Cutting garden: Invest in perennials

Flo­ral arrange­ments are def­i­nitely the eas­i­est way to improve the ambiance of any room pro­vid­ing an instant pop of color, life and beauty to the home. But because cut flow­ers are often an expen­sive lux­ury, it can be hard to jus­tify the cost unless for a spe­cial occa­sion. The beauty of a cut­ting gar­den is how entirely cus­tomiz­able it can be. From a rel­a­tively small space in your gar­den with an invest­ment in peren­ni­als, you can have fresh-cut flow­ers from March to late autumn.

One of the most impor­tant fac­tors in the suc­cess of your cut­ting gar­den is decid­ing where you always like to have flow­ers. For exam­ple, I always want an arrange­ment on my cof­fee table. So for me, grow­ing long-stemmed flow­ers is of no con­cern. If the area in your home where you like to keep flow­ers demands a larger arrange­ment, grow­ing flow­ers with longer stems will need to be a con­sid­er­a­tion. Also impor­tant to con­sider is what kind of flo­ral arrange­ments you pre­fer. If you are more attracted to arrange­ments with sev­eral col­ors and types of flow­ers, it will be impor­tant to plan for mul­ti­ple plants to bloom at the same time. On the con­trary, if you pre­fer mono­chro­matic arrange­ments all of the same flower as I gen­er­ally do, assur­ing that there will be enough of each indi­vid­ual plant bloom­ing at the same time is para­mount. In a cut­ting gar­den, it is impor­tant to have plants that bloom all sea­son, as well as those that only bloom once.

Next, plan­ning the plant­ing of your gar­den is based on what blooms when. The first blooms of the year will come from bulbs and early bloomers like for­sythia. While it can vary by a few weeks, gen­er­ally the very first bulbs will bloom in mid-March. Favorites like cro­cus, mus­cari, hyacinth and daf­fodils are early bloomers and always a wel­come intro­duc­tion to spring. My favorites of the early spring for cut arrange­ments are daf­fodil and hyacinth. Cro­cus and mus­cari are both more del­i­cate as cut flow­ers with small blooms; many are needed for one arrange­ment. With daf­fodil and hyacinth, how­ever, you get a lot of bloom for the invest­ment. Also bloom­ing at this time is for­sythia. With long stems of vivid yel­low, for­sythia makes spec­tac­u­lar arrange­ments. In a few short years, for­sythia can quadru­ple in size pro­duc­ing more and more blooms to cut and enjoy inside. In mid-spring, many vari­eties of daf­fodil con­tinue to bloom as well as tulips. Because deer are so likely to eat tulips, it is advis­able they are grown in an enclo­sure or in con­tain­ers where the deer can­not reach. Later in the spring, allium and iris are per­fect for arrange­ments. One of my favorite arrange­ments is to mix pur­ple allium and green-white Annabelle hydrangeas.

In late April, the divine fra­grance of lilacs inside the home cut from the gar­den is a treat I look for­ward to all year. I pre­fer old-fashioned lilacs like “Pres­i­dent Grevy,” which have larger blooms, deeper color and stronger fra­grance. How­ever due to the large size of an old-fashioned lilac, space can be a con­cern. To kick off the sum­mer around Memo­r­ial Day, peonies are a favorite of many, includ­ing myself. Peonies make gor­geous, fra­grant arrange­ments. Peonies come in hun­dreds of vari­eties, so choos­ing your favorite is essen­tial. And some peonies work bet­ter as cut flow­ers than oth­ers; a “Krin­kled White” peony for instance lasts only about two days, whereas once cut, a “Boule de Neige” lasts around a week.

Once in sum­mer, the options really open up with hydrangea, roses, lilies, daisies, dahlias, black-eyed Susan and glad­i­o­lus for example.

Mov­ing into the autumn, some flow­ers like hydrangea turn a beau­ti­ful green and bur­gundy color if left on the shrub. Depend­ing on when the first hard frost is, you can rely on your bloom­ing shrubs for cut flow­ers deep into the fall. There have been a few years where even on Thanks­giv­ing I was still able to cut hydrangeas from my own garden.

While it is a bit of work in the begin­ning to do all the plant­ing and pur­chas­ing for a cut­ting gar­den, it is an invest­ment that will reward you for years to come. Fresh flow­ers liven up any room with min­i­mal effort, and with the resources in your own yard, they do not have to be reserved for spe­cial occasions.

A few basics for arrang­ing flow­ers from your own garden:

Wash them: A down­side to cut­ting your own flow­ers are the bugs that often come with them. This is a very easy fix. Fill your sink with cold water (warm water could dis­color or wilt the blooms) and sub­merge each bloom in the water. Twist or shake gen­tly under the water and more often than not, an insect you did not see before will come out.

Feed them: I buy large tubs of flo­ral food online, as well as a prod­uct called Quick Dip. Quick Dip is an irre­place­able prod­uct that helps oxy­genate the stems of flow­ers so they will more rapidly take in water.

Angle them: With excep­tion­ally clean scis­sors, cut the stems at a 45 degree angle. This pro­motes max­i­mum water absorption.

Also, flow­ers with woody stems like roses and hydrangea are more likely to need a fresh cut every few days as well as a lit­tle bit of bleach (½ tea­spoon) in the water to ward off the growth of bacteria.

Stephen Jones is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Jun 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.