Cut Flower Garden Design // How to Design a Four-Season Cutting Garden in the Landscape

Hi everyone! Welcome to How to Grow Cut Flowers in the Landscape. If we haven't met before, it's my pleasure to meet you. My name is Danielle and I'm a small scale cut flower grower here in southern Pennsylvania. Now maybe like some of you, I started growing cut flowers in traditional rows here on our half acre back in 2016, but something just felt amiss. I basically took up our entire property and attempted to turn it into those traditional flower rows that we probably all know and are used to seeing from the big names. So many people that I admire and look up to. But the thing was, it just didn't seem to be working right for me. My family didn't really have a backyard anymore just because of the layout of our property and we really didn't have that garden that included the garden design principles that I had grown up with and I had really come to love. You know I found myself longing for garden rooms, focal points, vistas, entrances, rhythm and repetition. But I also still longed to grow and sell as many cut flowers as my property would allow. Now, at the same time that I was struggling to make traditional cut flower rows work on this property, I was also managing a large vegetable farm, also grown in rows, of course. So I would go to work and work in row vegetable crops, and I would come home to cut. flower row crops, and I felt like I just had no place to rest and call the garden that I remembered growing up in at my grandma's house. And in my heart, I knew that I needed, I knew that my mental health needed, and I knew that my family needed a garden to call her own. But my dream of growing and selling cut flowers from this land that I'm currently planted on, it wasn't going anywhere. So I just had to find a way to make it work for me. And that's when it dawned on me to abandon growing cut flowers and long rows. And instead attempt to grow the same amount of cut flowers in a landscape setting. The process of growing cut flowers in the landscape has definitely been a learning process and I continue to learn what works and what doesn't work each year. With each passing year I notice things I could do better. I make notes of what works in the landscape and things that I put into the landscape and really didn't work well and it just gives me a clearer vision for what I want to accomplish as I move forward and I just keep on trying until I get it right and I would I would really just encourage you to do the same thing. Remembering that growing in the landscape will vary greatly from one property to another. But what remains the same is that it definitely can be done. You can grow cut flowers anywhere. You can grow them in the landscape and incorporate key garden design principles into your cut flower garden. You can grow cut flowers in pots on your porch. You can grow cut Flowers and raised beds along with your vegetables. Or you can grow cut flowers in an existing shade garden or even grow them on the devil's strip of your property. So as we move through this class, I'll do my best to share with you everything that I've learned so far with a strong emphasis on designing from the beginning for a continuous supply of cutting material all growing season. So step number one is to first do a site analysis. In other words, where do you wanna site your cut flower garden? Go ahead and consider sun exposure, any standing water issues that you might have in certain areas, any strong root competition from neighboring trees, or any areas that might be a wind tunnel. Also address when creating this garden if you wanna block any undesirable views right from the beginning. Whether you choose to grow in pots, raised beds, or landscape garden beds, it's best whenever possible to choose a site that receives full sun. Now if your property has only shade, don't worry, you can still grow cut flowers. They'll just need to be different varieties of cut flowers and I've provided a resource link to articles and videos I've done on the best cut flowers for shade. But if at all possible, a cut flower garden should be sited in an area that receives at least six hours of full sun, has well-draining soil, and the site should not have any issues with pooling or standing water. So let's just go ahead and do a site analysis of my main flower walk together. So both of these borders were not here when I first moved in, so I analyzed this site. I saw that the majority of this long rectangular area received full sun. This is all in full sun from about 11 a.m. till sunset. The front part of this border is also in full sun from 11 a.m. to sunset. But the back of the border, because of shade from this large oak tree, basically doesn't get hit with this sun until about 2 p.m. But additionally, when I think about how the rain and the wind acts here, we get a lot The rain comes down very quickly and it often rains for multiple days. So even though my garage here has a gutter, the gutter sometimes can't keep up. It will actually the water will just fall right off the gutter because it can't keep up creating an area that's not only shady back there, but wet. So it's not that I can't grow any cut flowers back there. It's just that I need to be careful with my choice of plant material back in that area. In an area that's wet and partly shaded for the majority of the first part of the day, I'm going to choose to plant hollies, winter berries, crepe myrtles, and some evergreens can handle that as well. But I wouldn't want to plant my dahlias, my zinnias, my salvia, my yarrow over on that side of the border. Instead, I'm sticking them over here where they like full sun. So you probably heard that expression, right plant, right place. The best advice ever when it comes to gardening, right? When it comes to cut flower gardening in the landscape, the same exact thing. The right cut flower for the right space and you'll be gold right from the start. Step number two is to perform a soil test. Plants are only as good as the soil that they're grown in so at the beginning of this season perform a soil test and send it to your local extension office, that's what I do, or you could also send it to a reputable soil lab for testing. Once you receive the results back, take the advice of the soil specialist and add all of the recommended amendments. And I completely understand how this step is often skipped, but it's my personal opinion and the opinion of many others as well, that this is really the most important step. Healthy soil means healthy plants, which means less pest and disease issues down the line. And that's what we all want, right? So now that we've completed our site analysis, had our soil tested, we can start to design the garden. The first thing I would just say to ask yourself is what kind of feel do you want this space to have? Do you want the feel of maybe a secret garden? Creating a narrow entrance where you can't see what lies beyond and creating tall plant walls all around the garden will give you the feeling of entering into a secret space. Remember, you can still accomplish this design with cut flowers, it's just all about plant choice. So instead of creating a secret garden with yew hedges, create it instead with arbors adorned with vines that are good for cutting, like clematis, lavender puff, hops, maybe cup and saucer vine, honeysuckle, the possibilities are endless. And then for the walls of your secret garden you can use tall flowering shrubs where you'll cut the bloom heads but you're still left with a fabulous foliage structure to give you that enclosed feel you desire. Once you decide on a design you can mark out the beds and measure them. These measurements will be extremely helpful as we place plants within the garden because no one wants to move a 10 by 10 foot shrub. And it's best to give the big things the room they need from the start. So now let's move on to a concept that is specific for growing cut flowers in the landscape, which is paths and hardscaping within the border for cut flowers. That's step four. And let me head over to one of those paths now. So thus far these gardening principles apply to basically any form of garden design, but now we really need to move on to something that's vital to growing cut flowers in the landscape and that is creating pathways within the landscape borders every four feet. You've probably read that cut flower rows should be no more than four feet wide so you can reach into the borders to harvest and the same principle is true. In the landscape, we really need places to step and be able to harvest our flowers every four feet. So I'm here on somewhat carefully disguised pathways. So if you can see, I have a stone pathway here that leads through this section of the garden. Now how you go about accomplishing these pathways is really up to you, and you can get really creative with this also. You could use flagstone, you could just use mulch, you could just be really economical, lay some cardboard down. The pathways don't have to be that large if you're the only one working. Here I go for about a two foot walkway, but as long as I can walk on my pathway, And set my bucket down there, it's good enough for me, but at least every four feet where I'm going to be having four feet of cut flowers, I want a pathway to go through that area, a pathway of some kind, something to step on. Because say for instance, you created this amazing, amazing cut flower border, right? And you designed it more like a herbaceous order, more like a herbaceous border. Let me try that again, and you designed it more like a herbaceous border that is just meant to be viewed. What's going to happen unfortunately is you're going to have this 30 foot wide bed that's going to be basically impossible to harvest without crushing a lot of your beautiful flowers. So this is something that really is different, cut flower gardens and the landscape versus just designing a garden landscape. I put in these pathways every four feet. So that you can always harvest your flowers with ease. Step number five is a step that I think is really fun. And it's just to assess what you already have. So I would encourage you to look around your property for cutting material that you already have. Do you have forsythia? Can you see this big hedge of forsythia behind me? This is the only foliage I started with. I propagated it via layering and now it runs along our entire fence line. So I basically have Forsythia foliage all mid-summer into the fall, all the foliage I need. Right there. It was right there from the start. All I had to do was a little propagation. So yeah, just ask yourself, do you have forsythia, nine bark or lilacs on the property already? Do you have tall evergreens to cut from? Do you have any native plants that make excellent cut flowers like goldenrod? Note what you already have. That way, if you have a small space, you can take these plants into great consideration when you make plant choices. So note how these plants that you have contribute to a bouquet? Are they foliage? Are they fillers? Spikes? Focal flowers, evergreen branches. For example, if you already have a long stand of forsythia to cut from, you may not need to plant much summer foliage. You can save that space for something else. You can simply use what you already have, just like I said. Say you have that abundance of goldenrod. You may not need to plant celosia, and instead you can save your precious space for dahlias. So just take note of what you have, note how it functions in a bouquet, and then note what's left over. What do you still need after that analysis? Let what you don't have yet, what you need, dictate your plant choices moving forward. So now let's move on to plant selection and supporting cut flowers in the landscape. So step number six, and basically the first plants that I like to put into a brand new garden, are the evergreens so put in evergreen interest that doubles as cutting material so say you want to make wreaths, swags, garlands or even sell winter bouquets you'll want a steady supply of evergreens berries and twigs, things with interesting bark from trees work well so select evergreens that mature to the right height and width for your garden's needs and try to plant different evergreens for a varied selection of material so let's have a for instance or an example instead of planting say 10 arborvitaes on the edge of your border and only having one plant to cut from in winter You may instead want to plant four arborvitaes, one pine, one holly, two boxwoods, a cedar with interesting cones, and maybe a variegated euonymus. Then you may want to come in with a yellow or red twig dogwood. Red and yellow winterberries are so beautiful and maybe some snowberries. And the way I like to place my evergreens is how we talked about at the beginning. Anything that needs to be screened, those plants go in those specific locations. But then I just like to space out this evergreen interest throughout the borders So that all the evergreen interest isn't just concentrated in one area. But as I walk my entire garden throughout the winter, there's always something beautiful to see, always something beautiful to cut from as I walk throughout the garden. Now that we have all our evergreens placed throughout the garden, we can move on to step seven, which is to add foliage shrubs that are good for cutting, keeping leaf color, So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to And also blooms in mind and I also like to make sure that the shrubs that I choose can reproduce themselves at either a moderate or a fast rate because remember everything within our borders is there to be cut. That's basically everything that I'm saying here could really be summed up with Everything in the garden can and should be cut. There should be kind of no plant left uncut if you will. But ideally I want each garden space to have the presence of lime, right here I have a smoke bush, purple, red and blue. However these shrubs must all be good cutting material as I said and even better if they bloom at some point in the season. Hence you could even say they're a double cut. So for example, for purple, you would want to plant something like a ninebark. It blooms in the spring, then you can use just the foliage in the summer, and then in the fall it has those wonderful seed pods that it leaves behind. So with ninebark, it's almost a triple cut. You just can't go wrong with ninebark if you ask me. For lime, maybe you want to go ahead and plant some lime-colored spireas. Lime spireas in my area bloom in early summer, For red, you could go ahead and plant mahogany splendor hibiscus. Even though this is an annual, it still functions within the garden as a shrub until it comes to the very end of the season when you'll go ahead and cut it. And for blue I think blue can be hard in terms of being a shrub. The only thing I can really think of that's a good cut would be like a kinsley honeysuckle and at that point some people are going to say that's a shrub and some people are going to say it's a perennial. But basically we're just trying to create a four season cutting garden and we're going to start in with our evergreens first our shrubs next and try to get as much color and as much varying leaf form and structure into the garden as possible. And friends, I'd like to stop here and stress this next point for just a while because it's something that I definitely didn't consider early on, but this is another differentiating point between regular garden design and cut flower landscape garden design, if you will. It's that it's very important to note that creating a mixed border that is going to be continuously cut is dependent on what remains. After cutting. So foliage color and form is just so important. In fact, let me say it again. A cut flower garden in the landscape that is continually cut is dependent on what remains after cutting. So, evergreens, varying foliage color and foliage form will be what makes your garden continue to look interesting even after the flowers have been cut. Without this consideration, you may be left with a sea of green shrubs with similar leaf structure. And I can think of an example of what I did early on that kind of brought this information to light in my mind. So the first three years I grew cut flowers, I grew in rows, most of the rows went this way and they just kept traveling forward. Then when I switched, I dug out these kind of winding borders because they didn't want you to see what lies beyond. But what I did was, I planted in a few shrubs, a few evergreens, and then I just planted in tons of annual cut flowers to fill in the gaps. So basically I just had these ginormous drifts of zinnias that swooped all over the place, dianthus that swooped all over the place here, a big thing of snapdragons that swooped here. Well it looked beautiful for about two minutes then as soon as I cut it I was just left with all green everywhere. So really being dependent on shrub color, shrub foliage, evergreen interest, and having these spaced sporadically throughout the garden is really vital. So friends, I hope I haven't hit on that point too hard, but I really feel like this is what makes all the difference because if you set up your cut flower garden in the landscape and only use green or only use annuals, the garden, if you are really truly cutting and selling the flowers on a continuous basis, you'll be left with little to no interest to look at because remember, everything is being cut. So actually here's another great example right next to me. So I have this lime colored smoke bush here. You can probably see that I cut it for an event earlier on in the season but instead of it reflushing green because it's a lime smoke bush it's reflushing this vibrant lime green color giving me just that added layer of interest throughout the growing season. So step number eight is where things get fun and really floriferous if you will. That's when we add perennials into our border. Whether that be herbaceous perennials like you see here with the obedient plant. Also so many wonderful perennial bulbs out there on the market. I feel like every perennial bulb basically is a wonderful cut flower. Just check the height of course. But the way I like to set this up And I've tried it a couple ways, and I'll tell you some fails and successes, is that now I just basically put all of my perennials in the back. or the middle of the border and then leave these open areas in the front just always open for annuals because the way I plant is heavy in succession planting so the annuals are going to need flipped at least three times during the course of the growing season and I just find that if I put the annuals in the middle of the border even if it makes sense height wise and the design I'm just never as attentive to them as I need to be because the annuals is really what's going to our prime attention. So perennials in the back and in the middle based on their mature height and then you can move on to annuals. So maybe now you're saying to yourself, okay, I know where I'm going to put my perennials. I know where I want to space my annuals. I also like to once again, think of that classic garden principle, rhythm and repetition, instead of a long 20 foot row of zinnias that swoops all along your border, you may want to break that up into three different five feet sections to give you that garden feel of rhythm and repetition. But let's talk a little bit about how in the world do we decide what to grow when it comes to perennials and annuals because there's so much to choose from. Everything is beautiful. If you're like me, you want to grow every single thing on the planet. So what I think is really helpful is to make a list of seasonal bouquets for the four seasons. And the four seasons of my bouquets here at my farm stand are a spring bouquet, An early summer bouquet, a midsummer bouquet, and fall. And during the course of those four seasons, I want to always have a focal flower, a supporting flower, a disc flower, a spike flower, a filler flower, and some kind of foliage. That way my landscape is productive all growing season, not just for a few weeks in July. And that can happen very easily. So an example plan would be as follows, and I'll put it right next to me here on the screen so you can read it as well. A spring bouquet might be peonies, there you have your perennial, love in a mist or leia, snapdragons, bachelor's buttons, and bupleurum. Those are all annuals. A little bit heavy there on the annual production wouldn't you say? I can probably do better and say maybe instead of bupleurum I'm going to come in with some honeysuckle but you see where I'm going with that one. In early summer how about lilies for my perennial? How about strawflower, dahlia, bells of Ireland, saponaria for my annuals, and by that time forsythia is ready for harvest, I'm definitely relying on that forsythia foliage. By midsummer, how about sunflowers, marigolds, both annuals. Then how about yarrow as a perennial, celosia. Feverfew. Feverfew can go either way depending on who you talk to. Some people say it functions in their garden as a perennial. Here in my garden, rather, I grow it as an annual. And then how about some ninebark? Ninebark is absolutely gorgeous. And then in the fall, we've got the dahlias. That's our perennial. Zinnias, ageratum, celosia, Jewels of Opal, abelia is a wonderful foliage that lasts forever in the vase and is semi-evergreen here. So another one that could even be added in for evergreen interest. Now these bouquet examples may not be what you want to grow and what works for your particular situation at all. But I think that just by sitting down and making a list saying, okay, here's my four seasons where I'm going to be selling and I'm going to create a bouquet for each of those seasons and I'm going to feature all the different flower types. I'm going to make sure I have at least one or two perennials. One, two, or three annuals. I wanna have some shrub foliage from the garden. And you can quickly just narrow down the list of what to plant. You can even think about flower color according to the season. So in the spring, you know, pastels. In the summer, bright colors. In the fall, those dark moody colors, absolutely gorgeous. But you know, you can just narrow down, narrow down, narrow down, especially if you have a small space. Just hone in on exactly what you want to grow and then grow that. So now we're really cooking with our cut flower garden and the landscape. We know the feel that we want. We have our evergreens in place. We have all these great shrubs with varying foliage color, varying foliage form. We have a lot of different plant material that functions differently in design work. We've got spikes. We've got disc flowers. We've got all kinds of stuff, right? It's a flower zoo out here, just the way I like it. And so where I like to put my annuals, like I talked about in the perennial section, is in the front of the border. First of all, I always put the annuals at the front because they need the most attention. They need to be flipped multiple times during the growing season, and really they're going to be cut on the most heavily. An annual, a cut-and-come-again annual, if you will, is going to be cut on most often. And then in terms of succession planting and area, this could very easily be tulips. Cut flower tulips function as an annual, so we could start here with tulips. We could come in with a quick wave of Nigella that comes on really quick. Quickly cut it, ready for something else. You could come in here next with some kind of a salvia. You're on your third succession. I'm just talking off the top of my head at this point but if I planned that out more carefully I could easily be flipping this particular area three or even four times. And as you plant out your annuals remember that plant spacing can be pushed much closer together when growing for cutting. Most spikes can be grown at six by six inches. Some things like gladiolas can be spaced Space two by two inches. Disc flowers like zinnias can go in at nine by nine inches. Sunflowers can go. as close together as 4x4 inches or 6x6 inches depending on the head size that you want. So what I'm saying here is you can really push the spacing for cut flower production, do cut flower production spacing within the borders, but just don't push it too far, just like you wouldn't push it too far in rows. You wouldn't put zinnias in four inches by four inches. They would get powdery mildew right after that first cut. So just space them exactly the same as you would as if you were planting them in rows. So now let's move on to step 10 which is supporting cut flowers in the landscape and this step is very very very very very very important. So while you can use Hortonova netting and row cropping, and I do still use it in some of my raised beds along with my vegetable garden, there's a great deal more individual staking and corralling in the landscape. And it may be tempting to think that plants will hold each other up, but I promise you, they won't. It will take one second for a really bad storm to wipe out your entire cut flower garden. And so I'm here with a dahlia, and you can see I have a four-foot stake in this dahlia. If it was a taller stake, it might need to be six feet, eight feet, but this is a super heavy-duty black metal post, and I have the dahlia tied to this post. I would say at least five times already and I'll continue to tie it. Now that I see how tall this dahlia is, I would have preferred a taller stake to be honest with you, but basically the choices that I know of and that I use are just a singular stake. Then you can also corral groups of plants and then let me take you to another section where you can form an Put an X in front of your plants to keep them up. So I hope you can see the staking system that I have here. I'll actually take out the stakes and allow the plants to fall forward on me, but for this I'm using bamboo stakes and I picked this up from Longwood Gardens. Going to, sorry can y'all see me, going to botanical gardens is really helpful. A lot of them have display gardens with really tall plants and you can see how they support them in a landscape setting. So unsupported you can see that this salvia is falling way onto my path. I take the stake, display garden style, and basically create an X in front of the plant. And then because I need to support this one too, I don't know if you can see this stake here, I'm going to place this stake here, get these in really good, there we go, much better. And you can see creating that X helps keep these heavy flowers up. But what I do a lot of the times is just singular staking, corralling multiple plants, or if it's just something that maybe is slightly falling forward on me, these Xs work really, really well. But no matter what you do, no matter how you do it, just support your cut flowers somehow so that you don't lose them all in a devastating storm. So the final step is just to think about growing vertically, especially maybe if you're like myself and you just want to use your space to its fullest potential. Think about adding in some arbors, some teepees. Maybe you can put some lattice work up against a structure and grow some cut flowers up that as well. Once you have designed your whole border or even during the process of design, think about other ways that you can add interest and more cut flower production in terms of some form of trellising. And what I love to do is is really look to our English friends in this area. If you don't have any of Sarah Raven's books, especially her newest book, of course, Monty Don is such a great inspiration as well. But I feel like our friends over in England have so many great ideas for growing flowers up. That it's just one more thing that we can do and add into our gardens to maximize our space and maximize our cut flower production. Well friends, I feel like I could just continue to talk to you for hours and as I wrote the outline for this class, I contemplated talking about some really common design principles. Things like creating a vista, something like having an entrance point to your garden, But these are all principles that easily translate from garden design right into cut flower garden design. There's really not much difference. But my hope is really that we've been able to dial into the differences between a garden design that's meant to just be looked at versus a garden design that's purpose, sole purpose, is meant to be cut and sold and what kind of considerations do we need to take in that situation that maybe we don't need to take in regular garden design. So things like that really extreme concentration on thinking about what is the garden going to look like after I cut it. In a way, almost think of the entire garden without any flowers present, and then what does it look like to you? Do you still like what you see at the end of the day? Creating a four-season cutting garden, basically very similar to creating a four-season garden that you would just view as a landscape, but remembering, always good cutting material. Will the cutting material replenish itself at a medium or fast rate? Making sure to support those cut flowers in the landscape. I've had my garden fall over. I've had gardens I've managed fall over. And it's devastating. It's devastating to grow snapdragons for 120 days and lose them in an instant. Stick a stake next to every single snapdragon that's in your landscape. Put one or two ties on there. And you don't have to worry about that happening. And then also just remembering things like always having a succession of a bouquet blooming in your garden and kind of using those seasonal bouquets to plan out what is going to go in your landscape at the end of the day. Well friends, I want to thank you so much for joining me for this class. I hope it was helpful in one way or another. I'm a total student at this. I love learning, experimenting what works and what doesn't work. And you know, building out this class Totally honest, it was really, really hard for me to just sit there and kind of make this really long outline of how in the world did I go about doing this, because I made so many mistakes as I went through the process. And so I tried to build out this outline as if I knew what I knew now, but I was back seven years ago. If that makes any sense, basically, if I had to do this all over again, I would follow the steps that I've given you today. And I really hope it will be helpful. Whoever you are, wherever you choose to grow cut flowers, I'm here to support you along the journey. I want to wish you a great day and happy gardening. Bye.