1. Where to start planning your cut flower growing.
How to plan your cut flower plant palettes each season.
I only grow what I love, realising that I just don’t take the same care and attention of the plants I am not besotted with. Let alone cut them.
The first stage to planning a cut flower garden is with a list of plants you love. But before that, you must know why you are growing cut flowers.
The flowers you love will go hand in hand with why you need to grow too. Clarifying your why will transform your growing plans and success.
I expect you fall into one of three types of flower grower:
Which one are you?
Home Gardener - From balcony to multi-acre, no matter, growing for yourself, for friends and to give away.
Grower Florist - Again, scale doesn’t much matter. You might be a florist learning, researching and understanding more about the flowers you work with or wanting to grow flowers you just can’t find. Or you could grow most if not all of the product you use in your work. Adding skill and time to flower stems to create something more than its sum. Growing your palette.
Flower Farmer - Growing a quality product at scale. Focused on sales of stems, for your own work and for other florists.
Regardless of whether you grow in a back garden or on 2 acres there will undoubtably be some hard decisions to make about what you do.
So where do you start?
As a home gardener, you have that benefit of proximity to your ‘patch’, ideally visiting little and often. You can probably keep a close eye on your plants, tie in, water or pick every day as and when. Grow plants that you can’t get elsewhere very easily, or that are more fleeting such as sweet peas and poppies. I expect you have borders of shrubs and perennials also to mix with your flower growing to create interesting combinations. Choose annuals for your cutting plots that complement more ‘permanent’ planting. If you have plenty of spring perennials and bulbs, concentrate on mid to late summer annuals with dahlias in your sowing plan. Consider what flowers you’d really enjoy growing and cutting, and when. Those that really do delight you. What gaps do you have in your existing planting and when do you want to cut flowers? When are you usually away? (determining when needy plants can be tended or beds need to look after themselves.)
As a grower florist, regardless of whether you have a small or large cutting garden, since growing is only part of your work, you want to choose smart. What flowers do you really adore, will elevate your arrangements beyond your orders from the local flower farmers. It might be sweet peas and poppies together with flowers blooming at different stages. Nascent through to those on the edge. About to teeter over, too far gone but perfectly undone for a bridal bouquet. The autonomy of choosing tight rosebuds, seed heads and leaves for boutonnieres, gathered in jam jars. Pinches of flowers that are so utterly precious and perfect for the brief but you didn’t know what you were going to use until you walked the plots. And herbs, basils in flower, twirling annual climbers like cobaea, love in a puff, or dahlias cut at different stages for texture and movement. Your plots will be a treasure box of delights masquerading as a cut flower plot.
Finally, the flower farmer. Who is growing at scale. Beyond busy with sowing seeds, transplanting, growing and selling. Whose economies of scale dictate that the plot plans need reliable long flowering plants. Not those that need daily attention and huge resources to coax into flowers only to bloom in the two days you don’t cut. No, you want perennials, shrubs and repeat flowering annuals. Where you can cut in hundreds of stems, not dozens. Growing flowers in combination so that on any given week between late March and the first frosts, bouquets can be made in complementary colour combinations, scale and texture. Useful stems that can be cut by the bucket for larger scale events with foliage to make those flowers sing. Knowing which plants need the least care compared to which do. And which are worth it.
Whatever type of grower you are, you’ll want to know when you want flowers to be blooming. If you don’t know, use this year to find that out. What flowers when? Grow what you love and see what works with those stems. Look at what others are growing and note combinations that delight you
Know what you love - be it on your kitchen table, for your work or for sales and grow it for success.
Next, there better be a list. Or two.
1st - what plants do you already have growing ?
2nd - a wish list
Have you got scraps of paper with names written down, images in your camera roll and pictures ripped out of magazines? Or have you elevated to a bullet list on your notes app?
Either way, each year, I start with a list of plants that have piqued my interest the year before. Combinations I liked on garden visits or saw on instagram. I look through my notes and photos of arrangements I made. I know the times I was missing certain material that would be just perfect for this or that.
Over the next couple of months, I am going to take you through the planning process from inspiration boards and wish lists through to sowing schedules and plot plans that can be adapted to design your cut flower growing from a set of pots on a balcony, a small garden through to productive flower farm. The way I plan is exactly the same and easily scaled up or down.
We’ll go slowly and take each step so there is plenty of time for homework and keeping up over the next few weeks.
First I make a wish list then fill out the form below to include1 -
The plant name
The role the material plays2 (See The Anatomy of a Flower Arrangement for what these are)
Colour/ Shape notes
When the plant flowers (or does the thing you want it for)
Type of plant
And any other information that might be useful. For instance height, or colour or supplier.
(Don’t worry about the ‘flower season’ or ‘type of plant’ on the form just yet - we will come to that soon.)
Here is what is on my (very long) wish list this year -