Cut Flowers from the Garden

Local and homegrown flowers are the trend now. 

We all love to cut a few flowers from our gardens, but if you want lots of flowers all year, you may want to plant a cutting garden. For cut flowers, select some tall, sturdy varieties for each season. You’ll want to plant enough, either tucked into the flower beds or in their own plot, that you can cut them regularly without leaving the garden bare.

Shop the flower market in your backyard.

Choose some flowers with a long bloom season; coneflower and rudbeckia are ideal. Include lots of your favorite annual flowers, snapdragons and zinnia and salvia, but remember the perennials and foliage plants too. Ferns and hosta provide great leaves for arrangements. Mints and other herbs grow vigorously, providing lots of fragrant greens to go with the flowers. Plant for seasonal interest with spring flowering shrubs, tulips and daffodils. Summer offers an abundance of choice flowers. Include some summer bulbs like lilies, dahlias and gladiolas. Fall mums are famous. For blue and purple fall flowers grow some asters, and watch for fall leaves and seed pods to include in your arrangements.

   Photos: Vase/Colleen/Flickr/CC2.0ShareAlike; Snapdragons/JohnShortland/FlickrCC2.0; Blue Asters/PatrickStandish/flickrCC2.0