, in the evening, or at night can lead to fungus, including the dreaded powdery mildew. The exception is when it’s been particularly dry and dusty—then, give the plants a good morning rinse off. If the budget allows, consider drip irrigation.

Remember, its main focus is to provide blooms for floral arrangements. So if it’s a small plot that you plan to harvest extensively, don’t put it in a prominent location in the front yard. Instead, let it add a pop of color to a backyard corner.

Green Thumb Advice

Instead of putting an entire seed packet out at once, consider succession planting of annuals to extend the bloom time. Then, fill in any gaps left by plants that didn’t flourish.

When starting seeds indoors, be sure to label all the seed sprouting cells or pots. Even the best-intentioned gardener will forget what’s what. This is also useful when doing succession planting or infill.

Cutting gardens are about maximizing volume, but plants still need their proper spacing—as listed on the seed packet—to receive the proper amount of light, water, and nutrients, along with sufficient air circulation to help ward off pests and disease.

Got more space than needed? Consider infilling some vegetables, which will benefit from the many pollinators attracted by the flowers.

Now behave: No more pirating blooms from the main garden.

A cutting garden can be set up in the ground, in a raised bed, or in containers. Julia Zavalishina/Shutterstock

Flowery Fundamentals

The beauty of a cutting garden is that the more flowers that are cut, the more blooms each plant will produce. Read on for easy ways to enhance results.

Height Hints

While a cutting garden is typically an informal design, place taller plants so that they don’t block shorter varieties from getting their full six hours of sun. Also, taller flowers may need support in the form of staking, trellising, netting, or corralling (twine attached to stakes that run around the perimeter of the bed).

Maximum Width

Keep beds that can be accessed from both sides to four feet or less, with a two-foot-wide path in between for comfortable working conditions. Similarly, it will be easier to work beds that are against a wall or fence if they are less than 2 1/2 feet across.

Harvest Time

Select flowers in the morning when they’re at their vibrant best. Choose those with tight centers, rather than those that are just starting to open, and place them immediately in a container of water. Add a crushed aspirin to their final vase to lower the water’s pH; this makes the water easier for them to absorb and prevents wilting.