Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: The Cut Flower garden
Walking into your home and there on the kitchen table is a lovely vase filled with flowers from the local nursery.
They’re wonderful, certainly, but have you thought about growing your own cut flower garden?
This is the garden where you don’t feel guilty cutting that flower to bring inside! It won’t ruin the “look” you’ve achieved in your landscape. This garden should be in full sun at the rear of your property, if possible. A garden where you don’t mind picking the flowers. If you don’t have much room, how about planting large containers to pluck a few flowers from? Are you looking for large solitary blooms like sunflowers, zinnias or coneflowers?
Or maybe a multitude of smaller flowers like Penta or Verbena? You can include perennials, grasses, shrubs and bulbs too!
These are new for 2018. Who doesn’t love the smell of lilacs, plant the new First Editions ‘Virtual Violet’. This new shrub has shiny violet new leaves, deep purple stems, raspberry-purple buds and fragrant violet flowers. And get this, Leaf petioles remain violet well into the summer. The habit is upright instead of rounded and compact.
ProCut ‘White Nite’ sunflower is simply stunning and there’s no pollen to stain tablecloths. The flowers are a creamy pale-yellow, almost white with a dark center. To avoid insect damage, they encourage harvesting blooms just as they begin to open and storing until they open to the desired appearance.
And one more, the ‘Tartan’ dahlia! Tartan’s enormous two-tone flowers will be the talk of your garden this summer. The blossoms are an artful blend of deep burgundy and snowy white, with some petals solid and others striped. Just a few stems makes a stunning arrangement. This timeless favorite has been popular since the 1950s. The blooms are 7 to 8 inches!
