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Extend the Beauty of the Garden with Cut Flowers |
Cut flowers are a lovely way to bring the beauty of your garden indoors or to share something special with family and friends. Unless you have large, well-established flower beds, however, you may not want to sacrifice the appearance of your display gardens by cutting huge bouquets of flowers.
That's where a cutting garden comes in. The primary purpose of cutting gardens is to grow flowers and foliage for arrangements. They are a production space therefore visual appeal from a garden design standpoint is not a priority. A cutting garden can be tucked away in a sunny corner of your yard or be an extension of a vegetable garden you might have. Paths or stepping stones should provide easy access to the various sections of your cutting garden to avoid damage to other flowers.
Choose annuals, perennials, and bulbs that provide a succession of bloom throughout the summer. In addition to long stems, the combination of color, shape, and texture of the flowers is important. Taller spikes of flowers like gladiolas and liatris provide height while the rounder, fuller blooms of black-eyed susans, dahlias, iris, and zinnias give mass to your arrangement. Small, airy flowers like baby's breath are a perfect little filler to give your arrangement a finished look.
Once tulips and hyacinth take a rest after their spring push, perennials like Oriental and Asiatic lilies, Shasta daisies, blanket flower, and delphinium can be the backbone of a cutting garden, returning each year with more blooms to enjoy. Tall varieties of snapdragons, cosmos, stock, cleome, sunflowers, and African marigolds are annuals that give loads of blooms and the opportunity to try something new each season. Summer bloomers like dahlias and gladiolas also add a spark to bouquets and come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors.
The season for cutting flowers doesn't end with summer. Hardy mums, showy stonecrop sedum, and grasses make wonderful additions to autumn cut flower arrangements. Annuals such as strawflowers, cockscomb, statice, love-in-a-mist, and gomphrena also dry nicely for enjoyment all year long. |
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