garden
by Derek Fell
If you have space for only one kind of ornamental theme garden, my advice always is to make it a cutting garden because you can not only make a beautiful long-lasting outdoor display that visitors and passers-by can admire, you can cut armloads of flowers to make beautiful indoor arrangements that could cost a fortune purchased from a florist.
At my home Cedaridge Farm we have a small cutting garden directly beside our conservatory doors so that when we entertain visitors in the sunny indoor space they can not only enjoy a magnificent floral arrangement on one of our tables, but a view into a sea of color. The outdoor space is a simple square bisected by a flagstone path leading to a Victorian-style gazebo and filled with spring bulbs for an early display of color, and then replanted with ever-blooming annuals and perennials for a summer-long display that often extends into fall months until killing frosts.
Since our indigenous soil is heavy clay we amended it by adding loads of compost we either make ourselves or obtain from local municipal recycling centers. Most years we plant through black plastic to deter weeds, and cover the plastic with more attractive shredded leaves or some other organic mulch. This not only controls weeds, it conserves soil moisture and maintains a stable soil temperature that most spring bulbs and summer annuals enjoy. The planting squares are simply composed of parallel raised beds as most cut flowers like good drainage.
For early spring color we plant the cutting garden with spring bulbs, especially tulips, favoring the lily-flowered kinds as they produce the most elegant effect, and an assortment of daffodils such as Dr. Einstein which has porcelain-white outer petals that rim a deep orange cup, and ‘Pink Charm’ which has gleaming white outer petals and a deep pink ruffled cup. We also plant a row of quamash, a meadow wildflower from Oregon that produces a spike of blue flowers on long stems, and groups of fragrant hyacinths in a rainbow of colors that can include various shades of red and blue, plus white, yellow, maroon, purple and apricot.
When the spring bulb display fades we replace the planting spaces with flowering annuals and perennials. Among annuals with long stems suitable for cutting we include an assortment of seed varieties such as zinnias, cosmos, African marigolds, celosia, snapdragons, bachelors’ buttons, asters, heliotrope, phlox, poppies, gloriosa daisies, lisianthus, blue sage, scabiosa, strawflowers, sweet peas and a wide variety of sunflowers. When growing sunflowers one must realize that there are varieties that produce one large flower per stalk, and others that produce a multitude of flowers on branching stems, and that the more you cut them for arrangements the more the new flower buds are formed. Among varieties that produce one flower per stem I like the low-growing, golden, double-flowered ‘Teddy Bear,’ the giant-flowered ‘Mammoth’ with golden yellow petals and a brown seed disc, and the multi-stemmed ‘Autumn Glory’ which comes in an assortment of colors that can include red, yellow, orange, pink and maroon, plus bi-colors.
Among zinnias I like Benary’s ‘Dahlia-flowered’ mixed colors because the large flowers produce a carnival of clean colors until fall frost. Lisianthus (commonly called prairie tulips) is unfamiliar to many people because it is a Texas wildflower that was only recently hybridized by Sakata Seeds of Japan to produce large urn-shaped tulip-like flower clusters on strong stems in mostly pink, white and several shades of blue.
I would never be without an assortment of summer-flowering perennial bulbs, especially a row of gladiolus in mixed colors, also ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ red single-flowered dahlias because they are multi-stemmed and ever-blooming until fall frost; also an assortment of lilies that must include Asiatic hybrids in a mixture of colors for early summer display and Oriental hybrids for a mid-summer display. The Oriental hybrids in particular are exquisite because they are heavily fragrant, and my own personal favorites are ‘Sheherazade’ (a rusty-red with yellow throat and yellow rim to the petals,) ‘Star Gazer,’ a strawberry red with spotted throat, and the pure white ‘Casablanca.’ A benefit of lilies is that they will tolerate light shade and all are fragrant.
Remember, that the best time to pick flowers for cutting is in the early morning when the flowers are perky and the stems usually loaded with moisture. It is very important to plunge them immediately into a bucket of luke warm water up to their necks to prevent them from wilting, and when arranging them in vases to add a tablespoon of sugar to the water to promote long vase life.
Derek Fell is a prolific Bucks County garden writer. Two of his books for Rodale include ‘Vertical Gardening’ and ‘Grow This!’ He also publishes an online monthly newsletter, the ‘Avant Gardener’ (avantgardener.info).