Most Gardeners live in constant turmoil wanting flowers for bunches for the house or for friends yet facing the overwhelming urge to keep the flower bed at its best. Unless, you want a commercial flower growing business, it is perfectly possible to do both. In fact, there can be a symbiotic relationship. The trick is what you grow and where you grow it.
1. Cut Flower Beds
There's a fashion at the moment for separate cutting beds. Indeed, I have three raised beds that I use for this purpose myself. They're perfect for growing flowers as crops, mainly from seed but also bulb or tuba. It gives the gardener more control over the flowering; most plants flower a certain number of weeks from sowing and the crops can be staggered by sowing seeds at different times. The flowers are accessible and easy to cut. A cutting bed is certainly a bonus, a welcome addition and will help fill out those bunches for the house. But they're not strictly necessary.
Those who enjoy the more regimented discipline of vegetable gardening, with its rows and rules, often find a cut flower bed a gentle way into flower gardening. I'm not a big grower of veg; I'll dabble with what I like to eat and tomatoes are top of that list, but plants in rows and certainly flowers in rows, are not my thing. Cutting beds do not allow for year round interest either. Not without ruthless disposal of plants that may otherwise survive in the garden border which goes against the instincts of many a gardener. Therefore, I see raised beds as an addition to, rather than the main feature of, a cutting garden or a flower garden from which flowers may be cut.
2. Planning for Year Round Colour
I've planned my garden so that I can have bunches in the house from March to November. There's plenty of material for Christmas wreaths and lots of winter stems and coloured branches in the December to February period too. Even a few posies in January and February as the very early spring flowers (hellebores, snowdrops, crocus, primroses) emerge. But, if larger displays are required in the grey months (December to February), they need to come from forced bulbs or a few purchases of early tulip bunches.
The truth is, that bunches of flowers are rarely just that. They often look at their most interesting, unique and beautiful as a mixture of colour, texture and shape. This is often achieved using foliage; making the supporting act to your flower garden essential.
3. Trees
Planning a cut flower garden is not so very different from planning any other type of garden. You need to know your soil type (acidity, drainage), the direction the border faces and the other important logistical issues such as access need considering too (see my previous Blog 'How I designed my own garden'). Assuming you have done that, and are ready to select your plants, consider the big ones first. All gardens are big enough for at least one tree. If you can only have one, make it work hard. Select one that has good spring blossom, summer foliage that is interesting (consider a red leaf or a lime green) and provides autumn colour in leaf or in fruit. If it can do all that and have an interesting stem shape or bark that's year round interest achieved. It may take longer to purchase in the first place but it'll look good in all four seasons and could provide additions to your house flowers for two or three seasons. If you have more space, one tree doesn't have to be all things in all seasons, but it really should have at least two spectacular outbursts. In the main, I look for autumn colour first. It's a favourite time of year for me and I'm looking to extend the seasonal interest for as long as I can. There's plenty of action in summer, so I'm least interested in my foundation plants being spectacular then. With trees covered, you need to consider their supporting acts, shrubs.
4. Shrubs
In the past, gardens were designed with shrubberies. where specimen plants vied for view at different times of the year. Now, its more realistic (who has the space to dedicate a patch to bushes?) to have them integrated into your borders. Be careful, some can get huge so watch that final growth height and look out for those that throw out suckers and take over. But generally, a well behaved shrub should be able to provide a couple of season's worth of interest at least. As part of your overall design, you may well consider an evergreen or two. My personal favourites are box (although I think days will be numbered because of box blight eventually), pittosporum, choisya (a yellow leaf), pyracantha (watch the spikes) and fatsia. These are very useful from a cut flower point of view as they'll provide structure to your bunches in late autumn, in wreaths for winter and again in spring. They need to be carefully placed in the border to support structure and interest to the overall garden plan garden rather than creating a dark blob in the rear of a border. Often they need clipping into an interesting shape, but topiary's a whole other matter. There are shrubs that flower in winter, they're often scented too and there are plenty that flower in early spring. These are invaluable for bunches for the house. They may have good autumn colour but are not of interest in summer so I'd consider putting them away from your prime border spot or as part of a view that you can only really see when the leaves are off the trees in winter. You may want to keep them close to the back door for example, so you can easily see them without having to traipse to the bottom of the garden to appreciate a flower when its howling a gale.
There are a couple of seasonal pretties that often feature heavily on Instagram. First consider the lilac. Much loved in America, less so here in the UK but it does feature. The trouble with lilac is that it only really flowers for a very few short weeks and often at that difficult time when we haven't quite finished with frost. Therefore, we can wait all year for its moment only for a brown mess to emerge as flowers. My tip would be to go for the actual lilac colours rather than the white, the frost damage doesn't show too much and keep in a fairly sheltered spot if you can. Watch the pruning instructions, otherwise you'll cut off all its flowering stems too. I'm not a fan of lilac really, I don't think the shrub has enough interest in any other season. I have one but I'm not sure I'd plant it again if I was starting from scratch. That said there are some miniatures being developed that might be worth a look.
Similar to lilac, in that it's really only of interest for its flowers, is the Buddleia or Butterfly Bush. These are a favourite of mine. Pretty tough, I'm very hard with the pruning in autumn to keep the flowers lower; they flower in the second half of summer often with strong purple racemes of flowers. The deep coloured varieties are well worth seeking out from a flower arranging perspective as they provide a fabulous contrasting accompaniment to the main stems in arrangements.
Another Instagram favourite is the hydrangea. These are a must in the garden in my view. They do not like the sun too hot and they like to remain well watered, otherwise with a bit of pruning, they are pretty reliable and certainly worth their place. They are popular in flower and perhaps more so for drying well into autumn. Many hydrangeas also have magnificent autumn leaf colour, so although they are stacked towards the end of the season, I think this justifies their position in a garden.
There are a couple of foliage gems I wouldn't be without both in the border and then in the vase too. Physocarpus is a summer flowering shrub. I'm not particularly bothered about that though because it has delightful red/brown leaves. As a foil for so many flowers, this is perfect. Another favourite is Nandina, this has delicate feathery leaves that grow in shades of red. Again the perfect foil for flowers and this time with the added bonus of being semi-evergreen too. For me shrubs are more often about their foliage and stem colour across the seasons and less about their flowers. There are many more Hypericum for the berries for example. Another whole blog brewing.
4. Roses
Every flower garden needs a rose and preferably several. I have plenty. There are many different types out there but for me the David Austin roses are the best. The best value roses are the repeat flowerers; in the right position they'll keep going from June to November. My personal favourites for flower arranging include Lady Emma Hamilton (orange), Pilgrim (lemon), Queen of Sweden (pale pink) and Darcy Bussell(red) from David Austin and the Chocolate rose (red) which is a fabulous floribunda.
5. Perennials
Personally, I don't think you can have a cutting garden without perennial flowers and this is another reason why cutting beds are limiting. Its the roses and perennials that form the main flowers in bunches, rarely are those flowers grown in the raised beds. When it comes to perennial flowers there is a huge variety. One of the best tricks when planning a border is to visit the garden centre every month for a year and buy plants in flower. But there is a bit more to it than that. Watch for hardiness, so many new varieties of plants sold are really only barely hardy over a wet and often chilly English winter. From a flower arranging perspective you want a range of colours but perennial flowers can often provide interesting shapes and textures too adding real individuality to your bunches. These are the flowers rarely found in the florist's shop or supermarket bunch and these are the true gems. Filling your garden with different perennials that flower at different times through the year will guarantee you colour almost all year round in the house and garden. It takes a bit of research and time to create. You'll want to plant in groups to avoid a spotting effect and to ensure you have enough blooms to share across the house and border.
To list a few favourites worthy of you exploring further:
Salvias, delphiniums, stachys (sometimes called hedgenettles for soft foliage), hellebores (winter and early spring colour), phlox, scabious, alchemilla mollis (lime green flowers from a shade), verbena bonariensis, rudbeckia, potentilla, echinops (round blue thistle flowers), peonies, asters, penstemon (smaller leaved varieties are hardier), ornamental grasses such as carex, miscanthus.
6. Annuals and Bulbs
The world's your oyster here as there is something for every border gap at almost anytime of the year. Bulbs for me are a spring must. I to use these for the all year round colour and it can almost be done. Snowdrops and crocus to start, followed by daffodils; I love the miniature varieties planted en masse (always enough for the house and garden to share). The garden hits a blue phase at the end of March with seas of muscari, blue hyacinths and later blue bells. Then the big guns, tulips. I go for later flowering varieties personally to give the daffodils their glory moment. Tulips are the start of the rampage of colour and signal the end of spring and move to summer. These are followed by alliums which make fantastic border flowers as they are largely perennial and fill the slight gap between tulips and the next moment of perennial colour (sometimes referred to as the May gap) I've even been known to allow a few leeks to go to flower in the garden as they have superb flower heads for arrangements and their bubble like flowers are later than most alliums. I'm personally not a fan of lilies, the smell gives me a headache and I find them a bit garish but they are an option for the height of summer.
My favourite annuals are those which I've once grown from seed but now self seed happily every year. The raised beds are full of these and I generally just let them be, adding my carefully greenhouse grown choices around them. Poppies, nigella and briza grass are the most common self seeders for me at the moment. My seed grown staples include the now very popular cosmos. These are very easy to grow from seed, especially if sown later in early April. I love antirrhinums, which sometimes make it through a mild winter. Other favourites include zinnnias for late summer colour and of course dahlias which feel like annuals here as they have to be lifted and stored to make it through the winter safely. Some years that's enough, other years there are more seeds sown. This year I've got calendula and malope germinated. I'm already thinking about the combination of their orange and deep magenta flowers in the height of summer for the vase and in the border.
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