Planing a Cutting Garden With Design In Mind
While you’re looking at seed catalogs and dreaming of the new season, I want you to have a little plan that turns out an abundance of all the right ingredients to fill your home with sophisticated flowers from frost to frost.
When I first started Melliflora, my idea was to simply make market style bouquets for my customers. To pull it off, I knew that I was going to need all the design elements for gorgeous bouquets all season long, and it was that goal that drove all of my planning.
Today I want to share what I’ve learned to help you put together a cutting garden that’s a joy and creative inspiration from spring to fall.
One of my favorite fall brides with a bouquet that has all the elements that we’re looking for.
As you dig into those seed and plant catalogs, it’s super easy to respond emotionally to all of the big showy blooms. Let’s face it, I lose my mind over peonies and roses every year. So, I get it. But, I’m telling you, if you only grow what we call focal flowers, or face flowers, you’re going to be disappointed in the arrangements you make for your home. And, you are likely to have periods when there are no flowers at all and we just can’t have that.
Can we live on dahlias alone? Please?
Let’s think it through
A stunning bouquet is made up of three basic elements:
Focal Flowers (or face flowers) - these are your big attention getting showy flowers that create a focal point in your design.
Foliage creates texture and structure in your design while it fills dead space
Accent Flowers pull everything together and add interest and movement
To break it down a little bit more, I like to mix up my accent flowers into shape categories like: discs, round, spike, and texture pieces. I also like to add an element that that we’ve taken to calling “air” around here. These are plants that form little clouds of flowers or have tiny branching structures that add movement and airy space to a design.
Snapdragons are an easy to grow “spike” or “line flower” that will bloom all season
Plan Basics
The real trick comes in a little planning to make sure you have all three elements in each month of the growing season.
Overwhelmed? Don’t be! I’m going to help you.
If you live near me on the Palouse in Eastern Washington/North Idaho, you can just follow the plan outlined below.
If not, have a look anyway and once you see the pattern, you can easily modify it for your region.
When I made my first plan, all I did was make a little grid with the months down the side and the design elements I wanted across the top. Then I did a little research to find things in each category that bloomed in my region for every month of the season.
I ordered plants and seeds from that chart and it worked.
I still grow many of the varieties from that first year and have continued to add and refine so that we have lots of choices every week of the season.
Apricot Cosmos are super easy to grow. They bring shapes, lines, movement and sophisticated color that you can plug in with many other color palettes
The Plan
We have a very short growing season here on the Palouse. August is the only month of the year with no recorded snow fall. We can have frost at any time in May and we’ve had killing frosts early in September. So, if you live somewhere more gentle, you can certainly add a few months and do a little research into what will be blooming for you.
We start harvesting flowers in late April when the narcissus kick in and always have a booming tulip wave in May. But, there’s not much else going on and those flowers are fabulous all on their own. So, my plan focuses on June - September.
June
June is challenging because, anywhere you live, there is typically a gap in the bloom between spring and summer flowers. Around here that happens from the summer solstice until the beginning of July. I’ve worked really hard to close that gap with biennials and other tricks and that’s a topic for another blog post.
For today, just be aware, it is a tough time and there are not as many choices.
Focal Flowers
Peonies are the star focal flower in June. They hold in storage for a long time. if you cut them at the right time and can hold them, they’ll carry you through the month.
Foliage
I adore Lady’s mantle and it is at it’s best in June when the peonies bloom. The two look stunning together even with nothing else in the arrangement.
Spike Accent
Foxgloves are a biennial that fill in that bloom gap and provide us with beautiful linear elements in June.
Disc Accent
Icelandic poppies are still going in our hoop house in June
Round Accent
Geum, Campanula
Air Accent
Sweet Pea, Corncockle
July
Focal
Roses, Lilies, Zinnias, Lisianthus, Echinacea, Sunflowers
Foliage
Honeywort (cerinthe), Ninebark, Mountain Mint, Belles of Ireland, Bupleurum
Spike Accent
Snap Dragon, Delphinium, Larkspur, Lavender, Salvia, Stock
Disc Accent
Orlaya, Ammi (false Queen Anne’s Lace)
Round Accent
Small zinnias, Carnations, Calendula, Bachelor Buttons, Nigells
Air Accent
Forget-Me-Not, Corncockle, Sweet Pea
Texture Accent
Amaranth, Eryngium
August
Focal
Roses, Zinnia, Lisianthus, Dahlias, Giant Marigolds, Sunflowers, Rudbeckia
Foliage
Giant Marigold greens, Decorative Basil, Eucalyptus, Ninebark, Bells of Ireland, Buplereum, Dusty Miller
Spike Accent
Snap Dragon, Veronica, Gladiola, Celosia, Delphinium, Larkspur, Salvia, Stock
Round Accent
Ammi (false Queen Anne’s Lace) Didiscus
Round Accent
Small Zinnias, Carnations, Calendula, Gomphrena, Yarrow, Cosmos
Air Accent
Cress (also works as a foliage), Talinum, Frosted Explosion Grass, Spoon Tomatoes, Rudbeckia Triloba, Tangerine (orange or lemon) Gem Marigold, Baby’s Breath
Texture Accent
Bread Seed Poppy Pods, Amaranth, Nigella Pods, Spent Sunflower Heads
September
Focal
Roses, Zinnia, Lisianthus, Dahlias, Giant Marigold, Rudbeckia, Sunflower, Ornamental Kale
Foliage
Eucalyptus, Basil, Ninebark, Bupleurum, Dusty Miller
Spike Accent
Snap Dragon, Veronica, Celosia, Larkspur, Salvia, Stock
Disc Accent
Green Mist Queen Anne’s Lace, Dara, Yarrow
Round Accent
Small Zinnias, Cosmos, gomphrena
Air Accent
Talinum, Frosted Explosion Grass, Spoon Tomatoes, Ageratum, Rudbeckia Triloba
Texture Accent
Broom Corn, Millet, Breadseed poppy pods, Nigella pods, Echinacea seed heads, Sweet Annie (also works as a foliage), Spent Sunflower Heads, Basil gone to seed
Take it from here
There are far more ideas in the plan than you can reasonably plant. So, please don’t try unless you’re staring a farm. I’m trying to give you ideas so you can make choices that work for you.
You may already have some of the perennials, like roses, peonies or delphinium, in your garden as a head start. Awesome! Now you can fill in with more.
You also might discover some new things you’ve never thought about to consider growing as an experiment.
While there’s a lot here, the list is not comprehensive. We grow even more varieties than are mentioned, and you might have favorites that are left off. That’s ok, once you see the pattern, you can plug your own favorites into the plan.
Consider it a guide and a starting point.
Most of all, have fun!
An end of season arrangement with big Zinnias and Dahlias for focals, Green Mist Queen Anne’s Lace for discs, Marigolds and smaller Zinnias for round accents, Dara seed heads for texture, Tangerine Gem Marigold as a filler - it almost works like a foliage here, and Spoon Tomato vines for air
