I enjoy taking leisurely strolls through my garden, meandering among the flowers, and taking in the spectacular colors, textures, and scents. This delightful feeling does not need to end when it's time to go back indoors; just cut some of the blooming flowers from the garden and pop them into vases. I spread my cut-flowered vases throughout the house to bring good cheer to my indoor space.
Since several of the blooming plants in my garden have short stems, I have for a variety of small vases to spread throughout the house. However, I periodically splurge and purchase long-stemmed flowers for a larger vase that I like to showcase at the home entry way. Given the latest price increases for purchased flowers, I recently stopped to reconsider this indulgence.
I thought about how I would really miss seeing the colorful flowers at my home entry, which always brings an inspiration to my day.
It was a no-brainer, I decided to just grow my own long-stemmed flowers for home cuttings. This is a new venture, so I began my journey by exploring how to grow a long-stemmed flower garden. With some research, I found many options for a cut-flower garden. I was excited but realized that this project could become time consuming and a bit overwhelming.
I remembered the advice I heard many times from veteran gardeners - when starting new and untried gardening projects, go small. Yes indeed, I have found that many of own my colorful visions usually lead to high ambitions and doing too much at once, turning the fun project into a tiring chore. This is a common gardening mistake that I make periodically.
With this lesson learned, here are a few things to consider for a new cut-flower garden:
- Size of the planting space: I have two semi-raised 4 x 8 feet garden beds that I usually use for vegetable planting. I decided to dedicate one bed for my planned cut-flower garden. It is a small space, but I will be able to grow some flowers for later harvesting. One suggestion for a cut-flower garden is to space the plants at least 9” apart.
- Amount of sun: Most cut flower gardens need a full sun exposure, which I have for my garden.
- Condition of the soil: The soil was prepped for a vegetable garden, so it is all set to go.
- Irrigation: Drip and soaker hose irrigation is already in place.
- Bloom time: Select variety of plants that bring a bloom through each of the seasons.
- Plant annuals, biennials, or perennials, or all the above: Annuals usually live for one year, biennials take two years to complete their biological cycle, and perennials have a much longer life cycle and will come back every year. I am choosing a variety will that cover “all of the above” options. This way I will be able to experiment with several types of flowers.
- Colors and textures: I will add a diversity of plants to cover the range.
- What looks best in the yard: I am shooting for balance that will be tall in the back section of the plot, with a mix of colors, size of blooms and textures.
- Which flowers work best in a large vase bouquet? Most commercial flower bouquets use three categories of flowers: focal, filler, and foliage. The focal flowers are the most eye-catching blooms that sets the tone for the bouquet, such as Sunflowers Helianthus, Roses Rosa, Cosmos bipinnatus or Zinnias violacea. The supporting filler flowers make up the bulk of the bouquet many of the beautiful flowers that grow well in most areas of Solano County, such as Marigolds Tagetes erecta L., Snapdragons Antirrhinum majusI, or Larkspur Delphinium. The foliage includes many delightful options, like Eucalyptus, Bells of Ireland Moluccella laevis, Dusty Miller Jacobaea maritima, Queen Anne's Lace Daucus carota, Basil Ocimum basilicum, and so many more.
I am choosing to propagate some of the seeds indoors and I will direct-sow other seeds out in the garden. I have narrowed the selection (keeping in mind to “start small”) to the following plants:
Focal Flowers: Sunflower, Cosmos, Zinnias
Supporting Filler Flowers: Marigolds, Snapdragons, Larkspur
Foliage: Eucalyptus, Bells of Ireland, Dusty Miller (and other misc. plants already in yard)
I found some great resources online, including a helpful cut-flower planting chart that was created by the Santa Clara County UC Master Gardeners. The chart lists many flowers that do well in our local Solano and Yolo Counties, found at: https://mgsantaclara.ucanr.edu/garden-help/cut-flower-planting-chart/
The ornamentals included in this chart have been successfully grown by the Master Gardeners of Santa Clara County. The varieties were selected to consider the local or online availability of seeds, plant hardiness, suitability for open gardens or containers, the appeal to pollinators, and volume production of good cutting flowers.
Here are a few photos of the store-bought flowers that inspired my latest garden project. Scooter the kitty likes to photo-bomb and seems to always come out of nowhere when I am taking a shot. If I am successful with this new endeavor, my next blog will be about arranging a wonderful flower bouquet!