6. Drawing up your plans.

Committing ideas to paper

Planning Checklist

1. Reviewed what plants you already have growing ✔

2. Written a wish list of plants ✔

3. Edited wish list using the ‘flower seasons guide’ ✔

4. Added which type of plant is which ✔

5. Noted the flowering length of each ✔

6. Considered how you’ll be starting your seeds off ✔

Now in week 6 of the planning your cut flowers, time to commit your plans and all the information we have gathered so far. Now plot your plants out into their soil spots to maximise the flowers you will grow. No empty beds this year!

Catch up on the previous weeks here -

Week 1 : How to begin planning your cut flower growing.

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Week 2 : The Flower Seasons

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3. Plant Types

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4. Flowering length & successional sowing

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Week 5. Sowing indoors or out

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On week 6, plotting your plans to paper.

BIG WEEK this one. This week in the live, I shared two examples of plot plans drawn up across the flowering seasons.

What you will need - your space, be it a border, garden or multi acre plot drawn up, ideally to scale or at least know how big the spaces are.

You’ll want all your lists. What plants are you growing (week 1) and when will they ‘perform’ or create the material you want to cut and arrange in any given season (week 2) remember some of your plants produce material across several seasons. Note this as you make decisions as to their usefulness v. how much space these plans take up.

You’ll also need to have in the back of your mind, what type of plant it is (week 3 & 5) and therefore when it’s sown and planted out. We are drawing up these plans to show the plants in their soil position (not in seed trays) so this will be both their growing period (show in green on the border example) and their flowering period (week 4 and shown in colour during that time on the plans).

This is give you a visual representation of how you use any given space.

Then it gets interesting. What will you replace that plant with when it finishes flowering? How do you know? Use the planting calendar to check together with that sheet on the flower production (is it a one hit wonder or a come and cut again?) As you go through this exercise, you might find you have less room than you thought and some plants will get cut off the sowing list. Or perhaps you have more room, and find that when the ranunculus or biennials are lifted, there is a spot for some half hardy annuals before you pop in an autumn sowing of hardy annuals for next year. Piece of cake.

If you are growing productively, in a dedicated space just for cut flowers, you’ll want to watch the first part of the session. If you are a gardener or designer and interested in how flower successions fit in a bed, then watch from 25mins. I think both types of flower growers would get something from each example. Sometimes another way of presenting an idea just hits right.

I have also added the slides to this post from last night so you can click through and look at the examples in your own time to better follow how I am suggesting maximising your growing spaces with multiple crops or plants across the year.

Finally, we had a good chat about problems we might encounter in this process, our different requirements and fitting in green manures into the schedule too. I think there is a lot more to talk about with these. Read more here and I will do a live session on this in March once we have finished this course, in time to sow them directly in any spots available on your plot plan!

Here’s the recording of last nights live session with my slides as a pdf to download.