We asked florists and gardeners around the world for their favorite flowers, top techniques, and insider tips for planning and maintaining a cutting garden in your home garden, whether it’s a large backyard or postage-size patio. Another nice thing about growing your own flowers is that it gives you practice arranging displays of different sizes. Make small accent clusters on days when the picking is light and larger arrangements after heavier harvests. Pick up some arrangement tips in this florist’s guide to homemade bouquets, and flip through these strategies for making cut flowers last longer. Instead of sticking blooms in water, you can hang them out to dry into an everlasting display or activate your artistic side and turn them into pressed flower art or natural clothing dye. Edible flowers can also be used for kitchen experiments such as chive blossom vinegar and, Viljoen’s personal favorite, rose petal soda. With flowers at your fingertips, there’s really no limit to what you can create. If you’re planting your garden from seed (the most affordable option), it’s best to start germinating in late winter or early spring, a few weeks before the last frost hits your area. Organic gardener Allison Vallin Kostovick of Finch & Folly farm and Niki Irving, the founder of Flourish Flower Farm in Asheville, North Carolina, recommend the following flowers since they are all relatively low-maintenance, quick to germinate and grow, and have long stems that are ideal for bouquets: For an aesthetically pleasing garden that’s easy to snip from, city garden designer and founder of The Balcony Gardener Isabelle Palmer recommends arranging your flowers by height. “Always put the tall plants at the back, and then go down to medium, and then put things that are low-level or trailing at the front,” she says. Later on in your plant’s cycle, deadheading, or removing dead or damaged flowers, will also help it grow stronger. Whenever you see faded, dried, or shriveled flowers, snip them off where they meet their main stem. Getting rid of these will help save more of your plant’s energy for new growth. “The best time to cut them is in the morning,” says Palmer. “Failing that, cut them in late evening—never in the height of the heat of the day.” Cut your flowers with clean and sterile shears, leaving a good chunk of stem on if you’re planning to use them in a bouquet. Place them in water right away so they don’t dry out before you have the chance to arrange them. Palmer recommends using your compass (or, more realistically, the compass app on your phone) to measure what direction your outdoor area faces. North-facing spaces will likely get the least amount of summer sun and will only be suitable for low-light varieties, while south-, west-, and east-facing ones are typically more conducive to light-loving plants. If you live in a city, you’ll want to take the extra step of monitoring how much of your space sits in shadow throughout the day and place your containers in the brightest spot possible. Again, choose flowers that bloom more than once a year at different times to ensure that there’s always something to see. Here are a few container-friendly varieties that Viljoen and Palmer recommend for different light levels. For this reason, delicate decorative planters that don’t have drainage holes aren’t the best pick for an outdoor garden. Instead, go with strong and sturdy but portable materials like terra-cotta, fiberglass, or aluminum for easy maneuvering. Palmer recommends using as large of a container as you can comfortably put in your space: It will fit more soil (and therefore need to be watered less frequently) and leave more room for different varieties of plants to grow side by side. “I tend to mix lots of different varieties so that I’m not going to be left with a patch,” she says. She suggests placing four or five plants in a 25- to 30-centimeter planter (approximately 9 to 11 inches), six or seven plants in a 30- to 40-centimeter planter (approximately 11 to 15 inches), and eight or nine plants in a 40- to 50-centimeter planter (approximately 15 to 19 inches). Again, place plants with similar water and light needs in the same pot, and put taller plants in the back, shorter ones up front. She loves a blue, purple, and white display or a container filled with different shades of pink. Consider leaf color here, too, as some greens can clash with each other. Emma received her B.A. in Environmental Science & Policy with a specialty in environmental communications from Duke University. In addition to penning over 1,000 mbg articles on topics from the water crisis in California to the rise of urban beekeeping, her work has appeared on Grist, Bloomberg News, Bustle, and Forbes. She’s spoken about the intersection of self-care and sustainability on podcasts and live events alongside environmental thought leaders like Marci Zaroff, Gay Browne, and Summer Rayne Oakes.
