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Updated: July 16, 2009, 3:25 pm	Share    Print    Email

Hydrangeas make lovely cut flowers. Put them in just a small amount of water, let it evaporate, and let the flowers dry in the vase--they'll last for months. Photo by Anne Halpin

Southampton - Don't you love having vases of fresh flowers in your house? In summer you can have them on your deck and patio, too. Freshly cut flowers seem to capture the very essence of summer. Many local farm stands sell pretty bouquets that you can bring home and pop into a vase. But if you're a gardener, it's easy to grow some of your own flowers for cutting, and you don't need a big garden to do it. Here are some basics to get you started.

Dahlia falls into the ball and saucer category.

 •  • If you want to grow cutting flowers, it's probably best to plant a special bed just for producing them, instead of cutting from a flower garden meant for display (though you can do that, too). You might want to put a cutting garden near a property line or in an out-of-the-way corner. A small bed right outside the back door will be handy for snipping a quick bouquet whenever you need it. If you've already got a vegetable garden, add a few rows or blocks of flowers for cutting.

A sunny location will give you the biggest choice of flowers. If deer or rabbits are around, fence in the garden. Deer can leap an eight-foot fence, but if your garden is small, they won't want to jump in and risk the chance of getting trapped. My own garden is enclosed in a fence of deer netting that's about six feet high, and so far, I've never had deer jump into it. If you've got rabbits, peg down the bottom of the netting to keep them from scooting underneath it.

 • If your soil is very sandy, enrich it with compost before you plant flowers. If you decide to try your hand at growing annual flowers from seed (annuals are the ones that have to be planted every year), make three or four sowings two weeks apart, so you'll have lots of flowers to cut all summer long.

Summer snapdragon falls in the spiky flower category.

 • Choose flower colors that coordinate with the color scheme inside your house, so your bouquets and arrangements will fit right into your rooms. And of course, include your personal favorite colors, too. You can, if you like, organize the garden by color, planting blocks or rows of all blue and purple flowers, pinks, reds, yellows, white, or orange and peach. When you're looking for flowers of a particular color, you'll find them all together in the garden.

 • To create interesting arrangements, you'll need flowers of three basic forms: round balls and saucer shapes; tall, spiky flowers, and cups or bell shapes. You'll also need some smaller, airier blooms to use as fillers to plug gaps between larger flowers in arrangements and bouquets you create.

Some Cutting Flowers To Grow
Here are some flowers to consider including in your cutting garden:

BALLS AND SAUCER SHAPES
 • Allium
 • Aster
 • Bachelor's button
 • Black-eyed Susan

Tulip is in the cup and bells category.

 • Calendula
 • Coreopsis
 • Cosmos daisy
 • Dahlia
 • Echinacea
 • Gloriosa daisy
 • Hydrangea
 • Marigold
 • Peony
 • Rose
 • Shasta daisy
 • Sunflower
 • Yarrow (Achillea)
 • Zinnia

SPIKY FLOWERS
 • Celosia
 • Delphinium
 • Gladiolus
 • Hollyhock
 • Larkspur
 • Lavender
 • Liatris
 • Salvia
 • Snapdragon

Coral bells fall into the filler category.

 • Statice
 • Veronica
CUPS AND BELLS
 • Campanula
 • Lily
 • Nicotiana
 • Poppy
 • Tulip

FILLERS
 • Baby's breath
 • Bachelor's button, cornflower
 • Coral bells
 • Dianthus
 • Globe amaranth
 • Love-in-a-mist (Nigella)
 • Sweet pea
 • Verbena

Harvesting and Prepping the Flowers
When you go out to the garden to cut flowers, first make sure your clippers, scissors, or flower shears are sharp. Cut the flowers in the morning, when their stems are still turgid and full of water. If you can't cut in the morning, wait until evening. Don't cut in mid-afternoon when the sun has pulled moisture from the plants and the stems may be softer. Take a bucket of water to the garden with you and plunge the stems into it as soon as you cut them.

Remember, cut flowers are still alive, so you need to keep them fed and watered, just as if they were still in the garden.

As a general rule, don't cut tightly closed buds - wait until they show some color. Don't cut mature flowers, either - they won't last very long in the vase. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, and some flowers are fine if cut when they are fully open - zinnias, asters, chrysanthemums and marigolds are a few. But most other flowers are best cut when the buds are about half open. Don't cut flowers that show any sign of disease, or that have been nibbled by bugs, bunnies or slugs. Only cut the most perfect blossoms from your garden.

Dahlias come in a host of warm tones and fill a vase with summer color. Photo by Anne Halpin

To prepare the flowers for the vase, your goal is to maximize their ability to continue drawing water up into their stems. When out of water, the stems can seal off, preventing them from drawing water when you put them in the vase. That's why you may see flowers wilting in a vase full of water. When you get your flowers indoors (or bring them home from the farm stand) cut off the bottom half-inch or inch of the stem, and drop them immediately into your vase of water. Cutting on a slant leaves more surface area exposed to the water. You can even run some cool water in a sink and recut the stems under water.

Some flower stems bleed sap when cut (mums, daffodils, campanula, dahlias, heliotrope, hydrangea, lantana and poppy are examples). To give them the longest vase life, seal the ends of the stems by dipping them quickly in boiling water, or searing them briefly over a candle flame.

Before arranging your flowers, remove all leaves and any thorns that would be under water in the vase. Fill the vase with lukewarm water, and add some flower preservative before adding the flowers.

Once the flowers are in the vase, the very best thing you can do to extend their life is to change the water each day, and cut off a half-inch or so from the bottom of each stem. Adding a few drops of bleach to kill bacteria, or some flower food, sugar, or lemon-lime soda helps, too, but changing the water and re-cutting the stems is paramount.

Then, place your vases full of garden flowers everywhere, and enjoy them!

• Anne Halpin is a writer, editor and professional gardener, and the author of 17 garden, home and nature books. She lives in Hampton Bays.