10 best flowers to plant in spring for a summer picking garden
Top 10 Flowers to Plant in Spring for a Summer Cutting Garden
Brighten up your home with fresh blooms all summer long by growing your own cut flowers.
As the iconic British gardener once wrote, “A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even one solitary vase of a living flower may redeem it.”
If your rooms could use some floral redemption, you’re in luck! You don’t need a sprawling medieval castle garden to grow enough flowers to fill your vases and surprise your friends with pretty posies. By growing a designated cutting garden, you can keep your home blooming from spring to autumn.
Designating Your Cutting Garden
You can choose to designate a specific area of your growing space as your cutting garden or simply slot plants in between others where there’s space. Most of my flowering annuals, which complete their life cycle in a year, are grown in raised beds. This allows me to easily clear them out at the end of one season, giving me a blank canvas to grow a new lot of edibles or flowers.
However, some of my favorite cutting plants, such as roses and yarrows, are perennials that die back in winter. I grow them among other permanent plants in my garden beds where they’re less obvious during their dormant period. Just remember that flowers love sunshine, so choose a spot where they’ll get at least six hours of it a day.
Choosing Your Plants
When it comes to annuals, you’re spoiled for choice with varieties you can sow from seed. But if that sounds like too much work, you can fast-track things by planting seedlings instead.
Once your flowers start blooming, pick them early in the morning. Once inside, recut the stems on an angle to allow them to absorb as much water as possible. In the garden, deadhead spent flowers regularly to encourage the plants to send up new growth.
Plants in a cutting garden need to deliver on a few levels. You want “good doers” that will bloom for at least a season, plus they need to last well in a vase. In late summer, you also want flowers that can cope with hot, dry weather. Here are some top picks:
- Hydrangeas: A single mophead hydrangea flower can transform any kind of vessel, even a humble jam jar. Hydrangeas are perennials that die back in winter, so plant them in a spot where you don’t mind looking at a few sticks over the cold months.
- Sweet Peas: The more you pick these fragrant beauties, the more they’ll bloom. Sow seed directly into compost-enriched soil, rig up a structure for them to climb, and protect young plants from slugs and snails.
- Penstemons: The bell-shaped blooms on these perennials ring out for months, and the plants are tough as nails, even coping with heavy clay soil.
- Zinnias: These flowers love the heat and come in a paintbox selection of colors. They’re lovely standing tall in a vase or you can remove the stems and float the flowerheads in a bowl of water with tea lights.
- Alstroemerias: Also known as Lily of the Incas, these colorful perennials last for up to two weeks in a vase.
- Yarrows: Adding a meadow vibe to your garden and floral arrangements, the flat blooms on these perennials are excellent landing pads for pollinators.
- Roses: Still the queen of the flowers, the rose came top in my poll. For old-world beauty and repeat flowering, grow fragrant David Austins. My favorite is the orange ‘Lady of Shalott’, with tea and apple-scented blooms.
- Snapdragons: The flowering spires of these annuals are wonderful in a vase because they look good from all angles. Sow the tiny seeds in trays or buy seedlings.
- Sunflowers: The solar-powered structure on a stem. Choose multi-branching varieties such as the chocolate-red ‘Rouge Royale’, so you get more than one flower per stem.
- Dahlias: These long-lasting cut flowers come in an array of vibrant colors and striking forms, from cute pompoms to showstopping dinner-plate varieties. Plant tubers in well-drained soil once the risk of frost has passed.
