How would you like to pick wonderful bouquets from your own garden? If you have a sunny spot, why not create your own cutting garden with your favourite cutting flowers? Here’s a list of the top 10 perennials – ones sure to give you flowers for your weekly bouquet.
Your favourite cutting flowers
Before you get started in the garden, you have to decide on your ‘cutting garden favourites’. Which perennials do you like the best? Whatever you choose, make sure you have lots of them since a few flowers picked here and there won’t be missed in a border overflowing with plants. Just be sure to consider the flowering periods of your favourites; if distributed well over the season, you can pick gorgeous bouquets from your own garden from April to October.
Top 10 cutting flowers
When do the various perennials flower? To get you started, here are the flowering periods for certain perennials often used in cutting gardens.
Flowering period: May-June
1. Peony (Paeonia)
2. Baby’s Breath (Gypsophila)
Flowering period: June-July
3. Delphinium
4. Purpletop Vervain (Verbena)
Flowering period: July-August
5. Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum)
6. Phlox
Flowering period: July-September
7. Coreopsis
8. Mountain Fleeceflower (Persicaria)
Flowering period: July-October
9. Purple Coneflower (Echinacea)
10. Fountain Grass (Pennisetum)
Even when most summer flowers have finished blooming, colourful Michaelmas daisies – and later, the elegant Christmas Rose (Helleborus) – will provide delightful encores.
When to pick them
To extend the vase life of your flowers, pick them during the coolest time of the day: early in the morning or later in the evening. For the most beautiful cut flowers, pick the ones that have just started to open. Use a clean, sharp knife or a pair of flower scissors to cut the flower stem just above where it branches from the main stem. Then remove the lowest leaves and place the flowers immediately in a container filled with lukewarm water. Leave the container in a cool location for a few hours before bringing the flowers indoors. Cut flowers will perform best in a vase filled two-thirds of the way with water. If you see any leaves beneath the water surface, be sure to remove them to prevent decay.
Did you know that…
- After picking their flowers, perennials will often start blooming again?
- Leaves, grasses, seed pods and branches will make your cutting garden bouquet even prettier?
Also interesting:
Peonies: flamboyant perennials
The Echinacea: it’s not always purple
Attractive Lupines
